Good on sound, limited on features

I have been looking for a docking station for my 60GB iPod for a while, not so much because I needed it, but I wanted somewhere to put the iPod when I wasn't using it. Luck would have it that I got an excellent deal on the Sonic Impact T24.

I honestly had a choice in this matter as they also had a few Altec Lansing models at excellent prices as well. This however was the most expensive model they had, was bigger and felt better built than the others. I resisted the fact that this is not an ultraportable set of speakers but is more the size of a desktop radio.

So I now have my docking station. In the package you'll find an AC adapter, remote, a few different bases for the iPod (depending on what model/generation iPod you own), a small mini mic cable and instructions. The unit itself is tucked even deeper inside and double wrapped.

The T24 itself is pretty fancy looking, piano black and silvery, heavy for its size too, it feels like it is fairly well built. It supports a Digital Tripath amp. Some of the other Sonic Impact products have been touted to have good sound quality but this was less of a deciding factor upon my initial purchase. In the back you'll find a mini mic jack to hook up other audio products/mp3 players and a video out jack for your video capable iPods.

That aside it does not have any real feature set. Just volume up and down on the T24 itself. The remote has only fairly basic functions. Still would be nice if they included a few of the skip buttons on the front of the unit itself. If you have the desire to switch to an artist not on your playlist you'll be messing around with the click wheel on the iPod itself, while it is docked. The connector the iPod seats into has a little wiggle to it even with the correct base so I'm not certain this is a good thing. The unit itself feels sturdy though so I don't worry about it.

The unit's main strength is sound. The digital tripath amp is rated for 15 watts per channel which is quite a lot for a piece of equipment so small. I currently have mine on top of my Sony NAS-CZ1 which is rated to 8wpc but is bigger. The T24 produces reasonably loud volumes and does not sound bad doing it. Honestly for the price/size it is quite impressive. I've had my iPod hooked up to my $700 Dared Mp-7 vacuum tube amp with $600 B&W speakers before and for the convenience sake the T24 provided about the same volume (the Dared tube amp is rated to only about 7wpc), just lacking a bit on the upper and lower ends. Since the iPod is limited in what it can reproduce sonically I consider this a pretty darn good performance.

I prefer my music to sound good, I can live without some of the features if the T24 can can satisfy musically. In my estimate it did a darn good job and certainly is one of the better sounding docks I've heard for an iPod.