Imported songs sound wrong(solved)

Gear Girl

Ok I use iTunes to import just for ease of organization and transfer on to my iPod and recently I had to re-import my music collection. The previous time I imported my music I used the apple lossless encoder and then since I occasionally like to use winamp I had converted the entire collection to mp3 with 320kbps stereo bit rate, an "auto" sample rate, joint stereo and by default smart encoding adjustments and filter below 10hz were enabled. Now I have no idea what any of this means besides the stereo bit rate but it was just the default settings in iTunes.

This time I did the exact same thing with a couple of my CDs and I started to realize that the sound this time around seemed a bit..dull..perhaps even a bit too bassy. The sharp guitar and vocals and such that usually appeal to me in a song seemed less noticable and more dull. I have not changed any audio settings on my computer since the first time.

Anyone have any idea of something I may have done to cause it to sound this way?

shutz

First, at 320 kbps, you're better off encoding in standard stereo so that each channel is encoded separately. For one thing, it means there won't be any narrowing of the stereo image.

When you play the files, are they still at a 44.1kHz sample rate? if that was brought down to 22kHz, the music will definitely sound duller.

Lastly, have you tried playing that music in another player, software or hardware? If it sounds dull everywhere, then the file was badly encoded, and I would need to know more about your setup, but if it sounds OK elsewhere, it's possible that the player you're using has had its EQ settings changed.

I generally use EAC to rip, which calls LAME to encode the files. At 160kbps VBR, there's no noticeable loss of quality, except when I concentrate real hard and the song has a lot of "air" or white noise-style sounds in the higher frequencies.

Oh, one red flag I just noticed: you say you converted your collection to mp3: do you mean you converted the files you'd ripped with iTunes (presumably using its AAC codec) to mp3? because converting from one lossy format to another can certainly cause further loss of quality.

It's an imperfect copy of an imperfect copy. Quality loss always results from that.

Gear Girl

I used apple lossless not AAC. I then converted to mp3 yes. I know this is kind of messed up but the thing that is bothering me about it is that I did this in the exact same manner the last time and it sounds different this time.

Let me listen in a few different media players, I will let you know.

The one thing I'm unsure of is if this is how it is supposed to sound and I just had it wrong the first time or whether there is something actually wrong.

Edit:

When you play the files, are they still at a 44.1kHz sample rate? if that was brought down to 22kHz, the music will definitely sound duller.

Yes.

Gear Girl

Ok I loaded the file up in WMP, VLC, and even Quicktime. I have no idea whether I am just imagining this or it is actually true but I think it sounds a bit better in all 3 which is especially odd for Quicktime.

Oh one final note. Prior to doing all of this I installed the newest version of iTunes. 7.6.1

Gear Girl

So I found this "perfect iTunes equalizer setting" online which makes everything sound a hell of a lot better. This is good enough. Thanks for the help shutz.