Build Your Own iPod Stereo System

Avatar
Published on May 26, 2008, 3:50 pm
FavoriteLoadingAdd to favorites 3 mins

It just takes smart shopping to assemble a do-it-yourself speaker system.

iPod owners have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to choosing a speaker system for their music player. I should know—over the past few years, I’ve reviewed many of these accessories, which typically combine an iPod dock, an amplifier, speakers, and a remote control. And while many iPod speaker systems make considerable compromises between sound quality, size, and convenience, some are quite impressive. When I’ve reviewed the best of these products—take Klipsch’s $400 iFi or Jamo’s $400 i300 as examples—I’ve often noted that users would be hard-pressed to put together a system on their own that sounds better for the same amount of money.

But that got me thinking: how difficult would doing so be? With some smart shopping, could you create a system—an amplifier, an iPod dock with remote, and speakers—that competes on both price and performance with the best systems specifically made for the iPod?

I decided to find out. I searched for components to make my own iPod speaker system, with the ultimate goal being a noticeable upgrade in sound quality over good iPod speaker systems in the same price range (which means connecting an iPod dock to a $300 “bookshelf stereo” with mediocre sound quality wouldn’t cut it).

Why go through the trouble? After all, if there are already good systems out there for $300 to $400, why not just plunk down your money and start listening instead of going to the trouble of rounding up the parts yourself? For starters, a system with separate speakers has the potential to sound better than an all-in-one box. Second, by buying the components separately, you’re future-proofing your system: you can later upgrade to a better amplifier, or a nice receiver, and even use the system for listening to CDs or radio. Apple could also make changes to future iPod models that render current iPod speaker systems obsolete; with a custom stereo, you can just buy a new dock instead of having to replace the whole thing. Finally, as an audio guy who also reviews iPod speakers, I simply wanted to see what was possible.

The ground rules

To truly replace a dedicated iPod speaker system, my build-it-yourself stereo had to meet several requirements:

 

Avatar
Jonas Bronck is the pseudonym under which we publish and manage the content and operations of The Bronx Daily.™ | Bronx.com - the largest daily news publication in the borough of "the" Bronx with over 1.5 million annual readers. Publishing under the alias Jonas Bronck is our humble way of paying tribute to the person, whose name lives on in the name of our beloved borough.