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I just bought my first MP3 player this weekend - a 2G iPod Nano on sale at Target for a whopping $3.00 off. It has about 20 different EQ presets. Unfortunately, there is not yet a firmware upgrade that will give you 5 or more virtual sliders. With the EQ off it seems just a little bass shy, but the bass booster preset seems overkill. I have tried a few and not yet found one I am in love with. What EQ setting do you use on your iPod?

P.S. Aftermarket headphones or headphone amps are not an option - I have no idea how my wife even let me get away with buying (charging) the iPod itself, but she did. I guess she knows what is in store for me in a few weeks when #3 pops out.

P.P.S. Zune has now entered the slang lexicon as a synonym for "poser," "weak imitation", or "wannabe."

I just entered the iPod world myself (2 GB nano as well), and I've found that the different eq settings all sound about the same on the earbuds. It's very strange...

On the other hand, the earbuds themselves actually sound pretty good.

I bought some $15 Sony ear buds because the apple ones always fall out at the gym. They made an amazing difference. Maybe you could let the dog chew up your ear buds, so you can replace them! (that's what happened to mine)

the elephant wrote:I use the Acoustic setting. Mine is old, so this might not be a current option.

I just updated the firmware to the newest version and they still have the Acoustic setting. It is on my short-list.

Doug@GT wrote:I just entered the iPod world myself (2 GB nano as well), and I've found that the different eq settings all sound about the same on the earbuds. It's very strange...

Some of the settings do sound very similar, but there is a discernable difference. A few of the settings are just outright obnoxious and probably aren't used by anyone sane over 16.

Flat, or "Off", for me.

What I would really like to do is transfer the custom EQ curves I've made in iTunes, mainly the ones that I've specifically set for different earphones.

What I did was make a short track in Audacity that had a second's worth of sine wave for each of the frequencies labeled on iTunes's EQ sliders. I played it iTunes in Repeat mode, over and over, cutting a frequency's slider when I felt its note was too bright.

I did it with the iBook's own speakers, the Apple earbuds, some Sony earphones, and the home theater setup (streaming music via AirPort Express). After a few minutes of "boooo-ooeee-aaaah-eeee-EEEE-ssss", each set of speakers/headphones ended up with a unique EQ curve where they sounded the best. Stereo imaging and tonal balance improved whenever I chose my new EQ curve appropriate for the speakers I was using.

But, I can only use them while listening on the computer, and never on an iPod. I've tried everything I could think of, such as assigning an EQ curve to each song (also easy to do for the whole library), but custom EQ settings don't get ported over.

So, I listen to the iPod with the EQ turned off. It interferes the least with the original recording's balance. If I were to use an included EQ while listening through Apple's earbuds, it would be "treble reducer", which cuts the earbuds' 4KHz and 8KHz peaks that I massaged out with my own setting on the computer.

BTW -- always better to cut than boost; helps minimize distortion.

"Off" for me...

...sounds fine, and the EQ drains the battery faster.

BUMP, any more input?