iPhone 3GS sound quality

[JCW]

I'm no audiophile, but what has put me off in the past is the 'blandness' of MP3 players and now having finally taken the plunge and bought an iPhone I've noticed that things haven't improved.

Playing the same track on iTunes compared to Windows Media Player on my laptop brings a noticeable difference, with the iTunes version lacking warmth and sounding like its missing layers of the music. Is there anything that I can do to improve the sound as the portability is useful, but plugging it into the car sound system is like listening to a cheap tranny?

Thanks.

[stevoknevo]

All I can suggest is that you rip your tracks at the highest rate possible. Maybe mess about with eq settings on the ipod?

[WeirdNeville]

Two things to address:
1) The bitrate of your music. Ensure that when you rip your own albums it's set to at least 192Kb/s. Be aware that much of the online music is at 128Kb/s. Have a play around with codecs and bit rates and see what you can tell the difference between, being as it's your opinions that matter. You'll then get the size/quality tradoff right for yourself.

2) Headphones. THe standard iPod/iPhone headphones suck and always have done. I can recommend the Sennheiser CX-300's, they can be got for around £15 and are a massive improvement over the standard items. They give my Ultimate Ears Super-Fi 5's a run for their money.

IMO the iPhone is a perfectly acceptable portable MP3 player, easily as good as an iPod SQ wise. Most compact players are limited by low amp output and lossy formats, you have to play around with them to get ther best out of them, and most importantly get hold of some good headphones.

Edit: I noted that you said "plugging it into the car" - how are you achieving this?
My Ipod/Iphone sounds pretty great through my car stereo, but being as the audio equipment in the car is worth more than the car itself, it bloody well should do!

Edited by WeirdNeville on Monday 12th October 01:29

[PJR]

iPhones and iPods sound perfectly good for what they are

As for iTunes not apparently sounding so good (I take it you mean on your computer, rather than iPhone now).. Its down to 2 things.. Either the quality/type of file used. IE, if its a 128k MP3, then its going to sound crap played via any software.
But secondly, a bunch of cruddy effects settings are usually on by default, and they do royally screw with audio fidelity. Turn off "Sound check" and "Sound enhancer" I think you'll find that helps no end

P,

[XJSJohn]

WeirdNeville said:

2) Headphones. THe standard iPod/iPhone headphones suck and always have done. I can recommend the Sennheiser CX-300's, they can be got for around £15 and are a massive improvement over the standard items. They give my Ultimate Ears Super-Fi 5's a run for their money.

Ipod headphones are not particularly stunning devices.

I have a 3gS too and am using my old Sure EC3's or a good quality jack from the back of my car sterio (antique blaupunkt Montreal)yes, sorry spelling polis. On headphones it sounds prety good, in the car its a bit hard to tell over the engine noise

Will say though that i have noticed that in the car it seems to struggle to push sufficient volume compaired to my older IPods, but thats probably my old unamp'ed system!

[willd58]

You can rip or convert CD's/FLAC files to apple lossless codec.

[JCW]

Some interesting stuff, so thanks. I've deleted all the tracks and re-ripped them on to iTunes so I'll repeat the process on the iPhone and see what happens.