Equalizer Settings

[kpdesigns]

Does anyone set their ipod Equalizer setting to anything in particular to get the best output from their ifi?

Thanks for the help.

[SouthernGothic]

My personal preference is to turn the equalizer off completely and let the Ifi run as it may when listening. For my tastes, it seems to give a more "honest " sound or maybe more faithful to the recording itself. As a disclaimer though, people will all have their own preferences in how they listen to their varied styles of music. I found my preference by running each of the equalizer settings until I found what pleased my ear. Explore and have fun with it.

[Jay481985]

Whatever pleases the ear that does not make your ears cringe or make you feel tired after a few minutes. Yes those overly bright and bass heavy eq sound good for a few minutes but then you feel tired and want to shut the music off is a good sign that it is overly bright. I second just keeping it off

[Larry1]

What always attracted me to listening to the Klipsch iFi speaker system was the fact that you didn't need to utilize any EQ to get audio you could listen to for hours on end. My vote is also biased to using no EQ.

[Andy W]

Perhaps one of the best things to try is ripping a familiar well recorded song at a few different bitrates and doing a listening test. One of the first things that gave us headaches in the voicing of the PMU 2.0 was bad MP3 rips, and we learned our lesson. All of the critical music for our listening evaluations is done with uncompress cuts (1411kbps). A bad rip will defy getting any EQ/voicing to sound right. We have listened to these cuts hundreds if not thousands of times and we expect them to sound a certain way. (Ask Amy what she thinks about when she hears certain songs).

I find 196kbps the lowest tolerable bitrate for non-critical music, which you can't even get from iTunes, GRRRR. MusicGiants has WMA lossless downloads, but I don't think WMA will play on iPods. I'm not worried about storage space, that why God invented big hard drives.

If the music industry would allow it, I would pay $1.00 - $2.00, on a per song basis, for uncompressed singles. This is for music that I want, but would never buy the whole album. If they're worried about pirating, they shouldn't. People who want to pirate will do it anyway. Likewise, I won't pay $0.99 or even $0.09 for a low-rez rip. If they're worried about not making enough money I would even pay for 10 or 20 songs at a time, so it's like I bought an album anyway. Sorry, I digress, this belongs in OT.

[Jay481985]

196 you mean 192?

Also wma will not play on ipods as Apple did not want to pay royalties and its apple. Also from listening on the computer try different coded like mad for winamp and a few other music players. Like night and day.

What does amy think about certain songs?

[wdrazek]

I find 192 in AAC to be OK but like 320 a bit better. If my Ipod could hold it, I'd have ripped everything in lossless. Higher resolution is something a lot of us would pay for if it was available. I'm surprised it hasn't been offered as a higher cost option.

[Larry1]

I find 196kbps the lowest tolerable

bitrate for non-critical music, which you can't even get from iTunes,

GRRRR. MusicGiants has WMA lossless downloads, but I don't think WMA

will play on iPods. I'm not worried about storage space, that why God

invented big hard drives.

If the music industry would allow it,

I would pay $1.00 - $2.00, on a per song basis, for uncompressed

singles.

Right, iTunes is a rip-off when you consider the lower bit-rate downloads.

I find 192 in AAC to be OK but like 320 a bit better. If my Ipod could hold it, I'd have ripped everything in lossless. Higher resolution is something a lot of us would pay for if it was available. I'm surprised it hasn't been offered as a higher cost option.

Precisely why I don't buy any iTune downloads, just CD's and then import the music using AAC at 320 kbps.

I rather surprised more people don't complain to Apple about this, but the problem is Steve Jobs doesn't appear to have good hearing anymore, especially after declaring the iPod Hi-FI to have high-fidelity sound!

[Andy W]

196 you mean 192?

Uhhh, yeah. [] 192 is OK for "background" music, and like wdrazek, 320 is generally what I use when I want to compress. The difference between Apple Lossless and uncompressed isn't worth the difference to me so if it's critical is goes in at 1411kbps.

What does amy think about certain songs?

LOL. Uh, Amy you want to take that one?

Precisely why I don't buy any iTune downloads, just CD's and then import the music using AAC at 320 kbps.

What do you do when you only want one or two songs off the whole album? To me it's not worth $15.

[Larry1]

Precisely why I don't buy any iTune downloads, just CD's and then import the music using AAC at 320 kbps.

What do you do when you only want one or two songs off the whole album? To me it's not worth $15.

It really depends on the music genre and artist for me. I usually preview all the CD track selections to see if it is worth purchasing and then only buy it on the release week so its usually heavily discounted at the brick and mortar stores for say $8.99 or $9.99. Sometimes the artist has released it as part of a collection which makes the decision easier. IMHO a artist should always release a CD that has several good songs, not one or two, so the fan never has to ponder a decision like you are suggesting.

[Andy W]

Haha! It's been more than 15 years since I bought an album the same week it was released. Probably because there have been so few good artists/songs from the '90's and '00's. My wife has bought a few "Country" CD's, but I think they ran out of "Cliches for Song Titles" last year. LOL.

[Larry1]

Hmmmmm [] You must be pretty particular if so few artists/songs from '90's and '00's appealed to you! Surely some types of music genres are worthy of buying a album on occassion? (Jazz comes to mind)

[Andy W]

Sure, but I can't think of a single 90's rock band/artist that I would pay money for.

Particular? Not really, I like good music from most all genres. But right now there is a severe lack of good music, IMO.

Every once in a while I'll pick up a "greatest hits" album. The latest couple were Fleetwood Mac and The Who. For Jazz, I bought a couple Bela Fleck CDs, a Diana Krall, and Chris Botti within recent memory. The problem I have with most modern Jazz is that it is tooooo repetitive.

Since working here though, music listening hasn't been the hobby it once was. Probably the next several CDs will come from the baroque period; that stuff is 3-400 years old! Bach, Handel, Vivaldi -- I love that stuff. I have a smattering of baroque and classical, but I need more. The other day I heard Paul Galbraith on the radio playing Bach on a 8 string guitar which I must have.