[darkpuppet]

Well, I finally did it... I went and bought myself something apple.

An iPod Nano.... I got tired of swapping music out of my piddly 1Gb Sony MP3 player, and went for the 16gb Nano...

I've never been a big fan of apple hardware... I've always said that in the past (my sony 1Gb stick was smaller than the 1st gen nano, and had 50 hours of playtime vs 11 of the old nano-- 24 of the new nano).

But nobody makes an MP3 player that just does a good job of playing music. They all have to support video and other things like that it seems. They just don't make 'em like they used to.

I was tempted to go Zune, but then again, while the hardware is better...they don't have the same market penetration as apple -- and that's the understatement of the year.

So I figure, if I'm going to get greater capacity, I might as well go with the apple. I already use iTunes as it's simple to use and does a decent job... so having almost my entire music collection on a device not much bigger than my old sony wouldn't hurt.

So that's the story of how I ended up with apple...

but what do I think of this new toy?

well, it plays games nicely, has a nice interface, and is rather shiny... But here's the thing... it's not a great music player.

I have a $200 pair of reference in-ear headphones... and they pick up a lot of clipping from the Nano's diminutive amp... and I can't trim any of the levels in the EQ. Even with soundcheck enabled it's ok, but not great.... nowhere near how nice my MP3's sounded on my sony.

However, the little Nano does do a better job with AAC files. I've been known to download a single or two from the iTunes store, and they sound fairly decent much more full throughout... but still... the Nano favours the highs, clips on the lows, and while I know I'll get used to it's particular sound, I can honestly say that only the MPIO MP3 players have sounded worse.

Of course, now I know why you can hear everyone's music on the subway... if you want bass, you need to turn the EQ off and turn the volume up until you go deaf in the higher frequencies.


So there you have it.... I went to the darkside... it's a little treble heavy, but it's not bad.