Make my Nokia sing like my Apple...
April 21, 2009 10:31 AM   Subscribe

Migrating from an iPod to a cellphone... was the awesome surgically removed though?

I recently purchased a new Nokia 3600. There's nothing terribly different between it and other non-Symbian not-quite N-series Nokia phones. As my iPod died at the same time as me buying this phone, I've decided to buy a 16gb micro-SD card and use it as my new music player.

The only problem I've found is the headphone-jack sound quality is terrible with some music. It sounds like somebody has neutered all the bass. It sounds the opposite of what I understand the good effects of audio compression to sound like, with all the awesome and power removed. It's not just when I play it off it's tiny speakers, it's when I use the OEM headphones, or a 2.5-to-3.5mm adapter and run it to a pair of good speakers or headphones. If I play something like Neutral Milk Hotel, it sounds fine. If I play something like Tool, it sounds like a 32kbs RealAudio file played over an analog phone line. Changing the EQ doesn't help. The sound starts to bleed at the "high" volume range.

My speculation is that it's the Nokia media software being set to make things sound good on the built-in speakers, but then not adjusting for what they assume will be low-quality OEM earbuds. I haven't successfully been able to use non-OEM software and I'm very open to recommendations.

So, my question for the hive mind, is this a software problem that can be overcome or a hardware issue? Could it be related to fidelity issues of it being a 2.5mm jack instead of 3.5mm? How do I make it sing like my iPod?
posted by trinarian to Technology (2 answers total)
 
Totally pulling this out of thin air here, but is there a difference in encoding between the tracks that sound good and the ones that don't? If there's a format or sampling rate issue which is affecting things (maybe your phone doesn't have the processing umph to play high-rate tracks? or you have a mix of file formats and one of them is not native to your phone and it's having to convert on the fly?), then perhaps reripping the songs will help.
posted by hippybear at 11:02 AM on April 21, 2009


Different chips decode encoded audio differently. I would do some research on your phone and see what's inside.
posted by jellywerker at 1:15 PM on April 21, 2009


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