How to improve your Chipod audio/video quality for free $

[lattesurf]

After i repeated the freezing and de-frosting process twice as outline by michiganjfrog in his initial post, i left the player with the casing opened to air-dry any remaining moisture for 1 day before closing it to continue with my tests.

Surprise Surprise.. i've noticed something VERY different with the after-freezing process.

As soon as i finish my tests, i'll post my findings here. Somehow this freezing mambo-jumbo did something noticeably different to the player.

[nidebaba]

interesting...can't wait for the test results

[monstertunes]

How does taping the words on the player help? I must have missed something.

[michiganjfrog]

That's true.

[lattesurf]

After a very busy week, i've finally had some time to sit down and compare the Before and After recordings of the songs in my clone.

Here are my settings used for the recordings:
Equaliser mode: Natural
Volume: Maximum (level 31)
Connection: 2.5mm to 3.5mm adaptor, attached to Line out audio cable

First major difference i've heard would be the disappearance of Distortions. Some members have reported that they hear this soft buzzing sound when no music is playing, you might need to crank up the volume on your player to be able to hear that. Well, my player does that, and the Before clip recorded them down.
But the After clip, surprise.. The distortions are not there. Well, maybe they are present, but not audible at all. The 3 sample songs are located below, and all 3 exhibits the buzzing sound in the first few seconds. If you might ask, i started recording first before i clicked on the Play button.
Oh yes, you need earphones to be able to hear the distortions. You can't really hear them on speakers unless you are blasting the volume high enough.

Next difference i've noticed (and this was after repeated hearings of the music), would be the Faster response of the audio driver. Faster in a way i would describe it, that the sudden soft to loud transition was much better in the After, rather than the Before. The Before clip had this slight slur or draggy response, whilst the After clip had an instantaneous response.
I loaded both Before & After clips into an audio mixer to view the audio waveforms. And indeed the After clip did show cleaner step responses. Perhaps Clip 2 below would demonstrate this improvement. The other clip 1 & clip 3 are kinda "noisy" music..

Here are my Before and After recorded clips:
Clip 1 Before & After.
Clip 2 Before & After.
Clip 3 Before & After.

[michiganjfrog]

Lattesurf,

Wow, that was interesting. I just finished listening to your samples, thanks for posting them. I could certainly hear the familiar (to me) effect of the freeze technique, between the before/after versions; less distortion. I've heard about the background noise problem some have had, and its especially interesting to hear that you observed this background distortion had disappeared after the freezing. As the player exhibits less distortion post-freeze when playing music, I suppose its understandable it would do so with the music stopped as well. Most amazing, your screen didn't crack and your fridge didn't blow up, as some people might have feared... I'd like to post test #2 on my new site, so others can have an idea of the effect before investing 2 days into it, can I do that?

[lattesurf]

michiganjfrog , would be waiting for your next tweak guide..

And to those worried it would crack the screen, it does not. Unless after freezing for 12hours, you immediately take it out and drop it into a bowl of hot water. Yeah, that will crack the screen definitely.

For this guide, i'll say it is 99% safe for your player. 1% is left for those who actually drop their players into the hot water directly after freezing.
To be absolutely safe, you could always remove the battery, or else just switch the On/Off button to the off position. This way the battery and player are electrically isolated.
Also, i'll recommend leaving the casing open and air-drying it for at least a day after the final freezing process, this is to remove any excess moisture that might short-circuit your player.

[michiganjfrog]

Originally Posted by lattesurf";p=&quot

michiganjfrog , would be waiting for your next tweak guide..

If you're referring to mp4 tweaks, I already gave Clackers the next one. Doesn't take 2 days to do, and there's a lot less chance of the screen cracking.

ALL:

Inspired by Lattesurf's idea of posting recordings of an experiment, I decided to do something similar. For those who are curious about these things, I am making available two test files, for your listening pleasure and scientific curiousity. The experiment is just to see if you can hear differences between the two files, or if they sound exactly the same to you. I'm not saying there should be differences or there shouldn't.

I'm also not saying what I did (or didn't do) to produce (or not produce) differences between the two. (Or not). I will only say it has nothing to do with the freeze effect. Once I get some feedback on whether people can (or cant) hear differences between the two tracks, I will explain what I did (or didn't do) with each version (which I named after the colors BLACK and WHITE).

Sorry, I didn't think to cut the mp3's down, so I'd say this is for hi-speed customers only, cos each file is 8MB, so its a 16MB total download!

BLACK:

http://www.savefile.com/files/597074

WHITE:

http://www.savefile.com/files/597155

[Pocket_Nano]

Has anybody just frozen their player only?. Or does everyone through the headphones in there also when freezing their players. I just want to experiment something here to see if it's not just something to do with freezing your headphones.

I know you said it will make both sound better. But if freezing just the headphones works well then there is no chance of harming your player if you dont need to freeze it. So everybody please post rather you have frozen both or just the player.

Then we will see what is most likely working better. I might even take 2 of my chipods and just freeze 1 of them and 1 pair of headphones but plug the frozen headphones into the unfroze player and the unfroze headphones into the frozen player. Then see which sounds better. By the way we are all crazy!. :lol:

[lattesurf]

michiganjfrog , will try out the taping of those printed words. Though i can't figure out scientifically how it would even help improve the quality.

As for the Black & White tracks, i can't really hear a difference. At the first moment, Black seems to be better, but the next minute they sound the same. So i'll say they are the same tracks, and are neither before nor after recordings.

Pocket_Nano , i just froze my player, without the earphones. But with the samples i've posted, i'm pretty sure the freezing of the player would do a better job, for my player that is.