Homemade iPod Hi-Fi mini

Simon Clement writes "Decided to add to the Apple product line with the iPod Hi-Fi mini. Here's the web page detailing its features, and there's also a link to a Flickr set showing how to build your own."

Is it only me...

[vidarlo]

...or was the article lacking any significant text? It gave me no clue of what he have done, expcet for hollowing out a old MAC, adding an amplifier and such. What amplifier? How did he interface to the iPod? Does the thing control the iPod, or just output the sound?

I guess the latter, that it is just a fancy set of speakers with a 3.5mm jack to connect it to any portable equipment with a headset output. It's not really innovative even. What would have been innovative was if he'd made a interface to control the iPod. As far as I know, that is not so straight forward, and you'll need a bit of electronics skills, and you'll probably have to write a program for a microcontroller to do the communication...

But as he have done it? Worthless. And TFA gives little or no information on it.

HiFi is a stretch

[hanshotfirst]

A novel idea, but probably not the best-sounding things in the world. You will notice the tweeter is behind solid plastic of the faceplate. If I recall there are ventilation slots under the rim on the front, but not significant in an audio application. You could improve it by incorporating a fixed equalizer circuit to compensate for the loss of high frequency blocked by the case.

Some would call it vanity

[FlynnMP3]

Speakers tend to sound better the more emotional attachment we have to them. The more reviews read finding out from somebody else how we shoudl think, our brain tells us that these speakers sound great. Well, that and pumped up bass. One of the many aspects of the psychoacoustic effect. And stereo equipment reviews know it. /offtopic

These homemade jobbies look cool as heck. More than functional for background music. Which is all the iPod is for anyway. Def: background music. Music that is listened to while paying attention to another task, eg exercising, talking, or cleaning the house. These are obviously not suitable for critical listening, but then nearly all stereo equipement made these days are not suitable for this task. Although my brain tends to enjoy Martin Logans. :)

-FlynnMP3

Why the haters?

[Rob T Firefly]

This is a damn neat hack. Yes, it's probably not as high-quality audio as a set of pro-grade speakers costing hundreds of dollars, but you're listening to an iPod full of compressed, lossy songs, so stop whining. This is a fun way to recycle old hardware cases (unless you have some other pressing need for a Macplus case, perhaps?) into a piece of high geek-factor functional art. It's right up there with the people fitting miniITX boxes into old NES cases and so on.

In other words, quit hating. This took imagination and engineering, and that deserves a bit of respect in my book.

Re:Is it only me...

[qw0ntum]

Yep... it looks like all he did was stick a speaker and an amp into an old Mac case. In this picture [flickr.com] you can even see the 3.5" cable attached to the iPod.

Oh well. It is a cool looking case, but I wonder how many slashdotters would actually rip apart vintage Apple gear just to make a speaker.

Re:Why the haters?

[mobby_6kl]

Because it's just a pair of connect-it-yourself speakers connected to a fucking ipod.

I would probably agree with you if it was an article like this one [dansdata.com], and the whole thing wasn't called "iPod Hi-Fi mini", but as it is, it's just stupid.

Re:I wonder...

[Mr. Underbridge]

Congratulations: You failed to detect any irony in my above comment! You win my derision and contempt.

Next time remember to make it funny and I'll detect it just fine.