iPod & iTunes: The Missing Manual, Fourth Edition

Earphones: Apple’s or Otherwise

The iPod comes with a set of white earbud-style headphones (Figure 1-4). These aren’t just flimsy freebies tossed in the box, either. They’re designed with the iPod’s amplifier in mind.

Figure 1-4. You’re supposed to wedge the iPod earbuds into your ear canals, preferably after covering each one with one of the included foam covers. As with any headphone, really loud music can damage hearing, so use the volume controls sensibly.

With a frequency response of 20 to 20,000 hertz, the iPod can cover a huge range of sounds—comparable to that of a respectable home stereo. In other words, it lets most people hear all the detailed sonic mayhem on a Pink Floyd album. To reproduce this range of frequencies, the iPod earbuds use 18 mm drivers with neodymium transducer magnets. (No, you’re not expected to know what that means—but it’s fun to say at cocktail parties. See the box on Section 1.4.)

UP TO SPEEDNeodymium and Why You Care

The driver is the moving element in any type of speaker system, from tiny headphones to subwoofers. When an amplifier supplies power, the driver vibrates and produces sound waves.

Neodymium—which, from your cramming for that high school test in the periodic table, you may recognize as atomic number 60—is a rare-earth metal that’s used in magnets, lasers, and purple glass. Its name is derived from the Greek neos didymos, which means “new twin” (an appropriate name for a substance used in a pair of earbuds).

Apple claims that its neodymium driver is five times as powerful as the aluminum or cobalt drivers in other earbuds, capable of delivering accurate sound with minimal distortion.

Sounds good so far.

While the iPod earbuds are quite robust, they’re not for everyone. Some people absolutely hate the sound quality. Some people don’t care for the sensation of oversized chunks of foam jammed into their auditory canals. Others lack the wedge of cartilage that keeps earbud-style headphones in place, and so they can’t use the iPod buds without duct tape.

Fortunately, the 3.5 mm jack on the iPod’s headphone port makes it possible to use just about any type of Walkman-style headphones. If you have truly hard-to-fit ears, for example, Apple also sells a set of in-ear headphones with three different earhole cap sizes that you gently plug into your head for maximum comfort. These in-ear buddies cost $40 at http://store.apple.com.

Swapping out the iPod earbuds for smaller ones, or even headphones that go over the head and cover the outer ear, is perfectly fine. You can even use those big fancy noise-canceling headphones (Bose and Philips make great ones) to neutralize background noise around you and pipe more pure music directly into your head. However, if esthetics matter to you, finding white earphones that match the iPod is much less of a challenge than it used to be since Apple bucked the black and gray trends of the early 21st century.