Steve Jobs was an audiophile

SS- I think actually Steve couldn't have found a better system - when it comes to electronics SPECTRAL is among the class leaders and their products look elegant, beautiful and a are a joy to use. The fact he could get in contact to the man in charge comes as a big plus.

The fact he had good taste in music I say he spend quite some time with music as a hobby - he called his HiFi room his Decompression chamber - the place to loose the stress accumulating during the working time..

Check the pics
I know for a fact he had the latest CD/DAC : The SDR 4000 Reference CD Processor http://www.stereophile.com/content/spectral-unveils-sdr-4000sl-master-cd-processor - he returned the olde 2000 for free 'to find it a good home..." and that sells new for 12000 Euro

add the latest greatest Pre & Power combo
Pre - amp incl PHONO
http://www.audio-components.de/seiten/spectral/dmc30/dmc30.htm

and two of those mono blocks
Now that with
with a decent Wilson Audio Speaker and a good selection of music on LP/CD and from the iTunes store lol equals audio heaven.
If you like music and got such a system you will use it and find the time to do that.

 

I think a lot of people who slam an iPod haven't listened to one. I had the latest version 160GB Classic and while it was slightly worse than my 5.5 Generation iPod Video the sound was very good. I had it filled with thousands of lossless ALAC files and with a good pair of headphones I was quite happy.

No so happy that I didn't upgrade the hard drive in my 5.5 to a 240GB one and sell the Classic though. The Video with the Wolfson DAC is a very good player.

Like I said, I think the majority of people who don't like the iPod haven't heard one or have heard one only playing lossy low res files.

Chad

 

Sadly, even when playing a somewhat low quality file, its not really that obvious as some want to make it out to be. Overall the sound quality is better than most of us WANT to make it out to be.

In fact only in a comparison to something better is it obvious, and not usually immediately, but only after trying to hear artifacts.

I think we in general in the forum downplay the sound quality of MP3 and even CD, but meanwhile other media is given a free pass.

 

Okay, I’m going to try to summarize where we’re at:

1) SJ maintained an excellent, high-quality music system at home for at least extended periods in his life.

2) If the Walter Isaacson bio makes a blanket assertion that Jobs never had a good system and didn’t care about high-end components, then it’s mistaken.

3) It appears that the posts in this thread speculating that Jobs wasn’t any kind of audiophile, or that he posed for a portrait in his living-room in the early ‘80s with a system he didn’t care about, are mistaken.

That’s how I’m scoring it at this point in the debate. (I’m still gonna dig into what the Isaacson book actually says and see if it squares with the earlier post in this thread.) Please dissent or provide further evidence if you wish.

 

It's not just the ear buds though, gapless playback was missing for a long time, the sound quality in general is low.

This is jobs we are talking about the man obsessed over every tiny detail when he cared about something. He find away to make things perfect. Sound quality was just not on the mans radar.

 

Really, I think Jobs was a guy who forced his vision on the world. One button mouse etc.. There are endless examples of this.

 

RAfter reading the feedback of his main supplier of quality audio for more than 2 decades this vague assumption based as a factual claim is so ridiculous - what's next - Steve Jobs did not care about computers or software ?
Music wwas as important to Steve as to many of his generation in the Bay era in the 60ies. He managed to create and lead the number one supply shop iTunes for music. Probably because he did not care for music as well ? He turned millions of people on to hear music while doing sports or walking around - look at any sports man and see what they wear on their heads - Headphones, mostly be Dr Dre or any other model, powered by an iPod.

He was a business man first and his audio room was his 'decompression chamber'
a way to free his mind from stress. So he did not try and force his hobby on others - at least not in public - I wonder how it comes you think so one dimensional about people you don't know....
Even Bill Gates got a muti million dollar sound system in his house, but the difference is his is known for gimmicks, Multi Media, surprises full surround etc. while Steve went for the best there is in real serious Stereo !

 

Given the custom engineering necessary to do gapless it is not surprising at all that the early iPods did not do gapless. It wasn't possible back then. It requires custom hardware chips made. You can't go buy MP3 decoding chips off the shelf that do gapless. It's custom. The fact that the iPods added gapless support to later models means that there was a very specific effort and expense to make that happen.

I have a 6th generation iPod Classic 80GB. Sound quality is adequate, but not what I would consider great. Sound quality from the headphone jack using the internal headphone amp is bright and harsh. Using the line out dock connection and an external headphone amp the sound mellows out and is plenty nice. You can also use the headphone jack out to an external amp if you want to get a brighter source sound while letting the external headphone amp mellow things and drive the headphones properly. It's fine. I'd prefer that the internal headphone jack and amp did a bit better, but I'd be using an external portable headphone amp anyways.

The EQ presets are a disaster. Useless. They clip badly. It would be nice if the EQ was actually usable. Better if it had a parametric EQ option. Steve must have ignored the EQ. That just might be proof that he was an audiophile. ::devil_grin::

 

Jobs didn't force anyone to buy Apple's products. Consumers vote with their wallets. Some Apple products have been breathtakingly successful (Apple IIe, iPod, iPhone, iPad) while others have been collossal failures (i.e., the Pippin, Power Mac Cube, the Apple III, etc.). No one was forced to buy--or forced not to buy--any of these. Think about it.

 

Apple's most notorious flops:

http://www.wired.com/gadgets/mac/multimedia/2008/01/gallery_apple_flops?slide=1

 

Wrong. He obsessed over the sound quality of the iPod when it was in production. When he was listening to early models, he kept telling them how to tweak the sound. This was documented in The Perfect Thing: how the ipod shuffles commerce, culture and coolness.

 

He held a gun on people and forced them to buy his vision?

I've used a Mac for 25 years and have always used a 2-button (and sometimes 4-button) mouse. Read Walter Isaacson's #1 best-selling biography on Steve Jobs, and you'll get a clearer perspective on Steve Jobs visions -- both positive and negative.

The boosts do clip (especially bass boost), but the cuts work fine. I think the dinky amplifier in the iPods just gives up. I do agree that EQ on the iPod is a huge failing; adding a user-adjustable graphic EQ would be trivial to do, especially if you're just trying to bump a specific frequency range up or down a dB or two.

There's far more than that. Heck, I would say Jobs' own NeXT computer was a huge flop. And there's scores of orphan Mac models in the 1990s that died terrible deaths. I'd have to say, though, the Newton and the Mac Cube were terrible flops -- though the former was John Sculley's problem, not Jobs'. I think you'll agree, the Newton's replacement (the iPad) did a little bit better.

 

And the Mini, which took over the conceptual spot from the Cube, has also fared better. One might argue that both were ideas ahead of their time, despite their flaws.

 

I read the book and I can't recall any point where it "clearly states that Steve Jobs never owned any stereo beyond a cheap, off-the-shelf Wal Mart type stereo".

I think that's something I'd remember, just like I remembered the photo of Jobs in front of his high end system (the one posted in this thread).

The book actually goes into detail about how hard it was for Jobs to purchase anything, since he was such a perfectionist. It mentions sofas and washing machines in particular, but I have to assume this process applied to other things, including stereo gear.

 

Maybe they put that in there because it's easier for most people to relate to buying a sofa or washing machine rather than a very high end stereo.

Chad

 

I'm up to the "Beatles" chapter (toward the end of the book) and don't remember reading anything like that yet either. I do remember the extensive talk of Bob Dylan (especially Dylan b**tlegs), U2 and the Beatles. So, if you don't want to believe the photo with the high-end equipment that's fine. There's music references at the beginning of the book as well as at the end.

At the very least music was a very important part of his life. Can't imagine him not liking good sound. That's an audiophile, right?

 

If you mean this pic... those look like electostats to me. Look in the background....




Also, you are presuming Jobs taste for audio extends to what he believes he can sell to the market. P.S. Original iPod had a Wolfson DAC.

 

As stated before they're Acoustats. The turntable is a Gyrodec, the preamp is either a Klyne or Threshold. Can't tell what's on top of the preamp, with the meters, maybe a Magnum Dynalab tuner? The Acoustats are self-powered, so no power amp is needed for that system.

Also, he's got the dipoles way too close to the rear wall and corners.

 

For earbuds, they were quite decent. Very well balanced.

 

I just came across this a doc about Jobs called the Billion Dollar Hippie. Nothing to do about Jobs an a 'phile but something to watch about the Jobs.

 

Steve Jobs may have been serious about music but the double standard applies where business is concerned. The masses don't care that much about sound quality.

 

Even if the speakers were positioned correctly, an empty room with hard wood floors, large windows and no carpets, no curtains and no furniture will sound awful.

 

That's it! He's NOT an audiophile.

BTW where is this place Jobs is sitting at located?

 

His living room. He didn't have furniture until his wife insisted sometime soon after they were married.

 

Looks like he has just moved into a new house and naturally the first thing he does is hook up a sound system and the kettle.

Or it could have been after a divorce and like a true man, he hung on with both hands to the music system.