iPod popping? HAHA

yep...

Personally I didnt even notice it myself until someone started to complain about it.
Not a big deal IMHO.

People are up in arms about it. I too never noticed it until I read it here...

'Course I go back to the vinyl days...so go figure.

Adam

Maybe it's a little more noticable with higher end headphones (and audiophiles who tend to buy such headphones tend to be a lot more picky about sound quality/details -- and perhaps rightfully so ;) )?

Anyhow, even if slightly annoying to some, I think it would be silly to postpone a purchase until Apple fixes this, as I believe it's just a matter of a firmware update to better control the CODEC chip they are using (Woflson WM8731). Here is a interesting description from Wolfson's data sheet (http://www.wolfsonmicro.com/download.asp/did.50/WM8731_WM8731L.pdf)
Special techniques allow the audio to be muted and the device safely placed into standby, sections, of the device powered off and volume levels adjusted without any audible clicks, pops or zipper noises. Therefore standby and power off modes mabe used dynamically under software control whenever recording or playing is not required As for being some hardware related problem that can't easily be fixed (i.e. electrical interference on the circuit board), without a hardware change I really doubt this would be the case as:
- it seems to only happen between tracks
- while HD activity could be a source of interference, the HD does not necessarily whirl for each track (nor would it necessarily start or stop precisely between a track while pre-fetching tracks).
- the DAC/CODEC is integrated with the headphone output driver (in the WM8731) so there should not be any pre-amp stage that can pickup any electrical interference

I have some very well known headphones (Sony MDR-D66SL...just go to head-fi.org and see what they think about them) and I hear the pop but it sounds to me like the song is just ending. I though it was in the middle of changing tracks and it was very loud...this noise is nothing...I kind of like it too since I know when the song is over.

The poping noise is louder somtimes, and its more noticible when you are listening to quiet tracks. Its extremely annoying when you notice it. Just because you're not bothered by the noise, don't make the same assumption about everybody else.