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http://www.macnn.com/articles/02/10/07/apple.updates/

Apple updates iPod software for Europe only

updated 12:40 pm EDT, Mon October 7, 2002

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Apple has released an update to the iPod 1.22 software for Europe only (Mac OS 9, Mac OS X), which will bring the sound level down from 104 dB to 100 dB, according to MacGeneration. Last week, we noted that Apple pulled all iPods from stores in France because they did not comply with a French law that requires audio devices to output a maximum of 100 dB. The update comes a day earlier than expected, and requires version 1.2.1 of the iPod software before installing.

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10/07, 01:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
what if

What happen sif you don't update? The French police will come and arrest you?

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10/07, 01:26pm | report spam | close Reply |
RE: what if

Yes, the French police come and arrest you. Smartass...

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10/07, 01:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
what?

The french have police? When the h*** did this happen!??!

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10/07, 02:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
yeah

It happened since they arrested terrorists before they crash on a building.

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10/07, 02:04pm | report spam | close Reply |
RE: what if

blood will come out your ears and then you will have to give your iPod to me....

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10/07, 02:06pm | report spam | close Reply |
French

We eat crepes in our cafes while you die in iraq.

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10/07, 02:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
pussies

never ceases to amaze me....
french are scared of loud noises, anything more threatening than a lady bug, and non-homosexual relationships with their families.

ah well, to be french and in love. sigh....

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10/07, 02:15pm | report spam | close Reply |
re: pussies

why not just say the french suck a**. since they do. no need to wax eloquent over it dammit.

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10/07, 02:17pm | report spam | close Reply |
iPod too loud

iPods are too loud anyway. Not for the french but for the Apple headset! Mine (new version) makes awful noise when I set it to max.

After update to 1.2.2 it is still damn loud but the cracking noise is gone.

So I think its time to relax for everybody - only people who prefer noise over music will dislike this update.

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10/07, 02:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
Loudness

Sounds like a decent legal limit. I assume the US one is 104 dB, since that's what they apparently capped it at before. The difference between 100 and 104 dB is actually quite large (each 1 Bel = 10 deciBel = 10 times louder). 120 dB is a jet engine at 50 feet. 100 dB is like standing in really loud highway traffic. It's a logarithmic scale, so by comparison the difference between 10 dB and 14 dB is barely detectable (both are lower than a soft whisper).

However, both of these limits are too high for casual use anyway - if you're chronically exposing yourself to headphones at 100 dB, you will permanently damage your hearing (and quite quickly). You might need to use it occasionally at that volume setting plugged into something besides headphones for an impromptu presentation or something, but as another poster notes, it'll probably sound like crunchy c*** at that point anyway.

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10/07, 03:00pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: ipod too loud

iPods are too loud anyway. Not for the french but for the Apple headset! Mine (new version) makes awful noise when I set it to max.

Here's an idea, genius. Don't turn it up to the max setting. Wow!

And did it occur to anyone here that the high-volume/output wasn't just for headphones, but for those who want to hook it up to a stereo system or cheap pair of speakers or something?

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10/07, 03:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
Not loud enough!

The MDREX70LP Sony headphones I use (highly recommended) require more power to drive them than conventional heaphones so any drop in dB would be real bad news. As it is the volume is set to max on my pod.

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10/07, 04:35pm | report spam | close Reply |
Re: Not loud enough

Switching headphones with a unit like this is always an issue that way; the legal limit (which is more about tort product liability than it is possible criminal negligence if some twit hurts themself) would only apply to the bundled headphones & player as a unit. You can obviously find headphones which will produce more or less sound power from the same signal. It's not actually the same drop in measured dB for you, it's more a question of signal amplitude at the jack. If you're having to turn it up all the way, your headphones really aren't suited to the player (if nothing else, you don't have a useful volume range available). There may be a resistor you can remove from the headphones (or replace with a lower impedance) to make it louder. Be careful you don't blow them, of course. ;)

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10/07, 05:02pm | report spam | close Reply |
Come on, guys...

Insulting the French is sooo last week.

This week, let's insult deaf people. Did you hear that Apple is giving $100 rebates on iPod's to schools for the deaf?

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10/07, 05:19pm | report spam | close Reply |
More info

http://www.quiet.org/noiseletter/Spring2002/Page5.htm

Interesting notes:

The legal limits are the same as those for toys, except that most testing is done on the sound power of a source held at arms length. The headphone limit may thus be calculated as an equivalent to an arms-length source (making it somewhat less as measured at the earbud). Sort of like how good headphones can produce a sound image that appears to be moving around the room.

The Canadian limit is also 100 dB. As the article notes, this is like an arms-length gas chainsaw, and really much more than you should be exposing yourself to for any length of time. It may be that they simply took the French iPods and relabeled them for the rest of Europe or the US, and took the English off some Canadian iPods and sent them to France.

The US limit is *138* dB. Recalling my psych undergrad classes on hearing, this is almost certainly taken straight from the approximate average pain threshold for a person with undamaged hearing. This is actually a pretty stupid limit, really like having no limit at all. Many people would report severe acute pain on being exposed to a short blast at that level, and you would suffer immediate short-term damage that would become permanent with repeated exposure. Also the pain limit is a disputed figure, mostly because it's pretty hard to measure in the lab (you can't keep doing it because you'll damage people, you only have subjective reports to go on, and really who's going to volunteer anwyay? ;). It varies a lot, downward for people with intact hearing and upward for those poor sods who direct traffic or whatever. But with hearing, once it hurts, it's already damaging you.

The Apple site lists 104 dB as being the limit within which the amplitude response of the iPod+earbuds falls. That is, it's capable of reproducing any sound from an apparent 0 dB (the just noticeable threshold, well below a whisper) all the way to 104 dB (chainsaw guitar :). Beyond that it turns to noise. In practice an audiophile will tell you these limits are usually overstated, and things degenerate long before that. But 104 dB is still a very good range. It's interesting that Apple chose to make the real power output the same.

People don't seem to realise that noises this loud were nearly never heard before the turn of the last century and the industrial revolution (or at least the advent of gunpowder). We're really not designed for this stuff. Take care of your ears. :)

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10/07, 05:55pm | report spam | close Reply |
hehe yeah the french song

french suck la la la

repeat ad nauseum

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10/07, 05:57pm | report spam | close Reply |
wankers

the whole lot of you. i have a pair of studio headphones i cant afford a drop in dB so what the h*** are those people in france doing? what an isane law.

oh yeah, and in the interests of this weeks hatred: f*** the f****** deaf people. i gues they would just hear this:
".... ......... ... ..... .......... .... ...."

:)

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10/07, 06:23pm | report spam | close Reply |
No, the iPod that Apple

is giving the rebate on, is a special model called the deafPod™. it doesn't have head phones but it has an animated Happy Mac on the LCD screen which does a sign translation of all the songs.

You should see it do "She Bangs".

In France, the screen is dimmed to avoid eye-damage.

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10/08, 01:28am | report spam | close Reply |
RE Not loud enough!

It's not true to say that the headphones I use aren't suitable for the player. I think you must be thinking they're studio headphones or something, they're not, they are tiny 'in ear' headphones made by Sony using a new technology that needs more power. Check them out, they were designed with any portable player and they are very good.

At the moment the volume is fine for most stuff, but I often find I need to turn up the volume on classical tracks and stuff like that so I won't be installing this.

It's not an issue with Apple anyway, its EU law, designed to protect peoples ears cos some are too dumb to know when something is too loud and they'll all want to claim disability from the government in years to come.

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10/08, 04:08am | report spam | close Reply |
Good Grief.

I swear this place is becoming increasingly inhabited by trolls. What on earth is it that drives people to post moronic, blanket comments about other people's cultures simply because it's not the same as theirs? For God's sake Grow up. How many of the people suddenly ripping into France have ever even been there? This anti-European thing seems to get more intense on MacNN every time something non-US is posted. It's patently ridiculous. There's plenty to criticise about every country on the planet so why not just give it a rest and keep the whole thread on topic? Maybe some of the more brainless posters here might want to examine themselves and their own culture before ripping into other people's. Brain first, then mouth.

I'm bound to get flamed for this, but I guess it's a peril of posting here. It's obviously be too much to expect for the moderators here to finally actually bother to do something and start removing some of the chaff from the forums and comment threads so that we can actually get some kind of sensible discussion on the issues that affect us without wading through piles of tosh.

Rant Ends. Coffee needed.

120dB is a jet engine at 50 Feet? Bloody h*** - 100dB sounds half reasonable on the strength of that. How does the frequency of the sound being listened to affect the perceived volume? I've found that my iPod is generally pretty clear when at maximum volume through my Hi-Fi, although I do have Sound Check on, which tends to dumb everything down a bit. Without it things can get a bit crusty sounding past about 90%.

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12/28, 05:24pm | report spam | close Reply |
sound

I want to know about the best sound quality of various mp3 (hard drive) players. Does higher db mean that you have a potential for better sound quality? Especially with great studio headphones? Can low or high db be detrimental to sound?

Creative boasts "Stunning 98dB Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR)"
This makes high db sound bad. Like interference.

http://www.americas.creative.com/products/product.asp?maincategory=2&category=2&product=324

Would 60 dollar headphones need more then that? Is the actual volume output for good phones that need more db be less loud then others and thus less bad to have at loud volume outputs? Are some phones ok for your hearing at 106 (just made to use a lot of input power) and others not?

Finally I can assume that you all think that ipod has the best sound because most have them. But if any of you think otherwise please tell. What others did you look at and what is the best. Back this up with specifications if you can.

BTW French are pussies. I felt left out :(

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12/28, 05:43pm | report spam | close Reply |
sound

The Zen bests the iPod in four ways.

You can create a playlist on the fly while a song is playing, so the player feels like a conventional jukebox. You still can't do this with the iPod. Are you listening, Apple?

Thanks to its 98 dB signal-to-noise ratio, the Zen sounds better than the iPod.

You can delete songs from the device.

The price is nice.

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03/09, 05:14pm | report spam | close Reply |
Boycott France

Boycott France bumper stickers and T-shirts at:

http://www.cafeshops.com/obnoxious_bs

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Apple updates iPod software for Europe only

updated 12:40 pm EDT, Mon October 7, 2002

what if

RE: what if

what?

yeah

RE: what if

French

pussies

re: pussies

iPod too loud

Loudness

Re: ipod too loud

Not loud enough!

Re: Not loud enough

Come on, guys...

More info

hehe yeah the french song

wankers

No, the iPod that Apple

RE Not loud enough!

Good Grief.

sound

sound

Boycott France

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Apple updates iPod software for Europe only

updated 12:40 pm EDT, Mon October 7, 2002

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what if

RE: what if

what?

yeah

RE: what if

French

pussies

re: pussies

iPod too loud

Loudness

Re: ipod too loud

Not loud enough!

Re: Not loud enough

Come on, guys...

More info

hehe yeah the french song

wankers

No, the iPod that Apple

RE Not loud enough!

Good Grief.

sound

sound

Boycott France

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