I've been called an "audio witch doctor" before, which can be interpreted as another way of saying SQ (sound quality) is of some significance to me. I find it strange that you don't often hear people talking about SQ in mp3/mp4 players, and certainly not as much as they ought to, by me. Very little about it, if anything, gets accorded in reviews. For, I would guesstimate, slightly more than 99% of the mp3/mp4 buying public, improving your sound means getting better headphones. For me, there's a few hundred other ways. I will endeavour to describe one of them in this post, for those who can appreciate their SQ. You just need a freezer, and a right good pair of music-lovin' ears.
The first thing you should do before any "tweaking" takes place, is listen to a good song on the player, to provide a reference for changes. Otherwise, you might have an even tougher time determining if anything improved for you.
1. Toss your player in the coldest part of your freezer (if you can turn up the cold, even better). While you're at it, throw your headphones in there, what the hey! It can only improve things. Don't worry about quiching your player. I've frozen tube amps, cd players, dvd players, speaker drivers, wire, watches, and all of my mp4 and mp3 players, never had a problem. Leave it in the freezer overnight, 12hrs min.
2. Take it out of the freezer and put it in the fridge for a few hours to get to fridge temp. Then immediately transfer it to the coldest part of your house, where you will wrap it up in thick blankets or something to prevent a quick thaw. The key to this trick is -slow-thawing-, the slower the device thaws, the better this will work. (If you can manage to transfer it to an ice or ice-pak filled cooler chest, even better!).
3. Once the MP4 player has thawed totally to room temp, put it back in the freezer and repeat the process a second time! (Second time is always better. Third time? Not sure, maybe!). The whole shebang should take a couple of days.
Now you listen again to the reference song you listened to before to determine if any changes have taken place. For most people, the difference will probably not knock you out at first, but (to me), its an important one. Speaking for myself, I had no problem hearing a change in my (MyMusix) mp3 player and my mp4 1st gen Nano clone. I was particularly pleased about the MyMusix, because I found the sound of the mp3 player boring and colorless before the process, and tonal hues were more vibrant and well defined after the process. The sound of my Chipod was always better than the mp3 player, but after listening to the last song that I listened to on the Chipod (before the big freeze), which happened to be Elton John's "Tiny Dancer", I had trouble putting the player down! Its nothing about bass/mids/highs or lows, or any of that nonsense. To put it succinctly, it was simply more musical.
Video improves as well, although my eye is not attuned so much to that, so the improvements are there (in the form of >slightly< sharper constrast and colors), but less discernible. Its more discernible on video dialogue, because I heard more clarity from the voices on my chipod, while watching The Simpsons. (The blocky low resolution of the AMV-converted image, of course, did not change!).
For the adventurous only. As always, YMMV.
ADDENDUM (SQ notes): I just got through listening to my white 1st gen Nano clone that also went thru the "operation big freeze" process (the black one is the one I listend to Elton John on). I was listening to the Stones on the white one, except not through my usual phones, the Koss Sportapros, but on the cheapa** .50 cent 10th rate Apple clony earbuds that actually come with the player. I've only listened to these phones once, cos once was enough. They are easily the worst earphones I have ever heard! Everything sounds like you're in a bathroom, and drowning in the bathtub. Plus the separation is so bad, its very nearly like listening to MONO. And yet... the musical quality blew me away!
I was listening to "Gimme Shelter", which admittedly is one of my favorite Stones songs but still, I couldn't put it down. I was grooving with the music just like those silhouettes you see on the Apple iPod billboards. I remember listening to Gimme Shelter on my Koss Sportapros in the player's pre-frozen state, and I certainly enjoyed it and recall grooving to it as well, but the experience simply wasn't nearly as intense as post-freeze with the Apple-clone buds.
So that was an interesting experiment for me. It showed me that it doesn't matter in the end, how lo-fi your headphones are. Because the "soul" of the music can still come through, the brain can still pick up on that, through the grunge and in-the-toilet sound character of the earbuds, if the player is capable of transmitting that. To put it another way, I think in a comparison I would favour this (post-frozen) player with the .50 Apple fake earbuds than another player that didn't have these qualities, but had a pair of Grado SR-80's attached to it.
How to improve your Chipod audio/video quality for free $
