Why does my ipod music sound clashy?

Question

Just bought myself an ipod nano. This is the first mp3 player I've bought, previously used a discman & minidisc. Anyway, I'm wondering why music on this cutting edge technology (compressed at 320kbs & costing in excess of £120) sounds like a dying cat screeching through a tin can?

Insight please?

Answer 1

It's the headphones, my ipod and iphone are both AMAZING! lol  

Answer 2

are you sure its not your headphones? but either way, if its new, you can get a new one cuz whenever you buy and ipod, you get a 1 year insurance plant that comes with it.

Answer 3

Welcome to the squeaky, squawky world of the MP3!

Of all the music formats available in the last 50 years, the mp3 has far and away the worst sound quality (even worse than audio cassette).

MP3 is what's known as a 'lossy' data-compression technique (so-called because a certain amount of the original data is removed and lost forever during compression).  Consequently it is inevitable that an MP3 is never going to sound quite as good as the PCM source from which it was created.  There is no other way of achieving the compression.

You obviously enjoy your music.  To you, the quality is more important than getting a million songs on your MP3 player?

Me too!  Which is why I will never own an iPod or MP3 player.  I'll stick to the music formats that actually play music as it should be heard.

(Take a look at the graphs in the first link below, to see just how much of your music is destroyed when using MP3)