With the Christmas tree chopped up and the New Year's resolutions made (and probably broken) the holidays are officially over and the new year has begun. But if you're on the receiving end of a gift from one of the 60% of Americans who purchased a gift card as a present this year, the Christmas season may not be quite over. Now you need to decide what to do with those gift cards and they probably won't be to a place like Newegg where you can geek-out on exotic hardware; instead you're shopping retail.
So what do you do with those gift cards before they begin to self-deduct? If you're thinking of an MP3 player, then you're in the right place. We're re-launching our coverage of MP3 players here at AnandTech, and to start things off we have a roundup of high-end MP3 players from juggernauts Apple and Microsoft, who between the two control the vast majority of the high-end high-margin market for MP3 players in the United States.
Apple of course needs no introduction in the MP3 player market, as while they were originally a couple of years late to the game they have managed to become the unlikely 800lb gorilla in the MP3 player market. iPod has very nearly become synonymous with "MP3 player" in common vernacular, a short-but-succinct summary of Apple's dominance (and a possible trademark nightmare for the company in the future). They're the company to beat, they have no desire to hide this, and they have no intention of letting it happen.
Meanwhile we also have Microsoft, a far newer competitor that has done surprisingly well or surprisingly poor in the market so far, depending on who you ask. Their first Zune was panned by critics for various perceived inadequacies and the Zune did not dislodge Apple from being the king of the hill as Microsoft had hoped. Yet on the other hand, the first Zune was enough to catapult Microsoft to the #2 supplier of hard drive based MP3 players in the United States, shooting past entrenched players like Creative practically overnight. They came nowhere close to beating Apple in the MP3 player market, but they got closer than anyone else in recent years and are willing to throw the money and leverage that is Microsoft to try again and again.
It has been no accident that Microsoft has chosen the past year to break in to the MP3 player market. Issues of company diversification aside, as an established market the MP3 player market has in the past year finally matured. For Apple this is a troubling news, as they must now compete with themselves to sell new iPods since they can no longer bank on market growth to keep their sales high. Meanwhile for Microsoft this is great news, as Microsoft's is often at its best when it's time to compete in a mature market where breakthroughs are slow and the risk of competitors blind sighting them is low.
The MP3 players we will be looking at today represent the shifts in product styles that come with that maturation. From Apple we have the old guard and the new guard; the iPods Classic and Touch respectively. From Microsoft we have the Zune 80, a product that is both the old and new guards at the same time, striving to fix what ailed the first Zune in the process. How do these MP3 players stack up? Let's find out.
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There have been a lot of people complaining about the audio quality of the classics vs the previous generation (5G's). I remember reading somewhere that they changed DAC chips in this model (probably to a cheaper one). Although they do do a sound quality review, I would like to see the 5G ipods included in this.
Also there is no mention about a lot of the newly introduced issues with the 6th gen Classic iPods. My girlfriend owns an 80gb Classic and has had several issues with it so far. She turned it on one day to find her music completely gone. Not only that, but several times now now she has been using it with a Logitech iPod dock and the iPod would just freeze completely and require a manual reset. 2 of these times, after being reset manually, her iPod went into a continual restart loop - no way out except to put the iPod into disk mode. The iPod could not be restored, the firmware could not be changed - they were bricked. We're sending her iPod to Apple for the second time now (the first time they gave her a replacement, only to have the same issue again). These problems with the continual restart loop have been experienced by hundreds of people on the Apple forums, yet Apple has yet to acknowledge the issue that i've seen - they're more interested in releasing firmware updates to add the ability to play movie rentals and stupid stuff like that so they can make more money.
Anyway, iPod Classics are complete crap in my opinion until Apple acknowledges these issues and does something about them. Too bad this review doesn't mention any of these problems.
Although things like IPODS have DAC's but it's usually for extracting your stored info(BITS) into waveforms which is then modulated by the DSP chip to produce sounds. Althoguh a high quality DAC will play an important role as well but what you hear usually comes from the DSP.
Last edited by kouhii00 on 22 Jan 2008 - 21:09
As i noted in my post, Apple's own support forums are riddled with hundreds of people experiencing these same issues - hence why i believe that Apple should acknowledge these problems and deal with them...
Although things like IPODS have DAC's but it's usually for extracting your stored info(BITS) into waveforms which is then modulated by the DSP chip to produce sounds. Althoguh a high quality DAC will play an important role as well but what you hear usually comes from the DSP.
Thanks for the clarification. I'm not too knowledgeable about that stuff - I just remember reading a post by someone whose professor compared the audio output of a Classic with that of the 5th-gen iPods and found the Classics to have some issues compared with the 5th gens. Sorry, cant remember where i read this so I can't link to this post. He tested a few aspects of the sound quality and from what i remember found issues with frequencies around 22khz and above in particular (among other things). After some investigation, it was found that one of the chips responsible for the sound output (I thought it must've been the DAC but I suppose it must be the DSP) had been changed from the 5th gen to a different one (which i assume is probably cheaper). Wish i could remember more details.. sorry.
Last edited by fRaek on 22 Jan 2008 - 23:04
As for DAC's depending on the quality, whenever you convert from digital to analog there is always some loss of information or in some cases error-bits (usually CRC takes care of this). However, DAC's are very efficient now a days; e.g. DVI-2-VGA cable, sometimes you notice almost NO difference when comparing DVI and VGA cables. Therefore, kinda hard to believe that DAC's are the culprit.
Although I might be wrong, DSP is not my area of specialty. I am more of a component(capacitors, resistors, FETS, BJT's, and etc) level design guy.
Last edited by kouhii00 on 23 Jan 2008 - 10:19
However, the differences between the iPod Classic the new Zune make the choice come down to personal opinion and taste. In fact, I would say the choice is more dependent on how much you like (or hate) iTunes over the Zune Software more than the actual PMPs.
I think it is a location thing at the moment. Around town here, the Zune 80GB is hardly ever in stock. As soon as a store gets more in, they sell out. I always see iPod's on the shelves, however.
+1
-Spenser
I'd take a Zune or an iPod over a Cowon anyday. Cowon did come with some good headphones. Still not as good as you can get from sennheiser or whatever, but better than the stock iPod headphones.
Yea, they are at #2 at a amazing 9% of the market. Considering their 95% desktop market share, massive advertising budget and a R&D company that goes by the name of "Apple", you'd think they could have done better than that. The more interesting question would be to offer the existing Zune customers an iPod in exchange. That number would tell us the REAL Zune customers.
The Zune, like all of MS's pervious products are a poor clone (crapgadget) of someone else's idea. (Netscape, Stacker, Lotus123, Windows, PalmOS, Java) Don't get me wrong, MS has it share of innovative products like BOB.
Don't mind me, I've been working with MS products a little too long...
First of all, Apple has no technology. Actually, its exactly the company that does what you said Microsoft does in your comment. Tell me one Apple product that has true "new" technology that wasn't possible. Don't give me sissy answers like "scroll wheel" or "touch screen", because they were out way before Apple's market entry. The fact is, Apple is a company that takes a product, makes it noob friendly, slams a bitten fruit on the back, and sells it for a ridiculously premium price.
The iPod line has been around since the start of the decade. It's had much time to have an imprint on culture, as had Microsoft with Windows and Office. Sure, the new Zunes can be a million times better, the market won't care. Not immediately, that it. Consumers slowly adapt from one product to another, as was seen in the reception of Windows Vista (or XP for that matter, but no one cares now because XP is awesome now for some random reason, even though the same idiots claimed it was trash 5 years ago).
I think you have a better understanding on what the heck to say next time. Remember, use that brain!
You'll see what I'm talking about around the time your acne clears up.
It basically comes down to:
* Get the iPod Touch if you really want the web browser. That is about the only worthwhile feature. I understand why people want it, don't get me wrong. But if you want a device solely for playing music than the Touch is not for you.
* If you want to watch a lot of video on the go, the choice is obvious: get the Zune! Touch would be good for video, but needs to have a larger capacity IMHO.
* For music, iPod Classic vs Zune is almost a toss up. It really comes down to iTunes vs Zune software. I prefer the Zune interface over the iPod's, but this review favored the iPod's interface. Its really a matter of personal preference at this point. Both devices are awesome and the price is just right.
ZUNE SUCKS!!
ZUNE SUCKS!!
The software its the worst!
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