Red Wine Audio's iMod hack tweaks the iPod for audiophiles

Granted, the untouched iPod doesn't sound half bad to the average ear, but for the audiophiles in the house, you all somehow know better. Enter Red Wine Audio, which took its discerning ways and channeled them into a nifty iPod hack that "reduces the analog signal path by taking the signal directly from the internal Wolfson DAC and then hard-wiring it to the dock connector." Additionally, the original case was stripped in favor of a bulkier, roomier aluminum shell that could house the new electronics, and "high-end Black Gate non-polarized NX-Hi-Q coupling capacitors" were used to ensure the highest audio fidelity. Onlookers noted that they "couldn't tell a difference" between the iMod iPod's WAV playback and a normal CD player, and while the company looks to be readying these pre-modified units for sale by the end of the month, there's no telling how many hundies you'll be throwing down for it. Click on through for a few more snaps.

Update: Looks like Red Wine Audio will actually be modding user-provided 5G iPods for a charge of $249 (plus $15 for shipping). Be sure to hit the read link for the latest.

[Jeff @ May 16th 2007 10:18AM]

Sometimes one word is all you really need. That said...

ridiculous.

[matthew @ May 16th 2007 10:19AM]

did they bypass the battery in favour of ac? or modify in favour of a replaceable battery? will i be throwing down god knows what for the same expected life span (give or take 18 months)?

[lt.milo @ May 16th 2007 10:26AM]

remember, you will need your own amp to power this, check out headfi.com and go to the portable audio section.
I hear that these do sound significantly better, but just how much better is determined on your external amp.
Personally, I think it is brilliant, and am waiting for one for the zune.
You definitly don't want the sound quality of your new headphones to be limited by the sound quality of your ipod.

[Phil @ May 16th 2007 10:25AM]

Sure, it kind of looks like a bomb, but this is what all us headphone junkies have been waiting for. The iPod's built-in DAC is good, but any external unit will blow it out of the water (and until now, the analog-only out prevented people from using those).

[What?! @ May 16th 2007 10:31AM]

iPod stuffed full of AAC and MP3 files, ha! The iPod (and every other DAP) is NOT an audiophile device, especially when hooking up with $500 interconnects, let alone those nice looking Monster interconnects.

[Big John @ May 16th 2007 11:06AM]

"...between the iMod iPod's WAV playback and a normal CD player..."

Don't you feel retarded?

[Tim @ May 16th 2007 11:02AM]

As all 'audiophile' scientists know there are a few electronic properties of connectors; resistance, capacitance, inductance ... and magic.

Of course it's not just the right kind of metal for the connectors, it's naturally important to use the right kind of batteries. Some batteries, well, they just make the sound just that bit unpleasant, don't they? I mean, I have to use special batteries in my calculator otherwise it gets the sums wrong.

It’s a good product for impressionable fools though. I guess iPod users are already a little further down the gullibility scale.

[Iscariote @ May 16th 2007 10:57AM]

I guess I just don't get it. I appreciate the goal of the audiophile. I understand there are subtle nuances.

I don't understand why I care about them on my iPod. If you're at home, in your soundproofed listening room then go ahead and buy insane audio gear.

Your iPod is for walking around. You're surrounded by ambient noise that has way more of an effect on what you hear than whether or not you use an external headphone amp or not. You can't carry all this crap around with you, so why start with an iPod?

[kadajawi @ May 16th 2007 12:31PM]

You do know that there are things like in ear monitors or closed cans, which don't let the sound from outside in, and are of pretty high quality?

The bigger question here is... why bother with an iPod? Why not simply buy an iAudio or even some iRivers, (those offering digital outputs).

@darkstar: hundreds of dollars? That's not very much in audiophile regions... maybe something you would spend for a speaker cable. ;)

[darkstar @ May 16th 2007 10:58AM]

im glad my ears cant tell the difference between cds and mp3s. i feel sorry for audiophiles who have to spend hundreds of dollars

[nicholas @ May 16th 2007 11:23AM]

I have the audiophile streak coupled with a pragmatic side. I did ditch my vinyl when CDs arrived. They did sound better way back in 1984/5, and were made better as well. A couple of years ago I burned all of my music as Apple Lossless, I put most of my equipment in storage, but miss a really good set of speakers. You may not be able to tell the difference, and most of the time, I could really care less. But, it’s like cars — sometimes 125 is sort of fun. And, maybe 150 is yet more!

I looked at the site as well, and they do it right. Batteries have always been the way to separate the electronic noise from the amplification circuitry. Now they need a good power supply instead of wall warts! Hey, look at the thousands of dollars in stereo equipment, and those are my $5 power supplies!

[Brian @ May 16th 2007 11:27AM]

This story is all wrong. I've been following this for the past 2 days. The mod doesn’t affect the 1/8" headphone jack and doesn't put an aluminum shell on the iPod Photo.
http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/index.php?topic=40904.msg365535;topicseen#new
http://www.aloaudio.com/imod/5gimod.html
http://www.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=240110

[threEchelon @ May 16th 2007 11:52AM]

Engadget, you are mixing up pictures of and information about the 4th gen and 5th gen iMod. And to all the skeptics, thank you for your opinion on a product you have never heard.

[Ignacio @ May 16th 2007 11:56AM]

The only problem I see it that at the price quoted here ($565):
http://www.aloaudio.com/imod/5gimod.html

it's not much cheaper than a Mac mini, which has digital audio-in/out.

[Anders G @ May 16th 2007 3:53PM]

You don't want a digital output since the DAC in the ipod is not that good compared to a high grade audiophile system.
Still, I completely fail to see the point, why use an ipod to playback your music if you have a hi-end audio system?

[anonymouspimp @ May 16th 2007 12:01PM]

What kind of audiophile buys an iPod, then expects to be blown away by its quality?

iPod is well known for its sleek styling and average sounds quality.

[nVidiot @ May 16th 2007 12:20PM]

This is perfect for those of us that want an iPod that is dedicated to their car audio system (like me), and want to use the iPod's click wheel to control music, not the lame deck-based connects that use the output on the bottom (takes up to one second to scroll through ONE song on a lot of those decks.)

I have my iPod mounted in my car hooked into my expensive car stereo through the 1/8" headphone jack and it kindof sounds like crap.

I want one! I realize it's a niche market but that's not in question here.

[Rick Lyon @ May 16th 2007 2:20PM]

Well, you don't need this to get better sound, you need a dock connector cable. There are quite a few out there fore cheap that deliver better sound than the headphone jack.

[Cheng Bang @ May 16th 2007 12:20PM]

useless. mp3/aac is not lossless therefore this mod is moot..

just as useless as someone I know who forked up about 1500$ for a new power cord for his hi-fi equipment. as if a 6 feet long power coord made of some "new super duper mega fantastic metal alloys" is gonna help when the building he lives in was built in the late 60's with its original electrical system utilizing undersized wires is still in use (vacuuming while the tv and micro is on results in burned fuses) and the power box he's hooked up to is about 600 feet away, just as old as the house, plus there is a heavy duty motor shop hooked up to the same power box...

and a 1500$ power cord from the wall to his his hi-fi equipment makes it "sounds so much better"
yeah, right...

[sockatume @ May 16th 2007 1:15PM]

A bulky, ultra-high fidelity system for playing back lossily compressed audio on a device that's meant to be portable? Talk about over-engineering for its own sake. I'm not sure, but I think buying a CD player instead of an MP3 player would give you a bigger improvement for a smaller expense.

[Shrike @ May 16th 2007 1:22PM]

$550 and it takes the audio AFTER the iPods own DAC!!!!
Surely someone having a laff.

[CarrotAndStick @ May 16th 2007 1:48PM]

@ nVidiot

Dude, what you need is this:

http://www.sendstation.com/us/products/pocketdock/lineout-fw.html

[KR @ May 16th 2007 1:58PM]

Regardless of how useful/useless this device is, to all of those screaming "Raaa! MP3/AAC files are compressed! Why do this!?" Remember that the iPod is fully capable of playing back uncompressed, lossless audio. Just because you have an iPod doesn't mean it's full of MP3s or AACs.

[JT @ May 16th 2007 2:07PM]

I still don't know why the 18-month battery life thing won't die. I have a 3rd gen iPod (touch sensitive buttons, 15GB) and it can still play 6-7 hours on it's original battery (original battery life was supposed to be 8 hours).

As far as this conversion, they're just bypassing the remaining electronics inside the iPod for theirs. For that matter, they might as well bypass the internal DAC and go with a higher-end chip, which would give you a hard drive with sound files on it. Plus, it kind of kills off one of the main purposes of the iPod, portability.

[JT @ May 16th 2007 2:11PM]

I see from the 5th gen iMod that it's portable now. Now it looks like a fancy dock connector. That kills off most of my argument, assuming that the dock connector is a lossless (or low-loss) connection.

[Johnny @ May 16th 2007 2:36PM]

If you want to improve your audio on your MP3 player, Creative already did that with it's X-Mod.

http://x-fi.com/products/xmod/

AND ITS ONLY LIKE 70 BUCKS!

[johnzilla @ May 16th 2007 2:57PM]

I settled for buying a CMoy-based amp in an Altoids tin off eBay. Made a big difference to me, audiophile or not. Playing songs on my nano sounds much better now, even at low volume, and it was a heckuva lot cheaper than $500.

[James @ May 16th 2007 3:37PM]

Heh. Confucius say, "Fool and his money soon parted."

Seriously, Engadget, did you guys post about this thing just so we could all have a good laugh about it in the comments? If so, uh, thanks.

[Tyler @ May 16th 2007 4:03PM]

About 4 of the 50 posters above have any idea what this product is.

For $550, you get:

A) A new video ipod
B) A modification that bypasses the PCB and stock output caps going to the dock connector and replaces them with point to point wired blackgate caps.
C) Lifetime replacement service on batteries, hard drives, etc. to protect your investment.

The standard headphone amp is untouched, and you can use it exactly as you normally would, BUT if you want immensely better sound quality you can connect a headphone amp via the dedicated dock connector and get a signal almost completely removed from the cheap stock circuitry of an ipod. This is a very useful product, to a very few people. If you've already dropped close to $1000 on high fidelity isolating in-ear-monitors that are custom fitted to your ear canal and $300 on an excellent portable amplifier, why would you want to plug that into the headphone out (and thus cheap opamps) of an ipod?

The point is, the sound that could previously only be had from a $10,000 home stereo can now be had from a $2000 portable rig. Even with an amp, the iMod combo is smaller than a portable cd player. If you still think it's silly, feel free to pay $200 a year to play games on a $2200 PC that will be obsolete in under five years -- I'm going for a walk.

[JS @ May 16th 2007 4:14PM]

I for one want to listen to my 128kps compressed files of hip hop artists playing alised 8-bit samples from their $50 casio keyboards with $1 monophonic audio connectors with all the sonic glory that gold plated connectors and audiophile grade DAC's can deliver.

[Tyler @ May 16th 2007 4:22PM]

Then do. I would like to listen to my losslessly compressed files of Yo-Yo Ma playing his multi-million dollar cello recorded by a suite of $3000 microphones in a little more glory.

Come to think of it, I'd like to listen to danger mouse in that same glory.

[Stephen Worth @ May 16th 2007 8:09PM]

I did a balanced line level comparison of an iPod playing an AIFF rip to my CD player, and I couldn't detect any difference. I didn't have to spend hundreds of dollars, void my Applecare and give up the headphone out to do achieve those results.

See ya
Steve

[Brian @ May 16th 2007 5:26PM]

Tyler. Thank you! Well put.
http://www.aloaudio.com/jumboRS2a.jpg

[Mike @ May 16th 2007 6:37PM]

Engadget, youre wrong about stripping the case and putting an alumimum shell on it. That case is actually made by YoTank

http://www.yotank.com/itankvideo.html

Amazing case if you ask me. They will even customize the holes they drill for your headphone jack - awesome if you have UE IEMs or others.

[mrrookie @ May 20th 2007 11:41PM]

Of course you can't steve, your can't tell the difference with your stock ibuds.

You should try something a little less 'mainstream' gear some day, altough you may never notice the difference.

[Tyler @ May 17th 2007 2:36AM]

Steve (or should I call you Bigshot?)

You're missing the point here. For
1)Presumably, your CD player isn't portable. If it is, good on you, but most portable CD players have rubbish sound quality.
2)With the 5th gen iMod, you don't have to give up your headphone port, as the line-out is used.
3) ALO Audio and Red Wine Audio's warrantees are far better than applecare, and they're lifetime. Redwine replaces imod parts for the price of the part plus shipping, and if it's defective the replace it for free. You can't buy a better warranty.

Either you think the sound quality and extra bulk is worth it, or you don't, but don't bash this without understanding it.

P.S. I still love you, bigshot.

[Matt @ May 18th 2007 11:56PM]

As others have written, the details on the iMod in this article are wrong. I own a (previous generation) iMod, and I can tell you it is by far the best sound I have heard anywhere near its price range. I know to some of you who don't really understand what the mod is about, it may seem like a waste of money. But there are far more expensive audio products that don't deliver like the iMod does.

Those people ridiculing the iMod as an obvious joke make me think of someone laughing at a BMW or Lexus owner because everyone knows a cheaper Hyundai will get you where you're going just as fast.

[paul34 @ May 21st 2007 2:06PM]

I wish there was a well-designed, mass market type device that also supported "free" file types like Ogg Vorbis and FLAC. I now rip all my CDs (the ones that I buy, just for you naysayer types) to FLAC format.

Unfortunately, I hate having convert batches of files to lower quality MP3s just to put them on my Zen Micro (which unfortunately has this nasty habit of crashing on startup =/ ). Anyway, I'd love to have something like the iPod, but instead with audiophile sound quality, no proprietary software or DRM schemes, and with FLAC/Ogg/anything support (open source firmware with can have "extensions" added to add/remove support for filetypes).

And I mean something that comes this way... I know you can already mod existing devices (as per the OP), but... maybe someone shares my vision =)