[Stephen McElroy]

In article , bob
wrote:

On Oct 25, 1:35*pm, Stephen McElroy wrote:
In article , bob
wrote:
I think I'd prefer to trust an editor who's actually measured said
piece of crap:

http://www.stereophile.com/content/a...music-player-m...
ts

Money quote:

"The iPod's measured behavior is better than many CD players"

There may be other issues related to using an iPod as a source
component, but the DAC is not one of them.

That's assuming the current iPod uses the same DAC as the 2003

No, it's assuming the later iPods don't use a DAC that's appreciably
worse. I know of no evidence that this is the case, nor any particular
reason to believe it might be.

There was a controversy. This guy did some measurements:

http://homepage.mac.com/marc.heijlig...son/measuremen
ts/measurements.html

The many online discussions are anecdotal, of course.

and that
it's possible to get that clean DAC output without it being degraded by,
say, headphone amps chips.

Well, that has nothing to do with the claim that the DAC itself is "a
piece of crap," now, does it? Whether it's true or not I don't know
(and neither do you, apparently), though it's certainly more plausible
than blaming the DAC.

If the DAC is fine but the iPod sounds awful, I suppose that's a comfort.

Stephen