Calling all iPod owners
May. 16th, 2007 07:14 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I have an iPod nano and want to purchase a device for listening to its music via speakers. Am I best off picking up a pair of cheap speakers, or is it worth getting a dock of some kind? Any recommendations?
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Date: 2007-05-16 06:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-16 08:21 pm (UTC)All I really want is something I can use to listen to the iPod in a different room. If it also looks cool then that's an advantage.
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Date: 2007-05-16 07:40 pm (UTC)Supposedly there's a newer one with a remote now too.
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Date: 2007-05-16 08:18 pm (UTC)I'll have to see how much they are, but it's tempting.
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Date: 2007-05-16 08:58 pm (UTC)The only thing that could make it better is having a larger capacity iPod (which will work with the same dock) and the remote version (not that it's necessary, just neat).
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Date: 2007-05-16 11:45 pm (UTC)I doubt that's what you're after though? Also, I've never been able to find another set again - I bought 3 at the time because they were so good. You'd probably be able to find something similar on Ebay.
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Date: 2007-05-17 05:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-17 07:38 am (UTC)I have all three of these options and use them in different ways - good thing about the iTrip is you can use your iPod when round at a friends house to play through their stereo. Docks with built in speakers rock - I've one in my bedroom(it's built into a radio alarm with remote control so I can waken to radio or iPod) also on in K's room which she uses. Plus the stand alone cdock attached to my amp lets me crank the sound up to max when I'm doing my housework!
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Date: 2007-05-17 01:01 pm (UTC)...something you've already got. In particular, most computers come bundled with speakers, and the speakers last longer than the computers do. We use old active computer speakers all over the house with our iPods. This is cheap. And if you bought expensive computers, your speakers might be very good. Or not.
...active speakers, and you can spend amounts from £5 to £500. Go listen to some.
...a dock. Docks are better than speakers because they are neater and look great, and charge your iPod when plugged into the mains. Some also have remote controls, which is good. However, they're fairly iPod specific (though they normally also have a minijack socket) and they can be expensive if you trade in your iPod for the Next Big Thing in a couple of years time. Again, go listen to some with your ears. What you want depends on the room size; for example, we have no room in our house large enough to make the iPod hifi a sensible choice.
If you want a portable solution then your choices are more constrained; all these products are very battery-hungry so you will want a rechargeable solution. We use a little set of nothing-special portable speakers for environments such as bathrooms and tents.
And today is a momentous day for us; we bought a brand new car a little over a year ago in the belief that we would quickly be able to retrofit it with an iPod dock. That proved wrong (it's more complicated because we wanted both an iPod dock with stalk control, and an auxilliary input so we could listen to live recordings of the weekend's festival while sitting in queues on the M1 every Sunday evening all summer approx) but Renault have finally launched a product that does the job and it's being fitted today. We hope. Possibly also with some extra power points because our car has one and we think that four in the front and four in the back would be a reasonable number to be going on with.
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Date: 2007-05-18 08:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-05-17 01:54 pm (UTC)I also have one of those nifty iTrip FM radio broadcaster thingummies to plug in to the bottom. This lets you listen to your iPod on any FM radio - e.g. my main stereo and my car system. The sound quality on these is fantastic (except on tiny, tinny FM radios, obviously). Only slight downer is that it uses the battery much faster than headphones - so I plug it in to a charger if I want it for any length of time.
Never been tempted by a dock - too much money IMO. To get decent sound quality you need to spend a frightening amount and it just doesn't seem worth it given that I have radios around the house anyway.