The iPod is an amazing piece of high-fidelity. However there are many things you can do to maximise your audio experience. Candy Robinson weighs in on how to fully utilise sound capability from your investment in that amazing piece of technology called your iPod.
The things that you can do to maximise the sound quality and output from your iPod can be broken into 5 categories:
Earphone enhancements/upgrades
Import settings
iPod Soundcheck settings
iPod equaliser Settings
Advanced Encoding for importing
1. Earphone enhancements
You can make a huge difference to your listening experience by upgrading your earphones. The ones that come with your iPod are "good" for the mass market but you could go a long way by upgrading them. The standard iPod earphones are more "on ear" design as opposed to "in-ear" design. Many people complain they are too big for their ears, or fall out easily (especially if used for jogging etc.) But the main problem is that they "leak sound" as they are "on" your ear as opposed to "in" it.
In-ear earphones go deeper into your ear and don't fall out and make a huge difference to sound since they are in your ear canal. They also isolate you from outside ambient noise.Try and use your standard earphones and see if you can hear music with the iPod at the lowest volume level. You wont hear anything, but with in-ear earphones you will hear something playing at the lowest volume setting!
The best bang for your buck is to spend R100 on a set of in-ear conversions for your existing earphones. My personal favourite are the Lajo iBuds or Griffin Earjams. Next to a protective cover for your iPod this should be the second most important thing you ever buy for your iPod.
We also have standard iPod black and white in-ear earphones that are very popular on our site for around R210. Alternatively you can try a set of Griffin TuneBuds. For many the KOSS earphones are the best for invoking deeper, richer bass response. The Sennheiser CX300's are the next level up and have quality brand, build and sound. For the enthusiasts choice we have the hand-made Etymotics for around R900. Many people say once you have heard a pair of Etymotics you will never go back to anything else...I made the mistake of trying a pair and landed up parting with hard earned rands...
2. Import Settings
The quality of your MP3/AAC files produced during the music import process to iTunes makes a huge difference to audio quality. Higher compression yields smaller music files which means you can cram more songs onto your iPod, but sound quality will degrade.
iTunes and the iPod support four audio formats -- AIFF, WAV, MP3, and AAC. AIFF and WAV files are uncompressed and consume about 10MB of hard- drive space for each minute of stereo audio. MP3 files are compressed (stripped of audio data considered to be less detectable to the human ear). With iTunes 4, Apple added a new audio-compression format -- Dolby Laboratories' Advanced Audio Coding (AAC).
By default, iTunes rips CD audio files at 128 Kbps to about 7 percent of the original file size. But if you're willing to trade hard-drive space for better sound quality, you may want to change iTunes' default import settings. To do so, select Preferences from the iTunes EDIT menu and click on the Advanced tab and then the Importing tab. Selecting AIFF Encoder or WAV Encoder from the Import Using pop-up menu provides you with full-quality, uncompressed music tracks -- useful for purists -- but these files will take up a load of space on your Mac or iPod. A better compromise is to leave AAC Encoder selected and bump up the resolution. To do this, select Custom from the Setting pop-up menu beneath AAC Encoder, and choose a higher bit rate from the Stereo Bit Rate pop-up menu.
We have found the best practicle import setting to be AAC encoding at 160 to 192 Kbps although the defualt 128 is fine for most users. If youre going to be playing back your music through high end HiFi systems etc. then go for 192Kbps.
3. Sound Check settings
Because audio CDs are mastered differently, you may notice discrepancies in volume between songs on different albums.
Sound Check is a feature introduced in iTunes 3 onwards and iPod Software 1.2 Updater that attempts to balance the volume of the music in iTunes and on your iPod. The idea is that if you play a Chopin Nocturne and Zep’s “Dazed and Confused” in succession, you shouldn’t have to fiddle with the volume as both tracks will be at approximately the same volume. To keep tracks from distorting, Sound Check imposes a limiter when they near saturation. That’s the theory, anyway. In reality, Sound Check balances volume on a per-track basis, which results in the quiet tracks on an album being approximately the same volume as the louder tracks.
To put Sound Check to use, simply open iTunes’ Preferences window, click the Audio tab, and enable the Sound Check option. When you switch on Sound Check, it analyzes your music library and then adjusts volumes accordingly. When you add new tracks to the library, they’re evaluated and adjusted in the background.
If you disable the Sound Check option, iTunes ignores the volume adjustments imposed by Sound Check (Sound Check information isn’t deleted, however, so if you switch Sound Check back on iTunes shouldn’t reevaluate the tracks).
As for the iPod, if you turn Sound Check on in the Settings screen, the iPod will play your tracks with the volume adjustments imposed by Sound Check in iTunes. Turn Sound Check off on the iPod, and the iPod will ignore the Sound Check settings and play the tracks at their original volume.
4. Equaliser Settings
The iPod has a built in equaliser that can be used to add more or less bass or treble and sound better for certain types of music. This can be very useful for tweaking the desired sound from your earphones or speaker system.The iPod's equalizer has the same equalizer presets as iTunes (except Loudness) and this allows a high level of integration between iPod and iTunes.
After you encode or "rip" a song using iTunes, you can assign that song one of 22 equalizer presets. Once you assign a preset to a song, iTunes will use it each time you play the song. When you copy the song from your computer to iPod, the equalizer preset you chose in iTunes is also copied, and iPod will play the song with the same preset.
Turn EQ off if you don’t use it. Equalizer is a feature that uses your iPod battery more quickly. If you don’t use EQ, your iPod will play tunes longer.
5. Advanced Encoding
For enthusiasts there is the option of advanced encoding when you import your songs into iTunes. Brian Kuzmanoski from the www.dapreview.net site provides a detailed but easy tutorial as to how you can accomplish this over here.