Hang on a minute...
Now hang on, let’s park something right away.
No-one has questioned the fact that AAC, MP3, WAV etc are compressed audio and, as such, have sound quality issues as part of the compromise. Which by default mean ALL portable audio players do. A higher sample rate masks this to a large degree but you can still hear the phasing and hiss in the treble compared to the original source. That is if you can be bothered to do a side by side comparison, have it pointed out to you, or indeed care. If you don’t care that is entirely your prerogative, but no-one has made ill informed comment about what listening to compressed audio formats mean.
What people have pointed out, myself included, is that as a music player the Ipod Touch has some basic sound quality issues that have nothing to do with the compressed audio format compromise. There are other players on the market that do not have a background hiss so intrusive and have a better base playback sound. They are the facts pointed out here and no matter how insane an amount of money you pay for headphones, those issues remain.
The previous price point of the Touch range made this a very glaring fact and many of the reviews pointed this out time and again. Which I feel to be very valid when you consider how good players from other manufacturers sound and, for less money too.
Do 95% of consumers care about this base quality of the Touch? Nope, and it isn’t really fair to criticise them for it. Is the Touch possibly one of the best featured portable audio devices on the market? Yes, and the interface is borderline genius (as much as it pained me to admit it at first). But when the thing cost as much as it previously did, and some mobile phones now have comparable audio playback, people were damned right to question the base issue of the playback quality. As well as bring it up here. That’s the point.
And I said all of that without swearing too... Well fuck me!
Paul, I tried the brown thing for warming up my guitar tone and to try and get the Eddie Van Halen ‘brown sound’, but my Missus wanted to know what the smell was and called me disgusting when she found out what I’d done......