When I got my iPod back from Vinnie I was anxious to plug it in and see how it sounded, especially because UPS cost me an extra day by not showing up until 7:15pm to deliver it when I had already had to leave home at 6pm. Unfortunately it didn't live up to my expectations, the sound was clearly distorted (it made my ears ring almost immediately at moderate volumes), bass was flabby and poorly defined, and the highs were etched and brittle sounding. Basically it was about what you'd expect from a $50 dvd player from WalMart and I was put off by that.
I knew the BG capacitors are notorious for taking ages to burn-in fully, but in my previous experience with them in my Clari-T & Nixon DAC that meant that things started out sounding really, really good and just got better from there. I was skeptical that the iPod could go through a transformation that would make an acceptable digital source given how much worse it was sounding at time t=0 than my Clari-T had. So, I relayed my concerns to Vinnie and told him that I'd be more than patient with it as it broke in.
(As an aside I was never a believer in break-in or burn-in at all until I got my Prometheus speakers. They sounded so bad when I first put them together and plugged them in that I wanted to burn them. My girlfriend, who has better ears than I do, was horrified that I had sold my gorgeous Ref 1 monitors to buy more expensive speakers that sounded absolutely f’ing horrible (her words). Fortunately things did change in time… after 100 hours the speakers became listenable, after 200 hours they started to sound really decent, and finally after about 400 hours of use they came into their own as serious contenders against just about anything else out there. This pretty much convinced me beyond any doubt that equipment can and does break-in with use. However, like I said, I was doubtful that the iPod could go through such a transformation but patient enough to give it a chance.)
So far that patience has definitely payed off for me. I plugged the iPod in and I’ve let it run continually whenever I haven’t been busy uploading CDs to it. That means it’s been playing overnight and during the day for the last four days or so and I’ve stopped to listen to it about every 10 or 12 hours. It’s really surprised me how much the character of the sound changed during each of those intervals… each time I’d sit down to listen I’d find definite changes, most noticeably in the treble, which again started out so bad that it made my ears ring. By yesterday morning, around 75 hours or so, the system was sounding good enough that I could listen to it and enjoy what I was hearing and that meant I could have a decent listening session at night before going to bed. I did, and finally my system is back up to par, which to me means it can deliver a sort of spellbinding experience that lets me totally get lost in the music and forget about everything else. That’s not an easy thing for a system to do, and after 4 days of anxiety I was very relieved for this to finally have happened again to mine.
If I was to describe the way the modded iPod is sounding now I would say it’s extremely detailed and fairly smooth, it’s liquid and fast like my battery-powered Scott Nixon DAC but it doesn’t force you compromise with the rolled-off highs of the NOS DAC. Its signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range are probably the best I’ve heard, the battery power and lack of moving parts work their magic to give you a dead-silent black background. Because of the detail and lack of background noise I’m hearing a lot of things in my music that I never picked up before, and that’s a good indicator for me. Things like guitar harmonics and organs layered quietly in the background are now far more noticeable. The bass has also tightened up significantly and it now sounds basically the same as what I heard from the Nixon DAC. That’s also a good thing. Things are still changing though, I like the sound now an awful lot but if the highs get a little smoother and cleaner as I expect them to I’m going to be one very, very happy customer.
Anyway, sorry for the length but I wanted to be explicit for the sake of anyone who goes the same route I did. And my system is extremely resolving, so who knows maybe other people won’t be as annoyed with the initial sound as I was but if you are… be patient, grasshopper, good things come to those who wait.
Gary
