Hi everyone. I always think people get a lot from these kind of articles, myself, I always look on the net extensively to see what real folks feel about the diference between products, when the get their hands one, try it out with their own headphones and musical tastes, so here's my little contribution. A little background first, I've been an avid fan of the Sony kit for years, and I own an HD-1, as well a NWA808, and I purchased the 808 to replace the HD1, as accidentally damaged the screen when it was in back pocket one day. Ooops, oh well. As I'd gone to great lengths encoding hundreds of albums in ATRAC3+ 256K, I thought it fitted well. And it does. When I put it together with My Shure E500 headphones, its frankly an stunning combination, and one which I've been very, very happy with. Its saddened me a lot that Sony have decided to drop this standard really, and that and the complete lack of any peripheral kits for the car have sought me to seek other avenues. So, I thought about my pending purchase hard, and then stumbled literally on the IPOD I touch. Wow, what a stunningly cool piece of kit that is. Now, clearly its not the same form factor as the NWA808, and anyone who is looking for something small to simply stash in their pocket, my personal opinion is that isn't it. That said, its not large, and its not heavy. So, I guess the big question is, how does it really compare...? Well, the Ipod is 16Gb, and I've bought it with the intention of using in my car instead of using a CD multiplayer, clearly it has this advantage as the Sony charges when on USB charge, and doesn't play, also there aren't any kits for holding it, and so on, and so on. So, onto sound, what does it sound like....? Big question I guess. To give the Ipod a decent chance, I encoded some music at 320Kbp, which is clearly a higher bit rate than the A808. So, does it sound as good the A808....? Er No. Fraid not. Probably quite a lot worse really. In isolation the Itouch sounds a nice piece of kit, plays music openly, has niceish bass, fairly clear treble. However, when you select the same tracks encoded at 256K on the 808, its much, much clearer, tonally balanced, smoother, and the bass simply blows it out of the water! The biggest downside for the Ipod is the EQ to my mind. All the EQ settings are pre-selected, and hence you can create your own. No matter which setting I create, its, well rubbish. I think if they'd provided a user configureable EQ, then perhaps it might have been in with a slight chance, as it is, well, I have to run it with the EQ off. Its also worth noting, the Shure E500 earphones are very, very easy to drive, with the Sony, I have it on level 13 most of the time, and its loud. with the Ipod, its at about 75% of volume level setting, so clearly it can't drive earphones as well as the Sony either. Now its worth noting, that the Ipod is a tremendously cool piece of kit. the Menu systems, the functionality of the product is way better than the Sony, not that I don't like the Sony at all, but the Itouch is very, very nice and ergonmic to use. It has a built in web browser for surfing the net, (and it works really well), their is a connection to Itunes, (bit of a marketing gimmick to my mind), but the Ipod is a very, very enjoyable piece of equipment to play with. Though I guess some of this is just gadget tastic playing! So in summary, am I happy with the Ipod? Well, yeah, I am. Its going to be used in the car pretty much, and no where else. For my long commutes on trains, and for those times when I really want to enjoy music sonically, I'll be sticking the phones in the A808. Hope you found this useful! G-Man p.s. I'll happily post some pics up off the two if people are interested enough to care.. :-)
