Review Guild's iPod Touch 2G review

[Overlord Nadrian]

My old iPod with the scroll wheel and the Touch have been as responsive as can be for me, I guess you're just an odd case

No

was needed, really, I am an odd case (at least here

).

I've been thinking of getting a new media player though and a Sansa Fuse + 16GB MicroSD seems like a good deal for me. I do like my old iPod but it's getting old and having some issues. I'm not really using my iPod Touch for music. I keep some on there for the hell of it but mainly it's for texting, games, and other general usage.Get one and Rockbox it, it's lovely.

QUOTE(CA519705950 @ Aug 1 2010, 12:15 PM)

Well since you're clearly such a pro-audiophile-guy (

), you should know all about Apple Lossless and how to convert to it.

Fuck converting, I download in FLAC and it stays in FLAC, dammit. Why go through the hassle of converting my entire library when I can just listen to it now, already in lossless?

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

Because you need to if you want lossless on iPod. You make it sound like a long, strenuous task... all you have to do is drag and drop your "entire library" over to a program, click convert, go play some Mario Kart or something for an hour and then come back and you're done. It's really not super-hard or confusing and it's not even a decent reason for not getting an iPod.

I make it sound like it is a long, strenuous task because it is. You even said it yourself. I never said it was hard to do that, it's just a waste of time and you know it.

I also never said that was the reason I didn't get an iPod. There are multiple other, very good reasons for that, being:

• iPods are shit and you know it;
• even if they weren't, I can still never get their touch things working;
• everyone has one, most people nowadays think all MP3 players are called iPods, so they go to the store, asking for an iPod; at least I show that I know more about MP3 players than them;
• they're overpriced, just like any other Apple product.

There's other reasons too but right now I can't think of a good way to put them in a good sentence.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

With my iPod Touch I have a ghetto setup.

I get around the pathetic size limit like so:

App: PocketTunesRadio (although backgrounding iTunes can achieve similar effects)
Server side: IceCast with Ices0 running on my NAS, but ShoutCast running on a Windows machine would also work.
[/p]

App: PlugPlayer
Server side: TwonkyMedia running (UPnP, so it also works with PS3s, etc...)
[/p]

 

[Sjaz]

Just so you don't go bogging down your iPods, the jailbreak multitasking is much more intensive than the official one because it keeps apps running in the background as if they were in focus. The official method actually halts the app, so it does not consume any processing cycles, but takes up more RAM, if I recall correctly. I'd suggest not multitasking on any devices
bar the iPhone 4 for fear of massive slowdowns.

If you jailbreak an iPod Touch 2G (like me), you can enable native multitasking. However, it will work like crap if you don't enable Virtual Memory. I myself am using VM now and multitasking works like a charm, always about 40MB free RAM. Yeah, I know all those bad stories about VM but it seems I don't experience any problems. If you'd like multitasking on an < iPod 3G/iPhone3GS/4 I suggest just jailbreaking it and enabling Virtual Memory. Also, deleting those daemons is a good thing too.

 

[George Dawes]

No crossfade, no crossfeed, no FLAC, no OGG (or a host of other audio formats - fuck spending hours of my life converting for a single device when I can just copy the music I already have with a simple copy/paste), substandard audio quality (OK, average is probably closer to the truth than substandard - but when you compare to players like those from sony and cowon then substandard is exactly how it sounds), the itunes requirement (although this can be mitigated - I sometimes use a nano and use an alternative method - but USB Mass Storage would be far better) and just the general ultra-badness of the OS make the ipod very, very unappealing to me.

On the plus side, Apple are one of the few companies making 160gb MP3 players (I know you can get big, ugly PMP players from the likes of archos that have more storage - but they also have giant dimensions to go with it).

I would recommend to anyone with an old ipod that can have rockbox installed on it to do so - it will improve the player so much. Crap audio quality will still be there, but you get rid of most of the other negatives.

 

[jalaneme]

Because you need to if you want lossless on iPod. You make it sound like a long, strenuous task... all you have to do is drag and drop your "entire library" over to a program, click convert, go play some Mario Kart or something for an hour and then come back and you're done. It's really not super-hard or confusing and it's not even a decent reason for not getting an iPod.

I make it sound like it is a long, strenuous task because it is. You even said it yourself. I never said it was hard to do that, it's just a waste of time and you know it.

I also never said that was the reason I didn't get an iPod. There are multiple other, very good reasons for that, being:

• iPods are shit and you know it;
• even if they weren't, I can still never get their touch things working;
• everyone has one, most people nowadays think all MP3 players are called iPods, so they go to the store, asking for an iPod; at least I show that I know more about MP3 players than them;
• they're overpriced, just like any other Apple product.

There's other reasons too but right now I can't think of a good way to put them in a good sentence.

erm, tell me if you know any other mp3 player out there that do 64gb worth of storage and are not as expensive as a ipod? sony don't do anything over 16gb creative mp3 players used to do large sizes but they don't anymore, so really you are getting value for money as you can take your whole music library with you in one place, on top of that ipods have games support, app support to, a touch is a good purchase, in terms of music quality 320kbps is good enough for me, i really couldn't tell the difference, after all using the mp3 audio format is all about conserving space anyway.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

So basically the four reasons as to why you shouldn't get an iPod are because you think "iPods are shit", because you have some mysterious, unknown condition which makes it impossible for you to use a touch screen that millions of people around the world are using with no problems, because everyone has them and because they're overpriced. As I said, I have no clue as to why it won't ever work for me.
The only valid reason there is the overpricing... but if a person wants an iPod, they're well aware of this from the onset. If someone fears overpricing so much they could quite easily pick up one pre-owned from eBay or wait until they're on special offer somewhere. But they don't.
Otherwise, you thinking iPods are shit is your own opinion. The sales show otherwise. I've used several other PMPs and haven't been satisfied with one as much as I have been with iPods. That's not something I can help, but I'm certainly not ignorant to other PMPs. I'm also not an Apple fanboy... but that doesn't automatically make me a hater. The high sales are because everyone thinks they're good. I don't hate Apple - the Macs are fairly good computers, although overpriced again - but iPods are just a waste of your money.
Everyone lives on Earth, which simply must make it boring and uncool. It is. I want to live on the Moon.
Oh, and the only thing you're showing here is that you think you know more about MP3 players than other people. I don't think, I know.Comments in bold.

No crossfade, no crossfeed, no FLAC, no OGG (or a host of other audio formats - fuck spending hours of my life converting for a single device when I can just copy the music I already have with a simple copy/paste), substandard audio quality (OK, average is probably closer to the truth than substandard - but when you compare to players like those from sony and cowon then substandard is exactly how it sounds), the itunes requirement (although this can be mitigated - I sometimes use a nano and use an alternative method - but USB Mass Storage would be far better) and just the general ultra-badness of the OS make the ipod very, very unappealing to me.

On the plus side, Apple are one of the few companies making 160gb MP3 players (I know you can get big, ugly PMP players from the likes of archos that have more storage - but they also have giant dimensions to go with it).

I would recommend to anyone with an old ipod that can have rockbox installed on it to do so - it will improve the player so much. Crap audio quality will still be there, but you get rid of most of the other negatives.+1 to this.

QUOTE(jalaneme @ Aug 1 2010, 08:21 PM)

erm, tell me if you know any other mp3 player out there that do 64gb worth of storage and are not as expensive as a ipod? sony don't do anything over 16gb creative mp3 players used to do large sizes but they don't anymore, so really you are getting value for money as you can take your whole music library with you in one place, As you said Creative used to make those, but the point is that an iPod only has that amount of storage space, and no possibility at all to expand on that (no microSD cards or anything).
on top of that ipods have games support, app support to, You can Rockbox a bunch of better MP3 players without extra thingies; Rockbox has loads of features so you'll get more apps than the iPod in no time (at least if you make them yourself, Rockbox has lua support). I know I shouldn't mention this as it hasn't got anything to do with the MP3 players themselves, but I just wanted to point out that custom firmware with loads more functions also exists for other MP3 players than iPods.
a touch is a good purchase, in terms of music quality 320kbps is good enough for me, i really couldn't tell the difference, after all using the mp3 audio format is all about conserving space anyway. Yeah, I'm sure you can't hear the difference between lossless and 320 kbps, depends a lot on the headphones you're using (if you're still using Apple's earbuds, you'll never hear any difference between any kind of audio file (pun intended), really). Sure, you could fit thousands and thousands of songs in a low kbps audio format on your iPod, and with a low-quality, not necessarily cheap headset, you won't hear any difference, but that doesn't go for me and for George Dawes either. Awesome sound quality is sex for my ears.

Comments in bold again.

 

[ojsinnerz.]

Apple still makes the best sounding DAPs in the market. Not even kidding you.

The only real complaint I have about it is the lack of format support. Oh, and being forced to use programs to put content onto the devices.

EDIT: Drag and Drop is still king.

 

[wyndcrosser]

This review is a little too late... lol.

Nice though.

Kinda like reviewing a NES console and calling yourself a great reviewer. But enough being silly. not bad for a review of something old.

Wynd

 

[ojsinnerz.]

It's not as if every player in the world supports OGG, Flac, and other formats. I don't even know any that officially suport them besides Cowon, Samsung, and Sandisk who actually only have them as they are free to use. Even then, Cowon, Samsung and Sandisk doesn't support AAC, the spiritual successor of MP3.

I once used lossless formats, but I that was when I thought I could tell the difference between LAME v0 MP3 and FLAC.

Short while later, I started doing some blind tests, and understood that it was nothing but a giant placebo effect that I felt. If I was using a decent home setup, I'm sure I could be able to tell some difference. Yet for the purpose of listening to music on the go or often in the house, using lossless just seemed incredibly silly.

I have played around with or owned a lot of player in the market as of now. Cowon S9 (Well, never got to play around with a J3, but they have the same sound and EQ enhancements), Sony X1000 series, iPod touch 3rd gen, Sansa fuze, Sansa Clip, some rockboxable stuff and Zune HD. I do have to admit, I never enjoyed using EQ on many audio devices in the past, but rockbox's EQs certainly were impressive. Regardless, the only thing that was on par with the iPod, if not better was the X1000 series. Sound is truly all about preference, as nobody in the world will have the same tastes as you do.

There is a reason why such a large number of head-fi users own an iPod. It's not as if everyone thinks it's cool or because it's nice looking, but they all have their reasons. We're talking about few of the largest audio communities in the world. The iPods also have a great advantage with the amps, due to the LOD capabilities. They sound fantastic to me, even without it.

I also believe this post I am about to bring up is extremely relevant to this thread. This is from a thread in the Zune forums of Anythingbutipod.com. The thread was basically bashing everyone on headfi who used an ipod and some even made hilariously inaccurate jokes about LOD.

Originally Posted by joyounghoon
I must be insane for enjoying the ipod sound more than the Cowon and the Zune HD.
PS: I was being serious.

QUOTEReally? You think you're insane?

I think this thread is pretty funny, myself. A few posters have pointed out that being able to bypass a portable DAP's low-powered built-in amp and channel line-level audio directly to a superior external amplifier improves the sound quality for certain headphones. The majority of head-fiers who use an iPod for serious listening use it in this manner (i.e. through an external amp via a line-out dock). Since the Zune HD lacks any sort of portable line-out dock accessory, it's at a disadvantage in this specific scenario.

More than that, though, the characterization of head-fiers as being of one mind about sonic preference is absurd; this should be evident to anyone who spends a decent amount time and peruses more than a couple threads there. Head-fi is anything but iLounge. So if a handful of people there prefer the iPhone 3GS' headphone-out to the Zune HD's, (1) what does it matter, and (2) who are we to disagree with them? Since audio appreciation is a distinctly subjective experience, and each link in the chain (file type, amplifier, headphones, ear shape, neural receptors) adds its own fingerprint to the final product, making absolute claims about what should or should not sound better to another person is, IMO, a futile and misguided exercise.

I am a former member of Head-fi, and anythingbutipod. I currently own a Sansa Clip with Hifiman/Head direct RE0, JVC Victor FX500 and Audio Technica ESW10JP. Plan on purchasing the iPod Touch 4th gen once released.

 

[Cermage]

oh lol at this thread.

you're an idiot if you are using loseless over lossy on a portable player. the small increase that isn't even noticeable in most songs from 320 mp3 to flac isn't worth the amount of space flac takes up (around 3x more per album). Chances are you won't even notice the difference with the pair of earbuds/iem's/headphones you are using with your device unless you feel like wearing a few hundred dolars worth on your head everytime you go out.

the ONLY thing bad about itunes as a content manager on your idevice is the fact it sucks up a bit of your system resources, which shouldn't bother you at all if your computer was put together within the last 5-6 years. When itunes plays music it should only take around 60mb or so, heck firefox idling takes up more than that. You have always been able to drag and drop (from explorer to your idevice in itunes), you have never needed to sync for music. Itunes manages a music library great as long as you keep everything tagged properly, it even will get the album artwork for you if you have the proper tags.

 

[Overlord Nadrian]

You said yourself that basically other PMPs can do what iPods can do... so in that sense, how can they not be good? Unless you're the one doing too much thinking here. They can do the same things as iPods can, and more.

Ah I see. But everyone is alive? Doesn't that make living uncool too? Baw? Yeah, I want to be undead. On the moon.

This comes from a site called Anything But iPod I'm a member there IIRC. For obvious reasons.

There are serious audiophiles that own iPods. Hipster kids (and adults, I suppose?). Nothing less, nothing more.

To use a form of one of your arguments, "fuck spending hours making my own apps when I can get them out-of-the-box on another player". Which is why I said the argument about Rockbox technically isn't valid. I just thought I'd mention it for those not in the know.

Exactly. It does depend a lot on the headphones you're using. See aforementioned. But then this applies to every player, not just iPods. There are differences in which player you're using (again, as an example I'll mention that a cheap player will nearly always have worse sound quality than a fairly expensive one), though there's probably not that much of a difference between iPods and its competitors, if any at all.

Awesome sound quality is sex for my ears as well. Except I'm not ignorant enough to use that as pretty much the sole reason for not owning an iPod, when you can achieve awesome sound quality on an iPod too. I didn't say iPods sounded worse, I said it was more difficult to get them to play lossless audio files.

Also, for the general user, having fantastic audio quality isn't needed. It's a portable media player. You can have a decent setup in your house and use that, when you're doing nothing other than chilling and focusing on the music. When you're out with a PMP you can be biking or running or doing whatever, your attention isn't going to just be on the music... and if your attention isn't just on the music, you're sure to miss out on those little perks of brilliant audio quality. Unless I'm walking somewhere, I listen to music on the bus, and I don't pay attention to anything on there (except hawt gurlz of course

). So, I actually do pay attention to all the details in the music.

Whether you like it or not, iPods are pretty decent PMPs with additional perks depending on the one you have, which set them apart from other PMPs. I never really wanted to say iPods are the worst (mind that my argument of iPods being shit was just a bit of joking around, probably not worded too well), they're just not worth the money and hassle for the things they can do. IMO. RESPECT MAH OPINIUNZ!

 

[Devin]

I can't wait till my iPod Touch get here. Thanks again for reinsuring me Guild.

 

[Guild McCommunist]

I can't wait till my iPod Touch get here. Thanks again for reinsuring me Guild.

Thanks, it's always nice to know I helped someone

As per all this audio crap in this thread, please let me say this: If you buy an iPod Touch, or for that matter, any modern Apple product purely for music playing then you are a fool. Yes, I know as much as any of you there are better devices for playing music. But the iPod Touch isn't meant just for music. It's meant for a bagillion other things I mentioned.

Be realistic guys. Am I going to go out onto a subway or take a run with my big expensive headphones or fancy high-quality audio getup? No, I'm not. If anything you'll take your crappy pair of headphones just so you can get some white noise to fill the void when you're out of the house. I doubt you'll give two shits about sound quality when you're in any real-life situation where you'd use a mobile music player unless it's ear bleeding ass-quality sound, which the iPod is not. It'll still provide you with enjoyable sounds on-the-go along with a bunch of other things.

 

[ojsinnerz.]

I can't wait till my iPod Touch get here. Thanks again for reinsuring me Guild.

Thanks, it's always nice to know I helped someone

As per all this audio crap in this thread, please let me say this: If you buy an iPod Touch, or for that matter, any modern Apple product purely for music playing then you are a fool. Yes, I know as much as any of you there are better devices for playing music. But the iPod Touch isn't meant just for music. It's meant for a bagillion other things I mentioned.

Be realistic guys. Am I going to go out onto a subway or take a run with my big expensive headphones or fancy high-quality audio getup? No, I'm not. If anything you'll take your crappy pair of headphones just so you can get some white noise to fill the void when you're out of the house. I doubt you'll give two shits about sound quality when you're in any real-life situation where you'd use a mobile music player unless it's ear bleeding ass-quality sound, which the iPod is not. It'll still provide you with enjoyable sounds on-the-go along with a bunch of other things.

Pffffahahahahaha.


Good one.




Also, Apple uses their own lossless codec. It's pretty easy to convert FLAC or something into Apple Lossless.

Ellie, you don't seem to have read my post about how a large majority of audiophiles use iPod as their sources, or the quote I brought in. I guess I'm a hipsters for wanting it and use it solely for media capabilities.

 

[jalaneme]

As you said Creative used to make those, but the point is that an iPod only has that amount of storage space, and no possibility at all to expand on that (no microSD cards or anything).
but the point still stands, do you know any mp3 players that currently do 64gb? (160gb on the classic) answer: there is none apart from apple, who would you want to expand from 160gb? or 64gb it's more than enough!

You can Rockbox a bunch of better MP3 players without extra thingies; Rockbox has loads of features so you'll get more apps than the iPod in no time (at least if you make them yourself, Rockbox has lua support). I know I shouldn't mention this as it hasn't got anything to do with the MP3 players themselves, but I just wanted to point out that custom firmware with loads more functions also exists for other MP3 players than iPods.
ok compared to apple's apps which has around to 100k different types of apps and games, rockbox is a very old and outdated software that doesn't even work on ipods anymore, there is no point in even mentioning it, jailbreaking a touch offers much more than rockbox anyway, including custom audio settings aswell.

Yeah, I'm sure you can't hear the difference between lossless and 320 kbps, depends a lot on the headphones you're using (if you're still using Apple's earbuds, you'll never hear any difference between any kind of audio file (pun intended), really). Sure, you could fit thousands and thousands of songs in a low kbps audio format on your iPod, and with a low-quality, not necessarily cheap headset, you won't hear any difference, but that doesn't go for me and for George Dawes either. Awesome sound quality is sex for my ears.
nope, you must be joking there is no way i would use the standard white headphones, i ain't deaf lol, i use Sennheiser CX 300, thinking of upgrading to Monster Beats Studio Headphones, not sure yet, i never listen to 128k it's torture to my ears, all my music is ripped to 320kbps, ripping music to flac just uses a lot of hard drive space like already been mentioned in this topic.

 

[ojsinnerz.]

As you said Creative used to make those, but the point is that an iPod only has that amount of storage space, and no possibility at all to expand on that (no microSD cards or anything).
but the point still stands, do you know any mp3 players that currently do 64gb? (160gb on the classic) answer: there is none apart from apple, who would you want to expand from 160gb? or 64gb it's more than enough!

You can Rockbox a bunch of better MP3 players without extra thingies; Rockbox has loads of features so you'll get more apps than the iPod in no time (at least if you make them yourself, Rockbox has lua support). I know I shouldn't mention this as it hasn't got anything to do with the MP3 players themselves, but I just wanted to point out that custom firmware with loads more functions also exists for other MP3 players than iPods.
ok compared to apple's apps which has around to 100k different types of apps and games, rockbox is a very old and outdated software that doesn't even work on ipods anymore, there is no point in even mentioning it, jailbreaking a touch offers much more than rockbox anyway, including custom audio settings aswell.

Yeah, I'm sure you can't hear the difference between lossless and 320 kbps, depends a lot on the headphones you're using (if you're still using Apple's earbuds, you'll never hear any difference between any kind of audio file (pun intended), really). Sure, you could fit thousands and thousands of songs in a low kbps audio format on your iPod, and with a low-quality, not necessarily cheap headset, you won't hear any difference, but that doesn't go for me and for George Dawes either. Awesome sound quality is sex for my ears.
nope, you must be joking there is no way i would use the standard white headphones, i ain't deaf lol, i use Sennheiser CX 300, thinking of upgrading to Monster Beats Studio Headphones, not sure yet, i never listen to 128k it's torture to my ears, all my music is ripped to 320kbps, ripping music to flac just uses a lot of hard drive space like already been mentioned in this topic.

I'm not trying to be offensive, but this post is few of the worst posts on this thread. Rockbox being worse than jailbreaking?(Granted, there are different uses for both, but really, Rockbox still has the best custom EQ options in the market, crossfade, themes, etc.) Using CX300 and telling others that they can tell the difference between 128 and 320? Planning on purchasing Monster Beats headphones? I don't have much words to describe this abomination.

EDIT: But she's right about one thing. That's about storage.

 

[DunkrWunkah]

Since jailbreaking is legal now, does the warranty still hold afterwards?

Also, very nice review. I'm probably going to get the iPhone 3GS Soon. I wont bother with the iPhone 4, it's too expensive.

Is there going to be an iPod touch model of the iPhone 4?

 

[BoxShot]

Since jailbreaking is legal now, does the warranty still hold afterwards?

Also, very nice review. I'm probably going to get the iPhone 3GS Soon. I wont bother with the iPhone 4, it's too expensive.

Is there going to be an iPod touch model of the iPhone 4?

No it won't hold warranty iirc.
Possibly towards the last question.

 

[George Dawes]

We'll need to wait for someone to goto court and a precedent be set before we will know if it is covered under warranty.