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Archos Jukebox versus iPOD 5th Gen Sound Quality

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Mark S:
Over a decade ago I used an Archos Jukebox Record 20 and Rockbox and the sound quality seemed to be very good.  I decided to revive it from the junk box and after a battery swap I got it working.  Just for fun I put one of my favorite songs (Hotel California) on my iPhone and compared the sound quality to the Archos and the Archos was noticeably better.

I have been thinking about getting an iPod 5th Gen and installing Rockbox.

Does anybody have a comparison of the sound quality on an iPod before and after a Rockbox install?

Thanks.

dreamlayers:
How was Archos sound quality better?

For me the Archos devices have louder hard drive spin up electrical interference noise, and they spin up the hard drive more often. This is only audible with some headphones though.

The original Archos Jukebox also had deficient bass, and there was a mod you could do to improve that. The V2 Recorder doesn't seem to have this problem. The 5th generation iPod is a bit deficient in bass with low impedance headphones, but with an inline volume control turned down a bit that goes away.

Overall, I'm satisfied with 5th generation iPod sound quality, though maybe that's because I'm not too picky.

Some people have modified iPods to take sound output directly from the CODEC chip, and use external higher quality components.

Mark S:
My Archos is the Jukebox Recorder 20 with the Micronas Dynamic Bass settings.  I have not noticed any disk electrical noise problems with two different brands of headphones.

I found and purchased a refurbished iPod Classic 5.5 Gen.  A little testing before I put RockBox on it showed that the audio quality was not as good as my Archos when using Bose Quietcomfort 35 noise canceling headphones.  It was not dramatically worse but in particular the bass was not as good and it seemed to lack the depth of what I would call texture.  I did not play with the iPod settings very much to see if I could do any improvement.

I also discovered that the Micronas Dynamic Bass features on the Archos apparently requires a specific chip that is not in the iPod so that feature is no RockBox for an iPod classic.  But the iPod settings with RockBox seem to have more control than the stock iPod firmware.

After installing the latest RockBox version the audio seemed to be better and after some settings adjustment I have come close to the Archos sound quality.  My test song (Hotel California) is very close to the Archos with RockBox on the iPod.

The larger color screen on the iPod offsets some of the sound deficiencies with convenience features.  Most songs play as well as they do on on the Archos.  It seems only those that have an emphasis on bass, like the drum solo on Burning Down The House by Talking Heads, seems to suffer just a bit.  But realistically if you never heard the Archos you probably would be very pleased with RockBox on a classic iPod.

Thanks for the feedback.

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