Each year I get a talkin’ to by *somebody* about my show reports and this year it was Channel Islands Audio (CIAudio) in the Von Schweikert room.

It started off by them accusing me of trashing their room sound. I tried to think of whether I had ever said ANYTHING about CIAudio in any show report. I am sure the confusion showed on my face [Neli says I look especially stupid when I am confused :-)].

So then the clarification arrived [to save me from looking stupid… or as stupid anyway] which was that I said their system couldn’t be taken seriously because it was driven by an iPod.

And then more clarification about how I only like tubed gear and Analog sources.

Well, that last is not exactly true, but I can understand how one might arrive at that conclusion.

And the statement about the iPod sounds exactly like something I would say.

At the time I said I was sorry, but we really had to decide how much ‘fidelity’ we were going to sacrifice in order to attract the iPod generation [the idea being, that if we sacrifice too much to get them, we will have won the battle and lost the war].

With some prompting, another person in the room indicated that they thought that the iPod with the Wadia dock sounded better sometimes than the Oracle CD player. We shall skip the discussion about whether the Oracle CD player is a good benchmark of high-fidelity or not and discuss something I think is a more general problem.

1. Almost every electronics manufacturer at the show has some kind of support for the iPod.
2. The iPod does not sound great when playing in a hi-fi system [hopefully we can agree on this]
3. The iPod generation is completely, absolutely, without a doubt absent from hi-fi shows, and we don’t hear much about them shopping up a storm at any high-end dealerships either

Now I am going to state some assumptions, otherwise this post will be as long as your typical online equipment review:

1. To attract a listener to the audiophile way of life they have to hear a system that sounds good.
2. Support for the iPod is a pre-requisite for the iPod generation who we want to transition to something better [there are technological methodologies that would help to transition them in other ways – like to a music server, with potentially much higher fidelity, but let’s continue…]
3. Making the iPod sound good in a good sounding system would be a home-run in this game of ‘save our industry from a lingering death’.

Just doing step 2 leads to failure to attract the iPod generation, and loses us some of the current generation of audiophiles as well, and this is where we are right now.

My proof comes with the experience I had in several rooms at the show, where, when I was in the room they played an iPod (or digital source) which was extremely bright and, in fact horrible in many ways – whereas other people whose ears I trust and who know my criteria – they heard a real source component and the sound was reportedly good to excellent.

This is plain stupid. In fact it is idiotic.

We would do better to attract the iPod generation by people bringing decent system source components and not looking strange, or even hostile, at young people when they want to play young music [you know, like the music WE LIKED when we were young? Duh].

Neli’s idea is that there could be an iPod docking station and lazy exhibitors are NOT to use it because they are too lazy to bring a real source component and CDs [or a turntable and box of LPs… unlike us lazy bones this year].Instead they should offer to plugin other people’s iPods and play THEIR music.

But this only works if it sounds better than them just sticking a couple of ear plugs in their ears. And if the exhibitor’s system is playing an iPod – and it sounds like poop – and the exhibitor happily grins and says “ain’t that great?” … what does that say about our entire hobby to a newbie. It says all we have in high-end audio is poopy sound and that they should spend their money on a bigger flat-screen instead.

So, now I not only reiterate that a iPod-fronted system can’t be taken seriously as hi-fi – but that, at shows, they are a threat to the hobby. And that includes laptops and music servers – which, with iPods, significantly increases the number of rooms that have megabuck equipment in them that sound horrible most of the time because they try to be ‘cool’ playing these sources that they cannot [yet!] make sound good.

So, let’s make this stuff [yes, it is COOL. No doubt about it. In fact we are eager to jump in with both feat.] sound good BEFORE we subject all these listeners to it, OK? Otherwise we have a repeat of the CD introduction – and we know what THAT did to our wonderful hobby.

Remember, CD Players were just as COOL, back in the day.

And they darn near killed high-end home audio.