No optical in/output on iPod!?


At first I thought the iPod was pricy but very cool. But then I noticed that it doesn't have an optical digital in/output. To me this looks like a major fault, any pro music user want's to be able to hook up their iPod to a reciever and get the best quality possible with digital. now how many recievers have firewire, none! And they will probably never get firewire, they use optical or coax. the iPod is great for pro users in the that you don't have to store music in mp3, but you can store it in high quality AIFF.


web developer
Uhm, I don't think an optical input would have any point because you can't record anything on the iPod (or any other Mp3 player).
It would be really cool if it could... :)
But yes, optical output would be possible, but would make the iPod 0.3 ccm bigger :p


I think the idea is to get your data with your Mac then download via FW.

Digital optical audio is not standard with Macs but you can get boards or PC cards which will accept digital optical streams from digital audio gear. Haven't tried it personally.


Angry Member
Has anyone heard of any audio-over-firewire standards that are out?

Technically- apple could include digital output through firewire without increasing the unit's size- since mostly it would involve some extra code and not much- if any- hardware. Of course- this doesn't do anything for people who have recievers that don't support the yet to be created standard- but hey... it's better than nothing.

Apple ought to take the initiative on that. Having one digital interface to allow for storage, cd burning, audio (and maybe midi :) would compell a lot of people working in pro audio to dive into firewire bigtime, since OSX already is pulling a lot of pro-audio interest since CoreAudio is pretty sexy.

I think Apple is poised to do quite well. All three of my roommates, my former roommate, and my roommate's former roommate have plans to buy a Mac in a year or two. My first year in college- this many people weren't psyched to go and buy mac's. Now- a TON of people are. The problem- as always- is price.

i agree... a TOSlink and/or a Coax output coupled with a 20GB hard drive would get me to buy this thing.... as it is now, an analog audio out and the relatively small capacity prevents it from being useful enough for me to justify the price.


a S-video out with support for G-Force would really make this something special.

dont get me wrong, the ipod beats everything out there right now.... but it could use a couple more features IMHO.