iLink dock brings digital output to iPod, with a catch
By Conrad Quilty-Harper 
posted December 28th 2006 5:16AM
posted December 28th 2006 5:16AM
There's no doubt that the audio industry loves audiophiles: a group of people searching for high fidelity who happen to pick up a whole lot of expensive kit on the way (that's where the love comes in). A company called MSB Technology is attempting to tap into this lucrative and exclusive demographic with its iLink Docking System for the iPod. On its own the iLink isn't particularly special, but when it's coupled with an MSB-upgraded iPod it can output true digital audio, something the analog-only iPod has never been capable of doing. You can either opt to send your own 5.5G iPod to MSB -- where they'll upgrade it for you for $199 and provide their own warranty -- or you can go for the full $1995 iLink system -- which includes an iPod upgrade, and an iLink dock that taps into a digital audio enabled iPod's dock connector. Although we don't claim to be audiophiles ourselves, we see a couple of potential problems here, not least the issue of the iPod being an inherently flawed device to market to audiophiles (compressed music = bad). The other little niggle is the two grand price tag, which isn't too far removed from the asking prices of the high-end CD players it's designed to replace.
Seems like for this price you are better off buying a macBook or other laptop and utilizing it's digital output or if your lucky enough to own a USB DAC using that and getting low Jitter output. Might be more than you need for just an audio converter but the price is the same ;)
hey guys; the ipod DOES have digital out at the dock connector; it is present as an I2S stream; the same raw format that spdif uses. this is the information that is decoded via usb, not a usb data file as it would in disk use.
the I2S stream requires apple voodoo or a (rather pricey I would imagine) license from apple to use this voodoo to enable access to the I2S at the DOCK. I would say MSD has circumvented this by the internal hardware mod they do. there are other solutions that are sanctioned by apple (such as the wadia digital dock) and do not require this.
this would also be the reason it wont decode aac; because they would have to also get a license from apple to allow hardware decoding of an AAC stream.
Audiophiles... WAV ftw. iPod's handle WAV
The iPod is entirely capable of playing back several lossless formats, including Apple Lossless, .WAV, and .AIFF.
...and Stereophile, the audiophile mag, has given high remarks to the iPod's sound quality, without any regard to the need for a digital out.
Else you can always Rockbox! it.
Hangon a tick not all compressed music is bad. I don't suppose you mean lossy compression is not desirable for audiophiles. There are lossless compression like AAC Lossless which is what iPods can play.
This sounds a bit like snake oil to me...
Firstly, the iPod is not 'analog-only', but I think that's an Engadget snafu, not MSB. It is a digital device, so you can't really call it analog only. Even if you're referring to outputs, it's still not analog only. I can play songs from my iPod through iTunes on my computer when it is connected via USB. There is no analog stereo output involved there.
That leads me to the snake oil part of all this. Do MSB really do *anything* to the iPod, except maybe engrave the back..? Do they really open it up and stick a soldering iron in there like their web site claims..??? There is already a digital output in the dock connector. It is used by the computer to playback music and the ID3 tag information is there too.
It seems to me that this is just a digital dock with nothing special about the iPod at all.
I think you are on to something
For the price, you can get a three zone Sonos Wireless Digital Music System. I have Sonos in my house. I re-ripped all my CD's to FLAC (lossless compression) and play them from a NAS. I have whole house digital audio for the price of this thing.
I gotta correct what GadgetGav is saying because it's completely wrong. When you plug your ipod into your Mac (I'm assuming) and play songs through itunes, you are using the computer's internal MP3/AAC etc decoding capabilities and not the iPOD's, so at that point, if your computer has a digital coax/optical toslink going to your stereo, you are in effect playing your music digitally all the way through, you can do this for a heck of a lot less than 2 grand, the iPOD on it's own does not have any way of connecting to a digital audio receiver, it is entirely possible that they modify the iPOD internally to enable the digital audio output -- different than USB connectivity. Though, I'd go for a sub 1k media center PC with a nice Audigy sound card and the ipod docked normally.
But let's not confuse things here, if they've figured out a way to modify the iPOD in such way that their dock gives digital audio/toslink then that's what they're doing
Kazolar: Streaming files over USB and playing music via S/PDIF, AES/EBU, etc., etc., are two different things. When you plug the iPod into your computer and play music from it using iTunes, it's just streaming the files over USB. This mod (supposedly, anyway) provides full digital output, much like you might find on a DVD player, from the decoder; after the MP3s or whatever are decoded to a raw format, they're normally sent off to a digital-analog converter to produce the sounds you hear. This just provides an output for the raw format.
This is total BS. They don't even have a real picture of the system. And what the hell is with the wireless RF? If you're really worried about sound quality why would you bother with wireless?
umm....the wireless data transfer is largely irrelevant...what is critical to audio quality is how that data is processed from 1's and 0's .....and that part of the processing does not occur wirelessly.
Hey Kazolar, read my comment again. You are saying the *SAME* thing as me, so I don't know how you think you're correcting something that's "completely wrong".
MSB is claiming that their mod bypasses the iPod's DAC, but what I'm saying is that if you're putting files on and off as digital data, then that's not going through the DAC, so the iPod / iTunes combo does this already without a $200 mod.
MSB also claim that the "digital format of its audio files are converted within the iPod" which I don't believe is true. The iPod is pretty simple compared to (say) a Zune in that it does no DRM or format conversion in the player, that's all handled by iTunes on the computer which has way more computing power.
I think their dock has a small (half second) buffer memory and an accurate clock device, and I guess some way to make the iPod think it's hooked up to a computer and not a dumb analog audio dock, but none of that needs a mod to the iPod.
mrdelayer, this seems to rely on encoding your CDs as bit-wise copies in iTunes in the first place. There is no way to get back to a bit for bit copy of the original if you've encoded it as MP3. These people are pushing this capability in iTunes (which has nothing to do with them) as the first step in an audiophile iPod system. That's fair enough. Their dock provides a buffer and a clock of the digital output from the iPod's bit-wise stream of the original stream and then puts that signal out on an optical link.
"There is already a digital output in the dock connector. It is used by the computer to playback music and the ID3 tag information is there too."
If you consider accessing the iPod file system, reading the audio files, and playing them using your own software to be a "digital output", then I suppose the iPod has one. The iPod doesn't have a digital audio output.
The stupid thing about this is that anyone who really cares about sound quality (enough to demand digital out) realizes that there's better ways to do this than to specially modify an iPod (for 2 grand no less). The beauty of an iPod dock is that it supports your iPod and your friend's. This version does not. If you want digital out that uses your iTunes music database, get a device made for that purpose. It will be cheaper than this, not require the iPod, and have access to your entire library (not just what the iPod has).
I would never modify my iPod for any price. It's enough of a burden to replace it twice a year as it fails.
Yes, the ipod is sorely missing a digital out, however I don't think we'll see it in the near future. I am a little skeptical of the claims of the above mod. Although the output of the Ipod is pretty good and possibly the best of all handheld DAPs, it would be great if Apple would add a dedicated high-quality line-out that would bypass much of the circuitry of ipod (like the Red Wine Audio mod. I know the docking station has a dedicated line out, however I have heard with the new ipods it is not independent of the ipod's volume control. Also, according to this guy's ipod audio tests http://hifiipod.co.uk/?page_id=61 , the output of the ipod dock is worse than that of the headphone jack.
I am generally happy with the ipod's performance, however next to the Audigy card I have in my computer, the difference in sound quality is night and day.
"If you consider accessing the iPod file system, reading the audio files, and playing them using your own software to be a "digital output", then I suppose the iPod has one. The iPod doesn't have a digital audio output."
Exactly. There's already a digital output - one that represents the music as a stream of 1s and 0s. Converting that to an optical connector is one thing. Claiming that this requires a $200 mod to the iPod is another. Charging $2000 for the moving of the 1s and 0s from copper to fiber is the price of making it seem like an audiophile product..! ;-)
You seem to be confused with the digital I/O of the ipod dock with the unique and unrelated DAC audio output.
One is simply data transfer (which as you correctly identify as an existing feature) while a DAC output ( via USB, Toslink or S/PDIF) does not exist.
I was considering doing this myself a while ago, so I've looked at the technical details and it's possible. It works just like the picture -- they tap off the digital data going to the D/A and then send it out unused pins of the dock connector. What they don't show is a protocol converter. This is a simple FPGA that converts the D/A format to normal digital out format. The two aren't much different (at least for the 2G ipod) - IIRC, the order of the bits is reversed, so you need a 16-32 few bits of memory. Otherwise, it's not too difficult... but it's something you wouldn't be able to do with just and LED and a soldering iron.
GadgetGav, they invented lossless audio for a reason. And even with MP3, while you won't have a bit-for-bit copy, it'll probably still sound better than the iPod's rather low-quality DACs.
the next engadget diy perhaps?
i work with MSB and spend a lot of time reading blogs, so i'd like to explain few points. first... MSB doesn't do snake oil products. if you take the time to look at the rest of our products, or go even further to read the reviews for them, you will see that MSB is a research-based company that has consistently put out amazing products for over 20 years. that's not our gimmick, it's the result of having a tightly-knit group of engineers who frankly do not care what is currently on the market or how much it costs.
the digital output is achieved by altering the internals... we literally bypass the DAC (and all its noisy circuitry) to offer bit perfect data. we do this very carefully with surgical gloves, so customers may think we never open the iPod. we'd like them to think that, at least.
the clock we use is actually a step up from the one in our $10k CD transport, because we have learned a few new tricks to reduce jitter. there is no way to offer digital output without doing this mod. some of the more tech savvy have raised the point that you can pull the digital info off your iPod with a USB cable, but that's not the same type of data transfer required for audio. very simply, you can't clock it and would therefore need another hard drive on your dock to store while processing which would not only violate a few laws, but would be a pain in the butt as well.
please excuse my audible sigh before addressing digital out on a computer.
*sigh*
there are a million different soundcards that offer digital output. there are two problems with these. one, most of these cards do not have a clock on them, so they are using an algorithm to alter your computer's frequency to clock their signal which creates a lot of jitter. two, even cards that do have these clocks (the expensive ones) still use algorithms to match your frequency (which is why the audigy has such a broad range of useable frequencies) and are not dedicated to a single stream frequency... resulting again in jitter. our clock is designed for one frequency, and is matched to create a bit-perfect representation of the data, without using any algorithms or snake oil. does your digital output sound better than the iPod analog out? of course it does. does that mean that it's bit-perfect? not at all.
you've all raised some excellent points, some of which will no doubt end up in our faq section. but to assume that we are selling an inferior product for a huge price tag just to fool audiophiles is downright ridiculous and offensive to me and the company i work for. i fully understand that we work in a market inundated with scam artists, but we scorn these people just as much as you do. please, take a moment to look at our other products and read their reviews... if you had before posting maybe you would have looked deeper into the technology you have been so quick to write off. we did not come up with this product as a way for iPod users to upgrade their sound systems. this is for audiophiles wanting bit-perfect data that is currently only available from a CD.
we will be showing this product, along with a couple other innovations, at CES next month. if you are there, we'll be in the venetian suites (along with the other reference audio companies) in st. 29-209. i'd really enjoy meeting some of you to talk tech and of course listen to the iLink.
if you have any questions, let me know. curtis-at-msbtech-dot-com
Hi Curtis,
When I was discussing the quality of the audigy soundcard output vs. ipod, I was talking about the card's analog output. The Audigy card is a decent card but by no means a superior card. I believe many of Creative's cards resample the digital output to 48Mhz, which unfortanetly can add distortion. I was simply stating that relative sound of one vs. the other, however as even as a decent sound card, but not great soundcard the audigy's output was much more enjoyable than the ipod through the same system.
oh, and that pic looks nothing like the real product, we'll have pics up on friday with any luck. (and hey, we're good at making stuff sound good, not look good)
coprock, that's a valid point. you'll have to excuse my near-rant. we've been tearing our hair out and spending hours with this thing and think that it's a really great product so it sucks to have people cut it down when they haven't heard it yet just because of the price tag.
a company like apple can afford to calculate out its expenses in production to create a product at a specific price level. we don't have that luxury. we simply create the best product we can (this time around it was perfect digital output for iPod) and price it according to how much the actual unit costs us to make. there is a lot of really cool stuff going on with the iLink, the culmination of a lot of research and testing, and you can actually hear it when comparing it to other CD players that cost many times more than it.
Curtis, I definitely appreciate your efforts to do what other companies refuse to do.
Although a bit out of my price range, hopefully your efforts will drive this digital out feature into other DAPs.
At the risk of sounding like a moron after that intelligent post both the company rep and others...
What about streaming music to say an airport express, and connecting that digitally to your system?
Thanks!
Personally I would prefer an imod... its a tiny fraction of the cost yet still boasts hellishly good SQ when coupled with a decent amp. Plus its been tried and tested! OK, it might not have optical out, but its still a great choice.
http://www.redwineaudio.com/iMod.html
Also, if you want a DAP with optical out, why not just buy an iriver H1xx series player? They have optical-out, and can also play a host of codecs (lossless and lossy) with Rockbox installed.
Have you actually heard the imod? Unfortunately, I don't think Red Wine Audio will work on 5th generation ipods. I did notice last week that Apple was selling 4g ipods refurbished for as little as $99
GadgetGav, you are the perfect example of where a "little" knowledge is dangerous...
A comment, and a question for Curtis from MSB.
First of all, I recommend that those who post one line bashing comments about price, just swing by a high end "audiophile" stereo store and spend an hour listening. It's truly amazing the difference between a good system and a bad one. Is it worth an extra $5K, $20K, $50K to achieve varying degrees of quality? That's entirely subjective, but clearly the choice exists. Sure, it's a niche market, as are high performance cars, great wine, the fashion industry, and more.
That off my chest, I'd like to thank Curtis, specifically, for providing real information about your product that helps the consumer community understand your product more deeply. I'll be following up with a post with a specific question for you, hopefully you can help me out with some more insight.
- Mark
OK, here is my question for Curtis. At first, I was VERY excited to hear about this product. Some have asked in this forum: "What's the market for this kind of product." The answer is "me." Here are my requirements:
- I have over 5,000 digital songs, with a variety of formats
- My library consists of a) 1,000+ songs I have downloaded from iTunes, and b) 4,000+ songs I have ripped from my CD's into FLAC format. That is, I am very addicted to the ease of use that iTunes provides in finding, buying, downloading, and organizing songs. iTunes is one of the best products of the century, in my opinion, for what it does.
- The reason I have this mix of formats is that 90% of the time I listen to music on the iPod - when I travel, hanging out with the kids in a docked iPod speaker, whatever.
- That said, I do have an "audiophile" system too that I love to listen to. Although not ultra-high end, I have a tube-based integrated amp from a company called Cary, and Paradigm speakers. My system probably costs around $15K, and I can assure you that my kids and wife, who don't really care, can tell the difference between this and my Apple "Hi-Fi" speaker for the iPod. That said, we use both - the docked speakers are convienient and I have them all over the house.
- That said, I also have a $30 Kensington iPod dock that I plug into my Cary system, and a very nice McIntosh media server. Again, if you were in my living room, the A/B comparison of the McIntosh versus the Kensington dock would make you want to throw the Kensington dock in the garbage. But guess what? I use the Kensington all the time, because it's so trivial to use and synch with all the new music I download from iTunes.
OK, with that context, here's the question / issue: I don't think this MSB system will work for me because I started to read the documentation and this device, unless I read wrong, will ONLY play songs off the iPod that are stored in Apple Lossless format? It won't play protected AAC files (the format of files that you buy from iTunes).
Curtis - is there any solution for this with your product? Is there any chance you'll solve this restriction in the future? Is there anything I can do, other than re-buying the 1,000 songs I bought from iTunes on CD and re-ripping them into a lossless format? And if I can't do this - why? Why can't the circuitry MSB places in you use the fact that I have my music on the iPod to satisfy the digital rights issue?
Or, for anyone else out there, have you found a way to get this kind of hybrid digital audio library connected with your home audio system?
Thanks for any help someone could give me.
- Mark
Mark,
Thanks for asking, I hope you come back to read this at some point. The iLink plays all music that is on your iPod, in any format. The website is heavily biased towards lossless music, but I'll put it this way:
When we showed at CES, we used a special lossless playlist to get the best sound quality possible for our system. As soon as everyone would leave for the day, I'd switch back to my lossy music because my collection is a haphazard mix of lossy ripped and downloaded music. It doesn't sound quite as good as the lossless, but it does sound much better than the standard analog output.
I hope that you take advantage of our 14 day trial... we guarantee your lossless on the iLink will sound better than your CD player, and that your lossy will be better than you've ever heard it before.
-Curtis