I recently stuck a new battery in my 2nd gen iPod to get it working again, and inherited my Dad's 5th gen U2 iPod. They both have the same issue, distortion (clipping?) on certain tracks. The opening minute or so of Cleo Sol's 'Self', in particular, is a torture test for them. The distortion is made worse when any of the EQ settings are applied.
I'm using Apple Music to encode 320Kb/s AAC VBR files to put onto them.
I've not seen a concrete answer as to what causes this, and it appears to be a common issue; I guess it wasn't noticed during the original release of the iPods as everyone used the crappy bundled earphones.
Is it something hardware related with the dac or headphone amp? Or is it more software with the encoding of the files? I've seen some people suggest modern AAC encoding is 'louder' than it was 20 years ago, causing the issue?!
I'm using Apple Music to encode 320Kb/s AAC VBR files to put onto them.
I've not seen a concrete answer as to what causes this, and it appears to be a common issue; I guess it wasn't noticed during the original release of the iPods as everyone used the crappy bundled earphones.
Is it something hardware related with the dac or headphone amp? Or is it more software with the encoding of the files? I've seen some people suggest modern AAC encoding is 'louder' than it was 20 years ago, causing the issue?!
). When directly using earphones, low frequencies were distorted at higher volume levels without applying any EQ. EQ definitely will make things worse. I suppose it's in large parts a problem of the available power. When using an amp (with 3.5mm input) no hearable distortion was present. So, I'd buy a cheap good 3.5mm input portable amp. Zillions of now unused such amps will lay around in drawers all over the world