MP3 players forum: Who HATES iPod's sound quality?

That's certainly a good-looking player with some nice features. OGG support is a major plus, I too am a big fan of that compression format. The fact that it gets picked up as an external drive is also great, as a major downfall of many good portable hardware is a reliance on obscure proprietary home software.

The included FM tuner, built-in mic and FM recording capability, as well as car power adapter are also all nice additions. I always wondered why something as simple and non-space-hogging as an FM tuner wasn't more standard for portable media devices. It even includes an FM transmitter built-in, for playing through a car's stereo system -- wow. That blew me away. Most companies don't include all of these features because they want you to buy them separately as accessories.

Seems like they really made something that finally speaks to what people want, and what makes sense to include. The extensive features don't seem to have even taken much of a toll on batter life (claimed, at least), or even on the price, which is actually lower than iPod's. Incredeible. I'm definitely going to look into this more, and hopefully it will turn out to be as good as it sounds.

Thanks so much! I wonder why I've never heard of this one before...

I've read some reviews, and those are the two main issues that are mentioned, the size/weight and battery life while using the transmitter. The transmitter/battery issue doesn't concern me because it comes with the car power adapter. When will I use the transmitter other than in my car?

That was actually one of the main ideas of a complaint I submitted to CNet regarding their review of the Neuros. It seems the company addressed the battery drain issue by including the car power adapter, and CNet failed to mention that.

I'm also very disheartened by reviewers' (all reviewers, not just CNet) disregard for the value of quality sound. They rave about the iPod so much without even comparing its sound to that of other MP3 players. The review for the Neuros even says that it has "excellent" sound, but that didn't seem to be much of a factor in their conclusion. If they did compare, perhaps iPods wouldn't be reviewed quite as glowingly. People have to start remembering that these devices are also meant to play music, not just to adorn the body of the owner.

So, that leaves the looks/size/weight issue. I'm still undecided as to whether or not that aspect would disuade me from the Neuros. I need to see it for myself and feel the weight. From the measurements and weight quoted by the company it really doesn't seem all that large, but it's hard to tell just from the numbers.

So I'll try to find a store that carries them and has a floor display. That might be difficult to find, but if I do, I'll let you know what happens.

Thanks for your help so far

You would say . . .

None of the reviews actually go into depth on audio quality, so, I believe that is a moot point . . .

According to reviews, the Creative Zen does have exceptional sound. The signal-to-noise ratio is apparently 97dB. In the world of hard-drive MP3 players that is a pretty incredible achievment.

I would disagree if you said that Creative's sound card expertise is the reason for the great sound quality ratings of the Zen. The fact is, when it comes to sound quality, any current brand-name $20 PC sound card will give you perfect or near-perfect performance. It's the added functions, inputs, effects and multi-speaker support that drive sound card prices up.

That means the real question to ask is this: "If everyone already knows how to reproduce perfect sound, why don't all hard-drive MP3 players have perfect sound?" The answer probably has to do with the fact that the higher the sound quality, the more physical space gets taken up by sound hardware in the device. Also, higher sound quality probably means more power consumption.

In the case of portable hard-drive players, both physical space and battery capactiy are at a high premium. With the exception of micro-drives like those found in the iPod Mini, hard drives are not small. It also takes a lot of power to run a hard drive. That power comes from the battery, whos capacity can only be increased by making it larger and heavier. This makes for a delicate balancing act for a company designing such a device.

Apple has seemingly simplified their approach to the issue. They've decided not to worry too much about sound quality. Instead they've focused their attention on outward appearence, compactness, and low weight, hoping that the the flashy finished product would look so good and be so trendy that people wouldn't notice the sound deficiency.

At the same time Apple has managed to raise the bar so high for compactness and low weight that no company looking to compete on the features and functionality front can possibly stand a chance. More features mean a larger and heavier product. Case-in-point, the Neuros, with its dizzying feature set, is also the bulkiest and heavyest of all such devices.

Now that Apple has managed to get people to think of their portable devices as show-off material (something many companies like Sony and Panasonic have been trying to do for years now, unsuccessfully), even very small differences in size or weight have a dramatic effect on how people percieve these products.

Creative's approach with the Zen has been to make sound quality and battery life their top priorities. The Zen is significantly bigger and heavier than the iPod, probably due mostly to its large battery capacity. It makes full use of that battery though, of course with its superb sound quality and long very long battery life. The Zen has a claimed life of 24 hours on one charge, and in practice it actually lasts 26 hours as tested by CNet. For reference, the iPod battery lasts 12 hours.

One thing is for sure: there is no reason to buy an iPod unless outward appearence is your top priority. The iPod is the most expensive and least finctional product out there. From a band-for-buck standpoint, it really is a terrible product. There are many devices that do everything the iPod does (and more), only they do it better and for less money.

For me, it is a choice between all of the iPod competitors. The Zen does look pretty nice. The sound quality is what attracts me to it. Which one it will be in the end though remains to be seen.

If you don't play certain games and sound quality is more important, look at Lynx, RME, M-Audio Delta series, or Creative's other line of sound cards: Emu 0404, 1212m, 1812m. These cards are designed for musicians and home-studio hobbyists, but some of them are affordable--the Emu 0404 at $99 is cheaper than some Audigy packages.

I have an Audigy 2 and an Emu 0404 (also other recording cards with balanced inputs), and for me, the 0404 and the other recording cards sound noticeably better than the Audigy. This has been confirmed by review sites that measure sound card performance. To name one random example, Tom's Hardware Guide. Look up the Audigy and the 0404 on THG and compare their measured audio performance.

But why speculate about the Zen's performance? Measure it! Download RightMark Audio Analyzer (freeware), put the calibration and test .wav files into the Zen, and then use your sound card to measure the Zen's performance. I did the same with my 1st Gen iPod Mini and an old Yamaha DS2416. The loopback performance of the DS2416 is much better than the iPod mini's, so the numbers for the iPod aren't below the measurement limit:

1G IPod Mini as a line-out device (i.e., with no load),
volume level max:

Frequency response: almost ruler flat 20 Hz - 20 kHz.
Noise level dBA: -90.5
Dynamic Range, dBA: 90.3
THD: 0.0014%
Intermodulation: 0.012%
Stereo crosstalk, dB: -89.7
IMD (swept freq.): 0.0094%

As a line-out device, the IPod mini has pretty good numbers. Now here's the problem with the iPod and the other portable players: the performance gets a lot worse when it's driving a pair of earphones. Here are the numbers when it's driving a pair of Sony MDR-EX81SLs:

Frequency response: compared to 0 dB at 1kHz:
-0.5 db at 20 kHz
...
-3 dB at 70 Hz
-4 dB at 60 Hz
-5 dB at 50 Hz
-6.5 db at 40 Hz
-8.5 db at 30 Hz
-12 db at 20 Hz.

It's too bad we can't post graphs and charts on CNet. The fundamental frequency of the lowest note on a piano is around 27.5 Hz. Pipe organ goes much lower. So if you use a normal pair of headphones on the iPod, you're going to get really wimpy bass performance. The bass boost EQ preset is really mild and won't make these numbers go up. Other MP3 players have the same problem, but I've heard that the problem has been fixed with the iPod Shuffle (maybe somebody with an iPod Shuffle can make some measurements).

The solution is a portable headphone amp (bulky), or a pair of earphones that have a hyped-up bass to compensate for the iPod's bass performance. The Sony MDR-EX81 that I use is such a pair--it sounds balanced with an iPod, but sounds too bassy with a headphone amp. Sony has a couple of other 'phones that do this: MDR-G74SL, -51LP, -71SL, -NX1, etc. Those will probably sound horrible on a regular stereo (unless you're a basshead).

Even when driving the EX81s, the iPod Mini has somewhat worse numbers on the other performance parameters:

Noise level dBA: -90.3 (breathing is louder than this)
Dynamic Range, dBA: 90.2
THD: 0.3234%
Intermodulation: 0.273%
Stereo crosstalk, dB: -48.7
IMD (swept freq.): 0.844%

But it sound fine to me through the EX81s. Unless you can make a side-by-side comparison of two MP3 players, it's hard to compare their sound quality. I compared my iPod Mini to my MPIO FY400 flash player and my EMU 0404 going to a headphone amp. The iPod Mini has the wimpiest bass of the three. That's how I know about the sound quality even before taking measurements. Let your ears be the judge.

RightMark Audio Analyzer (RMAA) has been around for a while now. It makes the audio test suite easier to run. If you prefer to do the tests by hand, you could download Audacity (also freeware), generate the test tones, and then run the audio tests manually one by one. A discussion of RMAA's test principles and a description of the individual tests can be found on the RMAA site:

http://audio.rightmark.org/downloads/rmaa-theory.pdf
http://audio.rightmark.org/downloads/tests.pdf

There is a Russian site that uses RMAA to test MP3 players. I can't read Russian, but if you look at just the graphs and charts, you can figure out the test results. I got these links from the RMAA site's discussion forums.

http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/digitalway-mpio-fg100.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/msi-mstick-520.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/creative-zen-micro.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/creative-muvo-txfm.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/archos-gmini400.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/creative-zen-touch.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/digitalway-mpio-fy300.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/sunstar.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/beatsounds-emp1x0.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/beatsounds-empz.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/cenix-mp400.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/safa-srm290f.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/creative-rhomba.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/digitalway-mpio-fy200.shtml
http://www.ixbt.com/multimedia/inno-phototainer.shtml

Follow the Zen Touch link and you'll see the chart that has the RMAA results. On that page there is also a link to the frequency response charts, etc. Earlier on the same page, you'll see links to the reviews of the Zen and the Zen Xtra.

The problem with that site is that they only test the MP3 players without the headphones plugged in, i.e., they're using the headphone jack as a line out going straight to the sound card's line in, which has a much higher input impedance (in the range of 10k ohms to around 100k ohms depending on the sound card). This is very easy for most MP3 players.

If you compare my test results for the unloaded iPod Mini (going into a Yamaha DS2416) to the numbers that they have for the three Zen models (going to a Terratec 6Fire), you can see that the iPod has similar numbers. By the way, the noise figure (90+ dB) that I'm getting for the Mini should be close to the actual S/N ratio. Even if the test didn't normalize the results, I'm still running the calibration signal as hot as possible without clipping, which means that the -90+ dBA noise level would be compared with a signal that's very close to 0 dB. Needless to say, the iPod is a pretty good line-out device. The Zen Xtra seems to be best performer of the group, with S/N and dynamic range figures that are a few decibels better than the others.

But that's not how MP3 players are used. A more realistic test would measure the player's performance while it's driving a pair of headphones, which typically has a much lower impedance. You can do this by running the RMAA tests with a headphone splitter. The 'phones (or a test load) would go into one jack and the line-in cable going to the sound card would go into the other. Plugging in the sound card should not affect the the signal that much because line in has a much higher input impedance (10k-100k ohms) than a pair of headphones (Typically 16 ohms for the stock earbuds to 600 ohms for the worst-case AKG K240Ms). Try it--listen to some music on your player and see if you can tell the difference when you plug in the sound card (you might be able to with the AKG's).

Here's a safety warning: never, ever wear the headphones while running the test suite. The calibration signals and the test tones are running almost full-scale, that is to say, very loud. In fact, it gets so loud that I'm sometimes worried that I might destroy the headphones. Don't say I didn't warn you. To date, I haven't broken any of my headphones yet (I've tested the Sony MDR-EX81s, a Sony MDR-7506, and a Grado SR-125 with my headphone amp). The EX81 specs, for example, says that they can handle 100 mW, which is higher than the maximum power output of some MP3 players.

There are other people who have also run the RMAA test suite on an iPod while driving headphones. I did it with my Sony EX81's; here is a link to the frequency response graphs of an iPod driving a Grado SR-60, a Sennheiser HD25SP, and a Sennheiser HD650:

http://ipodstudio.com/forums/showthread.php?t=980

That's a 3rd Gen iPod on the chart, not a 1st Gen Mini (which seems to have the worst bass performance in the iPod line). The problem is still there, but it's not as severe. The numbers are pretty good: for the Grados it's only down -2.5 dB at 40 Hz (which is as low as it gets for a lot of music).

I'm pointing out the bass performance, because it seems to be the one area that portable players don't handle well (the iPod Shuffle excepted). The iPod's S/N ratio of 90 dB is pretty good. The old Samsung YEPPs had a rated S/N ratio of only 85 dB and they sounded fine to me. Normal breathing is going to be louder than the noise level of these players when they're playing music at ''normal'' levels.

On my iPod Mini, I usually don't notice the noise even on quiet solo piano music unless I really, really listen for it. I can even hear Glenn Gould's humming loud and clear on the 1981 Goldberg Variations--the noise level is not the problem. For me, the distortion is a bigger problem than the noise. But even worse is that it takes effort to hear what the bass player is doing. I want to hear the fine work of a John Patitucci or a Victor Wooten, or a Ray Brown, or an Edgar Myer, or even Sting or Flea.

That's why I use the EX81s or the 7506s on the iPod instead of the Grados. When I use the headphone amp I can hear bass players just fine on the Grados. But on the iPod Mini, the're farther away in the background. It's almost unfair for them. And the EX81's aren't high end. They're less than $50. There's even a bit of controversy about them on the head-fi.org forums--some folks like them, and some think that they have bloated, tubby bass just like the EX71s. That could be because they're running the EX81s on a proper source (in which case I agree that the EX81s are too bassy). But it's probably because headphones rely on the structure of your ear for its sound--and everybody's ear canals are different. That's why you just have to listen--and trust your hearing more than the popular opinion in user reviews.

High-end phones usually expect a flat response from the source. Most MP3 players can't deliver a flat response to all headphones, and so many of them sound terrible on an MP3 player like the iPod. There are, however, some high-end phones designed for portables. The Etymotic ER-4P comes to mind (The ER4-S is the version for headphone amps with more juice).

Now all we need is somebody who has has a Zen and a nice sound card. By the way, here's Bill Machrone's controversial article about the bass performance of several players, with the Shuffle coming out on top and the Zen Micro coming in second. Alas, his tests also confirm what I've already known about my 1st Gen Mini just by listening to it:

http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/playertest/playertest.htm

After about a month of endless searching for reports on MP3 player sound quality, I decided on going with this player. Sound quality was also my biggest concern, even more so than battery life, navigation etc...

You'd be better off sitting in silence than using the supplied headphones. I'm using the same Sennheiser HD280 pro's that I use with my home system and I am very hard pressed to tell any difference between a CD on the home system and an MP3 ripped @ 192kbps on the Zen Xtra. The equalizer is only a 4 band, but I use only the 12khz for a small boost in treble and it works beautifully. Bass is perfect out of the box, not too much, not too little, and with perfect definition. There is a strong air to the sound as well, but not echo'y' and processed sounding (no added delay). There are some hokey sound processing settings (such as ''bathroom'' for example lol) included that I tried and have no desire to try again. The volume of the unit is more than adequate, driving the HD280's with no audible distortion to uncomfortable levels. I get about 8-10 hours out of the battery using this setup.

I was dead set on getting myself MP3 player, while at the same time resigning myself to the fact that I wasn't going to be experiencing the sound I was use to at home and this player surprised me. It's not sexy, it doesn't posess the most user friendly navigation setup, it's a little on the large and heavy side, but overall I don't think I could be happier with a player under $300. This player was only $220 too, $80 cheaper than what I was prepared to spend.

as most of you I have had my fair share of trial and error searches for The mp3 for me. My Son has an Ipod, its a pretty cool piece of mp3 player, must be my ears or maybe the years i wasted money as an over the top audiophile, but I was neither impressed or disappointed in the sound of his Ipod, after a few different makes of ear plugs. The long and the short of it is that I ended up with a Sony Walkman. With the stock earplugs it actually had life like imaging and soundstage with a non-fatiquiging fine sound.. but my Son, forever the cheap-scape(:>) purchased a MEElectronics player. After a very successful download using Windows Media 11 I was really shocked at the sound of this clunky user unfriendly player irregardless of the earplugs/buds. Sounding so clean but not sterile, I thought I had made a new friend, but slowly, then not so slowly, glitches developed which was not what I wanted on a long bike trek. Then on top of that, the media player started acting up.... Maybe low battery caused a deamon of some sort in the player, but ever since my pc's media started getting quirky I have not plugged in to the usb and have just written it off as a great sounding player with a not so great set up and, well maybe it was just the one I received, but the sound of it, I never thought I would hear from an mp3 player using any of the higher priced ear pieces I have tried.. Wish it had worked out, the first week it sounded as if there were live musicians in my head and the miles flew by while I was biking.

I have one myself, and the sound quality is great. Certainly far, far better than my computer sound. I always find something missing when I listen to the integrated sound on my MSI K8N Neo2.

I would highly recommend the Neuros, but only if you have the time to fool around with it. Once you learn how to use it, it's simple - but there are a few issues. First of all, the included software is terrible. It is just plain unusable. There are open source sync managers, such as Sorune and NDBM, which do the job much better (my favorite is Sorune). The Neuros with Sorune or NDBM allows you to organize your music in any way you want, so I simply do E:\music\artist\album\#-trkname.xxx . Sorune/NDBM can simply do a "rebuild" after you manually copy the music files, which will remake the database the Neuros reads when you use it.

There is also beta file browser support, which would negate the need for a sync manager. It's in beta, though, and uses a lot of battery because the HD is constantly running. I keep suggesting that they have the Neuros create a small folder-tree database after syncing on its own, but my suggestions seem to have fallen on deaf ears


All in all a great player, though. I love the integrated mic (wonderful quality, although it sometimes picks up HD noise) and line-in. It even has an antenna jack to make up for it's poor fm reception. It can be modded to transmit through that antenna jack as well, but that's against FCC rules (and kills your warranty).

The size won't bother you. It certainly doesn't bother me. I almost find the ipod/ipod mini to be too small. The Neuros III will be smaller, however... and I do welcome that change. It could bring more customers around .

I've been corresponding with Bill Machrone of PC Magazine (see my post further down) and he mentioned the Archos at one point. Not the exact model you have, but I thought you might like to hear what he had to say. When I purchase a quality product that I end up being very satisfied with, I always like to read as much praise for it as I can find. It makes me feel satisfied and validated so I thought I would do the same for you:

"All of the players have a bit of "droop" in bass response. There is one exception, though: The Archos Personal Media Assistant, PMA-430. It's not just digital audio player--it does video too, and it's larger and heavier than an audio player. But it blows all the others away in terms of sound quality."

First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who's posted so far. This entire dicussion has made for some very interesting and informative reading.

Since one of the things everyone says even when they agree with me is, "The iPod's sound isn't really so bad," let me try to explain exactly what I mean.

I am a huge fan of music in general. When I listen at home to music from my computer, from the radio, or even from a car radio with average stock speakers, the music seeps into me and moves my soul. Sorry to get flowery, but that's the best description I can give you about what music does to me.

I invested in an iPod thinking that no matter where I was I could get that feeling, and be able to choose among my entire MP3 collection to boot.

What I found instead was not only that I didn't feel the emotion I normally do from my music. I also had to take breaks from listening to the iPod. There was something about the sound, some harshness I can't quite articulate (harmonic distortion? noise level?) that caused me to actually get irritated if I listened for more than a half hour to an hour at once.

There's a total lack of warmth, spaciousness, separation of sounds and fequencies. The sound is overall simply low-quality and not subtle. It's the same type of difference that exists between cassette player sound and CD sound, albeit not nearly to that degree, or even the difference between a 96Kbbs MP3 and a 128Kbps MP3. That's the kind of difference I'm hearing.

I compared my home setup to the iPod's sound using the same files and headphones, the same headphones I can normally listen to for hours upon hours without needing any kind of "break". Granted, at home I'm listening to a PC sound card, line-out to a Sony reciever component, then to the headphones. So I might be a little spoiled by the amazing quality I have at home. But I still shouldn't need a break from the iPod during just an hour of listening.

I suspect the problem with the iPod is simply power output. Either the iPod's circuitry is not able to handle enough power, or it simpley does not output enough power. The iPod is the smallest and lightest hard drive MP3 player on the market, yet it still has competitive battery life. Something had to be sacrificed, and I believe it was sound quality for battery life.

After Yuriv provided me with a link to Bill Machrone's (of PC Magazine) personal site (http://home.comcast.net/~machrone/playertest), I emailed Bill to thank him for finally stepping up and addressing these issues. In the email I addresses my own concerns about the iPod.

We are now in an email discussion, in which he has told me that his tests on my white (non-mini) iPod, 20GB 4th gen, is actually one of the least of the offenders among hard-drive MP3 players. Here is a portion of Bill's words:

"Your white iPod really isn't all that bad in sound quality. There are some distortion errors in the sound processing when you use the EQ settings, but a little bass boost is OK.

We have a major comparison of large and small hard disk players coming up in issue 12 (2nd June issue), and I didn't find any large-disk players that I liked better than the iPod."

Needless to say, this is not only disappointing to hear, but disheartening and depressing. If the iPod's sound is considered among the best available among the large hard-drive players, there's pretty much no hope that I will find something I like.

I have not given up though. I tried very hard to articulate to Bill the exact flaws I was hearing from the iPod, and I await his response.

I will keep you all updated on this. In the meantime, keep on posting.

Everyone here has given you a lot to consider, and having a 4G iPod myself, it's been a great discussion and learning experience (I'm certainly getting new headphones). I don't know about anyone else, but at least for me, simply throwing out MP3s and using other compression and compression-less formats yielded much better sound quality. In the case of the iPod, I use either dolby's AAC (playing with the bit rate until satisfied) or Apple Lossless depending on the type of music. AAC is by far superior to MP3, MP3 sounding metallic in general. I say depending on the type of music since classical and jazz lose a lot with compression. You might have an instrument in the far range and not be able to hear it properly, losing the fullness of it.

Like I said, maybe it's just me, but that helped a lot. It's still not perfect, by far, but it's a huge improvement. I chose the iPod because it was the better sounding player, even if that's not saying a lot, and not because it just looks cool. The integration with iTunes and it's many features has really gone a long way to making me love it. Sure, better sound would be great, but overall, it's brilliant, and using other compression formats, I have been able to experience that soulful feeling you describe which I could never get with MP3.

In the end, music and the experience of listening to it is a very personal thing, so each person will draw different conclusions and preferences in regards to exactly the same thing. I hope my opinions helped, even if they are only in relation to my own experience.

I-Tunes is not the only tool for MP3 creation out there.

There are other "MP3 encoders" out there, and LAME is one which is considered as better than that built into I-Tunes. I suggest you give it a try sometime and you'll be pleased.

By the way, I'd like to correct you: AAC is an open format, not developped only by AAC. The version of AAC used by the I-Pod is Apple's version as far as I know.

Another thing: Apple Lossless doesn't perform as well as FLAC does. It's a shame that The I-Pod doesn't support FLAC.

I'm really not the nitpicky type when it comes to music. Yes, I can easily hear differences in quality that others can't. But usually I don't care much. Like I said, even stock FM from my dad's '95 Plymouth will have me dancing in my seat. iPod sound really just sucks to me. Go figure.

iPod's earbuds sound pretty damn good through my home setup; not great though. There's a noticeable lack of bass, as is to be expected, but definitely a lot better than when the iPod is driving them. I'm fairly certain this isn't a headphone issue.

My regular phones are Sony MDR-G72, 24 ohms impedance, but I'm not familiar with impedance so I don't know if that's good or bad. My sound card is a Sound Blaster PCI512. The reciever is a Sony STR-DE835 component reciever (headphone jack power output spec would be useful here, but it is not listed anywhere in my manual). As you can see, the only high-end device is the reciever. With the speakers cut and the headphones in, nothing else is in the chain except for cables, and even those are cheap; generic RCA-type coax from Radio Shack, and not even their ''gold''-type ones

As an aside, I'm curious to compare my current setup with the phones directly plugged into the card, no reciever in-between. I'll have to try that. I'll report any significant findings.

No DSP, effects, equalizers or anything of the like are active on any device in the chain, with two exceptions: about 25% treble gain using the standard Windows bass/treble equalizer, and a ''Bass Boost'' (static +6Db@70Hz) toggled on (a non-standard feature, separate from the EQ and DSP) on the reciever. I have tested with these off though.

As far as the iPod goes, I usually have a bass boost EQ preset active, and again, I've tested with that off as well.

Winamp 5 is my software of choice, EQ disabled, no plugins activated. I've used many songs to compare, ranging from metal to classical, Slipknot to Beethoven, results always the same. Files are, in the vast majority of cases, 128Kbps 44KHz MP3s. Most files have not been ripped by me, so I couldn't say which program or settings were used for encoding.