I suppose you want Apple to give you everything for free?
This is a reasonably priced device for what it does. It's NOT a cheap piece of garbage. You can tell from the weight. The drivers look good also. This was my business for a fair number of years. I can say that Apple is being honest. That's FAR more than I can say about most companies making products of this type.
Complaining about a 16Khz limit? Try getting your ears checked. You'd be surprised how likely it is that you can't hear above that frequency. If you want something that truely goes much above that frequency without distorting, be prepaired to pay another $200 for the system.
$349 for a product that contains a stereo amp, as well as well as the speaker system with these specs is nothing to sneeze at. You can't come up with something like this yourself
Sure, many companies will lie about output power, and frequency response, but that's all it is.
If this cost $149, as someone here said it should, it WOULD be a piece of crap.
A good speaker system requires a solid case, properly designed, not some thin, cheap, typical plastic injection mold.
Put Airport Extreme into this, and people would be complaining about the $425 price, and how they didn't need the Airport built-in. And why couldn't they buy it separately?
HiFi should have Airtunes installed. I do not buy the Melgross argument that this would raise the price $125. It would just be a chip or the small part that makes it all work.
Put that in and I would get one.
Look. The way I feel is until you get rid of the wires for this kind of thing and the mac mini/home entertainment thing when it eventually comes to be, then someone will hit the jackpot.
Streaming music and video is the holy grail. I will wait. (Of course, when I hear how good it sounds...dang it all Apple!)
Well, like I said, it all comes down to how it sounds, so I guess we'll see (hear).
The 16k top end strikes me as just a pragmatic acknowledgment of the limits of Apple's iTMS encoding- inaudible if most of your collection is 128b AAC but probably a bit of a dulling if you're running lossless CD rips (the "most people can't hear above" argument is a bit of a red herring in re audio specs, since the system's ability to resolve high frequency affects overtones well within most peoples audible range).
The spec page doesn't mention the wattage of the power amp, which would be helpful in discerning SPL before distortion, but I would guess that Apple would engineer this so that even at 11 you wouldn't get the unlistenable train-wreck of cheap audio gear turned up loud.
Still, a 57 to 16k plus or minus 3db is just OK for this price point, and I still think you could probably do better, sonically, with a remote dock and something else, sacrificing only a built in dock connector in a bit of "all-in-oneness".
Apple's page on this is distressingly Bose like, with its "custom engineered" cones and "sealed and tuned enclosures", as if those things weren't ubiquitous.
But: don't hold me to any of this. If it sounds great, then $350 is not an unreasonable price to pay. It just needs to sound pretty great.
The Bose Wave Radio goes for $349. The Bose Music System (radio plus CD player)is $499. They are very popular sellers.
My dad had a Wave Radio for about a month. He compared it with a Panasonic box with a built-in 60 CD changer. The Panasonic sounded better and had the same sticker price and didn't look bad. The only advantage to Wave Radio was size, and that didn't matter in his situation.
$349 for a product that contains a stereo amp, as well as well as the speaker system with these specs is nothing to sneeze at. You can't come up with something like this yourself
Actually, one time my friend built a boom box out of a car stereo, a motorcycle battery, and 2 very high quality 4x5's with built in tweaters. Totally sealed, and by-the-book on sealed and insulated speaker design. It was heavier and made of particle board, but it cost about $300 for easily the same quality and better audio range.
The battery life was much longer, by the way.
Did I mention he ran over it with his truck once and it didn't crack?
The only real difference is the ipod thing.. but really, we're talking about economy of scale here. He paid markup on all the components he used, Apple's wouldn't be nearly as high, even if they included an Airtunes interface and a CD player + Radio.
Components and technical quality are not the issue here, dude.
This is just another minimalist but high quality product by apple with a "comparable" price. It's not targetting most consumers, most likely it's just for people who want a "just works, and works purdy good" solution. It's for people who shop at william sonoma and the stereotypical starbucks patron.
This box is meant to sit idle in someone's "study," "den," or "library" for 9 months out of the year and be present for backyard parties where they serve horse-derves. Or maybe in some stylish san fran apartment where they don't own a TV--this'd be great to sit by an ibook on a tiny desk.
Or maybe this'd work in a dorm-room situation, lots of kids have rich daddies who buy this sort of compact and functional stuff.
Not a bad product, I just don't fit into any of those categories.. I've got my sony 5.1 speaker system here I bought for $100 and it's hooked up directly to my G5
I was thinking, it would be nice if it could support some wireless satellite speakers.
I have the 85 dollar creature II speakers. Which sound great. But they sound better when you get the stereo effect with the satellite speakers. You can't get that with this iPod HiFi.
Well, not something I would buy, but I suppose if even a small fraction of the people who dump hundreds of dollars into iPods and related paraphernalia are willing to spend $349 on it, Apple is bound to make money off of it.
Personally, I don't get why you'd need D battery power in something that doesn't look like it's designed to be taken outside. For indoors, I have no interest in something with a < 17" stereo "soundstage". Even if I did, various (relatively) high-end audio companies have complete radio, CD player, aux input (that you could connect your iPod to) packages for the same price range I'd buy first.
This really isn't the direction I want to see Apple heading in, so I hope they don't invest too much money in this kind of stuff.
How can you call anything that plays compressed digital files "Hi Fi"? This isn't necessarily a bad product, but nobody who cares about audio would replace their stereo equipment with this thing.
It's embarrasing that this is supposed to be newsworthy.
Is it a bad product? No. I think I'd like this in my living room - and considering I live in a weeeeee condo, that's saying something.
Will I buy it? $349 is not a Whim-like purchase for me right now. It's much better spent on a new iMac or the like. That being said, fresh-out-of-uni-new-to-the-corporate-world kids like me probably aren't the target market for this sucker. This is the upscale accessory for the established middle class and up. It's a nice birthday present for dad.
Did this stop any presses? I doubt it. Was it still kinda cool? Most definitely. As always, time will tell.
Overtones that are lower than the frequency being discussed? Aren't those called undertones?
It's about how the overtones that fall outside of the systems ability to resolve interact (or don't) with the frequencies it can.
Can't do 20K means 10k sounds different from the original (not that any of this is terribly germane to a discussion of a $350 boom box designed to play back heavily compressed digital files).
How can you call anything that plays compressed digital files "Hi Fi"? This isn't necessarily a bad product, but nobody who cares about audio would replace their stereo equipment with this thing.
It's embarrasing that this is supposed to be newsworthy.
I tend to agree, but they did characterize it as "fun new products" in the invitation. Emphasis on the fun apparently. I don't think Apple would ever make a truly high end audio component. There is just not enough market for that sort of thing.
Actually, one time my friend built a boom box out of a car stereo, a motorcycle battery, and 2 very high quality 4x5's with built in tweaters. Totally sealed, and by-the-book on sealed and insulated speaker design. It was heavier and made of particle board, but it cost about $300 for easily the same quality and better audio range.
The battery life was much longer, by the way.
Did I mention he ran over it with his truck once and it didn't crack?
The only real difference is the ipod thing.. but really, we're talking about economy of scale here. He paid markup on all the components he used, Apple's wouldn't be nearly as high, even if they included an Airtunes interface and a CD player + Radio.
Components and technical quality are not the issue here, dude.
This is just another minimalist but high quality product by apple with a "comparable" price. It's not targetting most consumers, most likely it's just for people who want a "just works, and works purdy good" solution. It's for people who shop at william sonoma and the stereotypical starbucks patron.
This box is meant to sit idle in someone's "study," "den," or "library" for 9 months out of the year and be present for backyard parties where they serve horse-derves. Or maybe in some stylish san fran apartment where they don't own a TV--this'd be great to sit by an ibook on a tiny desk.
Or maybe this'd work in a dorm-room situation, lots of kids have rich daddies who buy this sort of compact and functional stuff.
Not a bad product, I just don't fit into any of those categories.. I've got my sony 5.1 speaker system here I bought for $100 and it's hooked up directly to my G5
Making the assumption that that thing sounded half as good as you say it di, it would cost much more to produce than the $300 he spent. Having designed speakers, and drivers, I can tell you that home-built products rerely sound nearly as good as those who have built them seem to think they do.
This is by no means a revolutionary product like the iPod.
I for one am dissapointed with this.... Where's the big scrolling LED or LCD on the front so we can see what damn song we want.... I sure as hell don't want to have a set of binoculars next to me on the couch when I want to select a song... and Im too damn lazy to get up and walk over to the thing!
I may eat my own words on this... but I think it will be shelved within 6 months.
How can you call anything that plays compressed digital files "Hi Fi"? This isn't necessarily a bad product, but nobody who cares about audio would replace their stereo equipment with this thing.
It's embarrasing that this is supposed to be newsworthy.
That's a piece of crap. I guarantee you that the high frequency doesn't even approach that of Apple's product. Neither does anything else.
Don't be taken in by marketing.
<cough>it's 1/4 the price</cough>
Also, it's gotten some good reviews on target.com (only place I looked).. saying Apple's is better right now before a single review is a little more "blinded by the hype." On paper, the iBoom has higher range. According to reviews, people are satisfied with it. According to the price tags, Apple's is four times more expensive.
I'm not sure talking down to people who're trying to compare products is necessary. Apart from the information out there, all you're doing is speculating, just like everyone else.
Comments
Originally posted by melgross
You guys are really off on this one.
I suppose you want Apple to give you everything for free?
This is a reasonably priced device for what it does. It's NOT a cheap piece of garbage. You can tell from the weight. The drivers look good also. This was my business for a fair number of years. I can say that Apple is being honest. That's FAR more than I can say about most companies making products of this type.
Complaining about a 16Khz limit? Try getting your ears checked. You'd be surprised how likely it is that you can't hear above that frequency. If you want something that truely goes much above that frequency without distorting, be prepaired to pay another $200 for the system.
$349 for a product that contains a stereo amp, as well as well as the speaker system with these specs is nothing to sneeze at. You can't come up with something like this yourself
Sure, many companies will lie about output power, and frequency response, but that's all it is.
If this cost $149, as someone here said it should, it WOULD be a piece of crap.
A good speaker system requires a solid case, properly designed, not some thin, cheap, typical plastic injection mold.
Put Airport Extreme into this, and people would be complaining about the $425 price, and how they didn't need the Airport built-in. And why couldn't they buy it separately?
You can't win.
I'm with you melgross, you're spot on.
Originally posted by slughead
AMEN! .. I shouldn't post anymore, just wait for someone to post what I think and give them kudos
oh, PS..
No remote but only $90 and better high-range.
The iBoom is a piece of junk.
HiFi should have Airtunes installed. I do not buy the Melgross argument that this would raise the price $125. It would just be a chip or the small part that makes it all work.
Put that in and I would get one.
Look. The way I feel is until you get rid of the wires for this kind of thing and the mac mini/home entertainment thing when it eventually comes to be, then someone will hit the jackpot.
Streaming music and video is the holy grail. I will wait. (Of course, when I hear how good it sounds...dang it all Apple!)
The 16k top end strikes me as just a pragmatic acknowledgment of the limits of Apple's iTMS encoding- inaudible if most of your collection is 128b AAC but probably a bit of a dulling if you're running lossless CD rips (the "most people can't hear above" argument is a bit of a red herring in re audio specs, since the system's ability to resolve high frequency affects overtones well within most peoples audible range).
The spec page doesn't mention the wattage of the power amp, which would be helpful in discerning SPL before distortion, but I would guess that Apple would engineer this so that even at 11 you wouldn't get the unlistenable train-wreck of cheap audio gear turned up loud.
Still, a 57 to 16k plus or minus 3db is just OK for this price point, and I still think you could probably do better, sonically, with a remote dock and something else, sacrificing only a built in dock connector in a bit of "all-in-oneness".
Apple's page on this is distressingly Bose like, with its "custom engineered" cones and "sealed and tuned enclosures", as if those things weren't ubiquitous.
But: don't hold me to any of this. If it sounds great, then $350 is not an unreasonable price to pay. It just needs to sound pretty great.
Originally posted by chascmd
The Bose Wave Radio goes for $349. The Bose Music System (radio plus CD player)is $499. They are very popular sellers.
My dad had a Wave Radio for about a month. He compared it with a Panasonic box with a built-in 60 CD changer. The Panasonic sounded better and had the same sticker price and didn't look bad. The only advantage to Wave Radio was size, and that didn't matter in his situation.
Originally posted by addabox
since the system's ability to resolve high frequency affects overtones well within most peoples audible range).
Overtones that are lower than the frequency being discussed? Aren't those called undertones?
Originally posted by melgross
$349 for a product that contains a stereo amp, as well as well as the speaker system with these specs is nothing to sneeze at. You can't come up with something like this yourself
Actually, one time my friend built a boom box out of a car stereo, a motorcycle battery, and 2 very high quality 4x5's with built in tweaters. Totally sealed, and by-the-book on sealed and insulated speaker design. It was heavier and made of particle board, but it cost about $300 for easily the same quality and better audio range.
The battery life was much longer, by the way.
Did I mention he ran over it with his truck once and it didn't crack?
The only real difference is the ipod thing.. but really, we're talking about economy of scale here. He paid markup on all the components he used, Apple's wouldn't be nearly as high, even if they included an Airtunes interface and a CD player + Radio.
Components and technical quality are not the issue here, dude.
This is just another minimalist but high quality product by apple with a "comparable" price. It's not targetting most consumers, most likely it's just for people who want a "just works, and works purdy good" solution. It's for people who shop at william sonoma and the stereotypical starbucks patron.
This box is meant to sit idle in someone's "study," "den," or "library" for 9 months out of the year and be present for backyard parties where they serve horse-derves. Or maybe in some stylish san fran apartment where they don't own a TV--this'd be great to sit by an ibook on a tiny desk.
Or maybe this'd work in a dorm-room situation, lots of kids have rich daddies who buy this sort of compact and functional stuff.
Not a bad product, I just don't fit into any of those categories.. I've got my sony 5.1 speaker system here I bought for $100 and it's hooked up directly to my G5
Originally posted by Xool
I'm with you melgross, you're spot on.
ditto
I have the 85 dollar creature II speakers. Which sound great. But they sound better when you get the stereo effect with the satellite speakers. You can't get that with this iPod HiFi.
Personally, I don't get why you'd need D battery power in something that doesn't look like it's designed to be taken outside. For indoors, I have no interest in something with a < 17" stereo "soundstage". Even if I did, various (relatively) high-end audio companies have complete radio, CD player, aux input (that you could connect your iPod to) packages for the same price range I'd buy first.
This really isn't the direction I want to see Apple heading in, so I hope they don't invest too much money in this kind of stuff.
It's embarrasing that this is supposed to be newsworthy.
Is it a bad product? No. I think I'd like this in my living room - and considering I live in a weeeeee condo, that's saying something.
Will I buy it? $349 is not a Whim-like purchase for me right now. It's much better spent on a new iMac or the like. That being said, fresh-out-of-uni-new-to-the-corporate-world kids like me probably aren't the target market for this sucker. This is the upscale accessory for the established middle class and up. It's a nice birthday present for dad.
Did this stop any presses? I doubt it. Was it still kinda cool? Most definitely. As always, time will tell.
Originally posted by JeffDM
Overtones that are lower than the frequency being discussed? Aren't those called undertones?
It's about how the overtones that fall outside of the systems ability to resolve interact (or don't) with the frequencies it can.
Can't do 20K means 10k sounds different from the original (not that any of this is terribly germane to a discussion of a $350 boom box designed to play back heavily compressed digital files).
Originally posted by buckeye
How can you call anything that plays compressed digital files "Hi Fi"? This isn't necessarily a bad product, but nobody who cares about audio would replace their stereo equipment with this thing.
It's embarrasing that this is supposed to be newsworthy.
I tend to agree, but they did characterize it as "fun new products" in the invitation. Emphasis on the fun apparently. I don't think Apple would ever make a truly high end audio component. There is just not enough market for that sort of thing.
Originally posted by slughead
AMEN! .. I shouldn't post anymore, just wait for someone to post what I think and give them kudos
oh, PS..
No remote but only $90 and better high-range.
You're joking, right?
That's a piece of crap. I guarantee you that the high frequency doesn't even approach that of Apple's product. Neither does anything else.
Don't be taken in by marketing.
Originally posted by slughead
Actually, one time my friend built a boom box out of a car stereo, a motorcycle battery, and 2 very high quality 4x5's with built in tweaters. Totally sealed, and by-the-book on sealed and insulated speaker design. It was heavier and made of particle board, but it cost about $300 for easily the same quality and better audio range.
The battery life was much longer, by the way.
Did I mention he ran over it with his truck once and it didn't crack?
The only real difference is the ipod thing.. but really, we're talking about economy of scale here. He paid markup on all the components he used, Apple's wouldn't be nearly as high, even if they included an Airtunes interface and a CD player + Radio.
Components and technical quality are not the issue here, dude.
This is just another minimalist but high quality product by apple with a "comparable" price. It's not targetting most consumers, most likely it's just for people who want a "just works, and works purdy good" solution. It's for people who shop at william sonoma and the stereotypical starbucks patron.
This box is meant to sit idle in someone's "study," "den," or "library" for 9 months out of the year and be present for backyard parties where they serve horse-derves. Or maybe in some stylish san fran apartment where they don't own a TV--this'd be great to sit by an ibook on a tiny desk.
Or maybe this'd work in a dorm-room situation, lots of kids have rich daddies who buy this sort of compact and functional stuff.
Not a bad product, I just don't fit into any of those categories.. I've got my sony 5.1 speaker system here I bought for $100 and it's hooked up directly to my G5
Making the assumption that that thing sounded half as good as you say it di, it would cost much more to produce than the $300 he spent. Having designed speakers, and drivers, I can tell you that home-built products rerely sound nearly as good as those who have built them seem to think they do.
Originally posted by nagromme
Doomsayers may wish to note:
http://forums.macrumors.com/showthre...=&threadid=500
This is by no means a revolutionary product like the iPod.
I for one am dissapointed with this.... Where's the big scrolling LED or LCD on the front so we can see what damn song we want.... I sure as hell don't want to have a set of binoculars next to me on the couch when I want to select a song... and Im too damn lazy to get up and walk over to the thing!
I may eat my own words on this... but I think it will be shelved within 6 months.
b.
Originally posted by groverat
A retarded product that will sell very well. I'm fine with my JBL OnStage setup that I paid ~$280 less for.
And, I'm sure that your JBL is worth every bit the $280 less that you paid for it.
But, this isn't competing with that, or any other cheap speaker set out there. It will compete with Klipsh, and others, in that price range.
Originally posted by buckeye
How can you call anything that plays compressed digital files "Hi Fi"? This isn't necessarily a bad product, but nobody who cares about audio would replace their stereo equipment with this thing.
It's embarrasing that this is supposed to be newsworthy.
Have you ever heard of "Apple Lossless Encoding"?
Originally posted by melgross
You're joking, right?
That's a piece of crap. I guarantee you that the high frequency doesn't even approach that of Apple's product. Neither does anything else.
Don't be taken in by marketing.
<cough>it's 1/4 the price</cough>
Also, it's gotten some good reviews on target.com (only place I looked).. saying Apple's is better right now before a single review is a little more "blinded by the hype." On paper, the iBoom has higher range. According to reviews, people are satisfied with it. According to the price tags, Apple's is four times more expensive.
I'm not sure talking down to people who're trying to compare products is necessary. Apart from the information out there, all you're doing is speculating, just like everyone else.