Just realized my old iPod classic has better sound than my phone

I was at a park last week and this teenager asked what I was holding when I pulled out my iPod classic 160GB from 2009. He said it looked like a weird brick and asked why I still use it. I told him to try it with my wired headphones and he actually looked surprised at how full the music sounded compared to his streaming over bluetooth. The conversation made me think about how we traded sound quality for convenience without even noticing. I still use mine on walks because the battery lasts a month, but I'm curious if anyone else feels like old mp3 players just hit different. Do you keep one around or am I just being stubborn about change?

2 comments

2 Comments

ray_king22d ago

Honestly, "traded sound quality for convenience without even noticing" is exactly it. I had the same moment when I plugged my old Sony Walkman MP3 player into my car aux jack last month. My jaw actually dropped at how much richer everything sounded compared to the same songs on Spotify through Bluetooth. I started digging out all my old CDs and ripping them to 320kbps MP3s just to get that fullness back. People don't realize how much Bluetooth compresses everything into a muddy little blob. Ngl, I keep that old Walkman in my glovebox and use it every time I drive solo. You're not being stubborn, you just remember what music is supposed to sound like.

paul23322d ago

Yeah, "muddy little blob" is exactly how @ray_king described it and he's spot on. I read somewhere that bluetooth uses something called lossy compression that basically throws away a lot of the small details in the music to save bandwidth. The phone is doing all this processing before it even gets to the headphones. I remember seeing a video where a guy compared the same song through a phone aux and bluetooth and the difference was pretty obvious once you knew what to listen for. The bass loses its punch and the cymbals sound like static. Honestly makes me want to dig out my old 2012 iPod nano from the drawer.