IPod Nano - weird music quality - please help!

[Jo3363]

Hi, my long awaited Christmas pressie and the music sounds.... rubbish! Have downloaded my ITunes library and on ITunes it sounds absolutely fine. However, on my brand new IPod Nano it sounds dreadful - like the music is at the front and the vocals are at the back (I'm sure there's a techy term for it but I don't know it!).

Happening to MP3s from ITunes as well as songs I downloaded from the ITunes store just yesterday.

Have I done something completely wrong????

Please help, this is spoiling my Christmas Joy!!

Thanks very much

Jo

[Jo3363]

If anyone else is having similar probs, see this link

http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=780289&tstart=225

In ITunes I had to play around in preferences (advanced, then "importing") and set the "import using" to AAC. I am NOT techy, just a bird with new IPod so if this is all wrong then I'm v. sorry but it worked for me - I deleted all from my IPod then changed the preferences in ITunes and reimported all the songs to my IPod and I now sit here listening to music of perfect quality wearing a big fat Christmasey smile on my face!

Good luck chaps!

Jo

[bwh79]

What was it importing as before? As a default, if you don't mess with anything, iTunes should encode to Apple's "recommended" (recommended to actually hit their advertised song count, not recommended for best sound quality) 128kb/s AAC. That's what I still use for ripping my CDs and it sounds just fine. Keep in mind that "import using" only affects tracks that you rip from CDs, not the other files already in your library. Changing that setting and then reloading your iPod with the same tracks (which is what it sounds like you did) won't do anything to the files you already have, you actually have to delete the files and reimport them from CDs for it to save them as a different format.

Files downloaded from the iTunes Store are already in AAC format, and converting your old MP3's to AAC (which is what the person in the article you referenced was recommending) won't make them sound any better. In fact, it might make them lose sound quality because they're being converted from one format into another. That thread did say something about WAV files, which are huge and may or may not cause problems with your iPod (all my music is compressed). If you like, you can convert your WAVs to AAC, but I wouldnt' recommend converting your MP3s.