Sound quality of iPods.

[bhenry]

I have the 30g (I think) video iPod and can't stand to listen to the thing. It sounds absolutely awful.

I just got a new truck (2008 Ford F150) that has an aux input for things like the iPod. My truck has the Audiophile system (factory) in it that actually sounds pretty d##n good. I thought that plugging my iPod into this system might work for road trips but discovered that it still sounds like crap even with a good sound system to back it up.

Do the Klipsch headphones make these things sound good or will nothing help?

[LoudnClear]

The iPod itself is not at all likely what is causing your problem. Instead, you are probably hearing the effects of poor MP3 or AAC sound quality. How did you load the music onto the player, iTunes? Did you buy it or rip it from your own disks? Songs you buy from iTunes will be at 128 kbps, which sounds very bad to me. Some songs are available on iTunes at 256 kbps for added charge. They do sound better. The effect of poor compression gives music a "watery warble" sound, especially affecting cymbal crashes. Is this what yours sounds like?

Try ripping one of your own CDs with iTunes, but first go into the setup/preferences of iTunes and set the Bitrate to 320 kbps. Those files should sound very nearly CD quality. Once you have that figured out and it sounds good, you can experiment by stepping down on the kbps setup parameter and rip another CD and see where you want to balance sound quality vs file size. The higher the quality you rip at, the larger the file size.

[bhenry]

Very good information, thanks! I will try that.

I don't do the iTunes thing, I have tons of CD's so I put those on it. I will look at the settings and correct as needed.

Thanks again.

[InnerTuber]

Couple other thoughts

Depending on the settings you used to originally rip, you may have to re-rip. You can't make a compressed format uncompressed, or correct it. You can delete and start over though.

Here's a few other things to check - goto preferences, advanced, importing I think it is.

You might choose import using apple lossless which is a pretty good choice for quality/space.
Choose setting automatic.
Always keep error correction on for ripping.

If you rip a cd and choose apple lossless, WAV of AIFF, of which the later 2 are uncompressed and sync that to your iPod you should have a pretty good sound. Of course that's subjective.

For playback make sure you iPod doesn't have any strange EQ settings active and I assume your coming out of the headphone jack with a splitter?

If you are still unsatisfied, you might just not like the DAC in the iPod. Some companies are coming out with a bypass and USB out to goto an external DAC, but I bet using all the prior info you a good improvement, especially, if you were using a highly compressed format.

Let us know how it sounds ...

[bhenry]

Thanks for the good info.

To be totally honest, it's my wifes iPod and I hardly use the thing but I had to try it in my truck because I could.

I will try these ideas and hope that it will change my opinon of the iPod.

Thanks again.

[InnerTuber]

We have the 08 Ford too and it sounds pretty good to me. You probably even have a better radio. I'll bet with all these ideas you will be pleasantly suprised. Just remember to re-rip ... sorry for that tho.

[Jay481985]

some car's aux jack in are crappy where my car the jack sometimes does not want to play in stereo

[pretzelb]

You can also look into Exact Audio Copy (EAC) with lame encoding. There are some sites that walk you through the process. You can then record in mp3 format with some pretty decent quality. But going with iTunes lossless first is probably the easiest.

You can also look into getting a bypass for the iPod amp. The place where you charge the iPod can also be used to send the signal to the truck. I think Klipsch even has a docking station iPod player that does this. But for your truck you can find a connector / cable combination that will plug into that slot and then go into your aux in. The advantage is you bypass the iPod amp (which many don't like) and you get a much stronger signal. The downside is that these cables can be insanely expensive.

[TheEAR]

First ...The iPod is not at fault.Like others have pointed the resolution of the encoding is at fault.

Second...I doubt very much(read I am sure)the so called audiophile car factory system is...(I will not even use words,too strong)compared to a dedicated high-end home system.

I use the iPod third generation 40GB ,Creative ZenXtra 40GB and now the Arcos 605WiFi 160GB ...sound quality is more than satisfactory...even for my discriminating taste.[] You ditch the garbage headphones they come with and get some quality Klipsch Image series ...voila.

[kaiser SET say]

Your iPod can sound great if you do 2 things:

1.) RIP all your music in Apple Lossless CODEC

2.) Make sure that the iPod EQ is set to off, this one item alone has turned more people off to the iPod than any other thing I would say because these EQ filters can literally destroy a decently ripped file[]

[InnerTuber]

BHenry - any update on reults? I'm curious.

Thanks

[bhenry]

EAR, you are correct- the sound system is not as good as my home system, although it really does sound good for a factory sound system. It is actually called "Audiophile Sound System" when you check the box at the time of ordering the new truck. That's what they call it, not me.

Thanks for getting your digs in though!! (read I am joking!)

No update on the Ipood. I just don't like it and I have no need for it. I would much rather enjoy REAL sound from a REAL audio system than stuff those uncomfortable little pieces of crap in my ears.

Thank you for asking, though.

[kaiser SET say]

Me too bhenry but it would be pretty impossible to haul my whole rig to the Doctors waiting room for that 2 hour wait! Done right iPod can be a fine portable audio solution. I have 2740 .wav files coverted to Apple lossless on my iPod and it sound very good, not as good as our home rigs but with my set up it's a far cry from bone stock MP3 (128Bit) loaded iPod/iBuds[]