Serious question about that clunky old iPod Classic I still use

My buddy at the leasing office swore his 2007 iPod Classic with a dead hard drive sounded way better than my iPhone through the same $20 earbuds, and I argued with him for 15 minutes in the break room last Tuesday - do you think old MP3 players actually have better audio chips or is it just nostalgia talking?

3 comments

3 Comments

shane_nguyen1mo ago

Wait, isn't this the same kinda thing where people swear old cars had better heaters or older TV remotes worked from across the house? lol. I've seen this pattern a ton in life - people mistake "different" for "better" because their brain connected the dots with a good memory from back then. Like my uncle still says his 90s cassette deck had warmer sound, but really it just had more hiss and he's remembering sitting in his beanbag chair after school. The iPod Classic had a Wolfson chip that technically measured cleaner on paper, but your iPhone's DAC is actually better at converting the digital file. The bigger difference is probably those old MP3s were louder and hit your ears differently, so they felt punchier with cheap earbuds. Trust your break room instincts, the old stuff is cool but not magic.

aaron_wilson171mo ago

The iPod Classic's hard drive was the real bottleneck. Those old drives had terrible seek times and you could hear them clicking. The flash memory in newer devices loads songs instantly and doesn't skip when you run. Also those old Wolfson DACs people obsess over? They were running through a headphone amp that could barely drive decent headphones. My 160GB Classic sounded thin and lifeless through my Sennheiser 580s. The iPhone drives them way better. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug but the measurements don't lie on this one.

ben4021mo ago

My 2003 iPod’s battery would last three hours now, but @shane_nguyen I still defend it like it’s a family member.