iLounge

1

Just to get it out of the way…

OMG!!!!!! $400 for a set of headphones?!?!? What are they made out of gold??? Who in their right mind would buy these? That costs as much as a 20GB iPod!!! This is the most idiotic thing I have ever heard in my life!!! BLAH! BLAH! BLAH! Ignorant Blather! Ignorant Blather! Ignorant Blather! Ad Nauseum, etcetra, forever…

Posted by steve on March 17, 2004 at 9:39 AM (PST)

2

Alrighty then. 

You know, there are those who have said the same about my portable music player that holds over 17 days worth of music.

Have you ever actually listened to a pair of E5c’s?  Personally, I don’t have $400 burning a hole in my pocket, but if I did—I’d be on board in a heartbeat.  For those who can afford dropping $400 on headphones, why not have the best?  The cost of the player is irrelevant as long as the sound quality is as good as any iPod.

My $.02.

Posted by Breathe on March 17, 2004 at 10:48 AM (PST)

3

Breathe, Steve was kidding.  Every time news is posted about E5s, people freak over the price. 

I find satire amusing.  It keeps us in check… 

Posted by A on March 17, 2004 at 6:05 PM (PST)

4

Actually, this price can be beat.

Posted by stark23x on March 17, 2004 at 7:59 PM (PST)

5

Congratulations, “A”, you have passed the => 100IQ test. Here is your gold star!

*

Posted by steve on March 17, 2004 at 8:45 PM (PST)

6

Thanks A—didn’t know steve was kidding

Posted by Breathe on March 18, 2004 at 5:10 AM (PST)

7

That star isn’t gold.  Can I get a new one?

Posted by A on March 18, 2004 at 6:22 AM (PST)

8

400 dollar headphones for an mp3/aac playing portable music device?  sound fishy to anyone else?

I’ll stick with my 50 dollar sony mx-71’s until i can get a portable media player with a huge hard drive that supports lossless audio.

note: i’m aware ipods handle .wav files, but we’re talking compressed lossless audio.

Posted by dave on March 18, 2004 at 8:35 AM (PST)

9

[gold]*[/gold]

sorry, best I can do… :(

Posted by steve on March 18, 2004 at 10:06 AM (PST)

10

dave,

No. Not fishy at all. If ANYTHING, the iPod’s built in amplifier will be weak chain in the link, not a well encoded high bitrate MP3.

It sounds like you have never read the landmark article from the German Audiophile magazine c’t regarding this issue.

An English translation can be found here…

http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusicclassical/mp3test.html

...but this paragraph sums it up well…

“In plain language, this means that our musically trained test listeners could reliably distinguish the poorer quality MP3s at 128 kbps quite accurately from either of the other higher-quality samples. But when deciding between 256 kbps encoded MP3s and the original CD, no difference could be determined, on average, for all the pieces. The testers took the 256 kbps samples for the CD just as often as they took the original CD samples themselves.”

Posted by steve on March 18, 2004 at 10:12 AM (PST)

11

“I’ll stick with my 50 dollar sony mx-71’s until i can get a portable media player with a huge hard drive that supports lossless audio”

Rio Karma supports FLAC - compressed lossless audio. But its on-device buttons are very difficult to use, and its built-in networking is a PITA.

I agree that Apple should add FLAC/SHN support to iPod if they are serious about audio quality. Although with almost continuous disk access I think that battery life would be cut down by around 50%.

Posted by Karma on March 18, 2004 at 10:37 AM (PST)