iPod sound quality drastically different than PC

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SwissedToast

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Dec 4, 2013
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My Audio Technica ATH-M50's, which are excellent excellent headphones, sound completely different on my iPod than on my PC. With my iPod, the music sounds great, full, deep, and bassy. The same song with my PC sounds shallow, watery, and weak. I've tested various media players including WMP, MPC-HC, and iTunes, but the result is the same. It's not an EQ issue as despite turning off bass booster on my iPod, no matter what I do to my PC program's equalizer the sound isn't even a fraction as good.

Seems it's not the headphones, and not the software, so what other possibilities does that leave? Maybe it's an audio driver problem with my PC? My OS is Windows 7 on a Dell Studio XPS 7100. This isn't a new problem, I only noticed recently because I loved my ATH-M50's so much I swapped out my regular ear buds that I use on my iPod for them. It's really important to me and I really really appreciate any help.

This is exactly what my Device Manager shows:
Sound, video, and game controllers
- NVIDIA High Definition Audio
- NVIDIA High Definition Audio
- NVIDIA High Definition Audio
- NVIDIA High Definition Audio
- NVIDIA Virtual Audio Device (Wave Extensible) (WDM)
- Realtek High Definition Audio

Related earlier thread from someone else with the same problem:
http://www.tomshardware.com/answers/id-1880288/beats-sound.html#.
 
Solution
The headphones probably require more power to drive them than the sound card can put out properly. ipods, despite me hating them, do have decent amps for headphones. built on sounds cards work ok for basic headphones or to power speakers, which have their own amps and don't rely on the sound card.

lastly, you are plugging into the green plug right. lol.
The headphones probably require more power to drive them than the sound card can put out properly. ipods, despite me hating them, do have decent amps for headphones. built on sounds cards work ok for basic headphones or to power speakers, which have their own amps and don't rely on the sound card.

lastly, you are plugging into the green plug right. lol.
 
Solution

SwissedToast

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Dec 4, 2013
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Thanks very much for reply. It's plugged lol. The power part makes sense, how would I go about remedying it?
 
They make dedicated headphone amps or soundcards with better headphone amps in them.

that's what I would think anyways is the issue. I know with my system, my good sony headphones sound ok through my built on sound but amazing through my Tascam digital USB mixer that I use for my audio work. 1000x difference in sound.
 

SwissedToast

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Dec 4, 2013
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10,510


I tried going through Control Panel>Sound>Speakers (Realtek HighDef [Default])>Properties>Advanced and changed the Default Format from 24 bit 44,100 Hz to the highest setting 24 bit 192,000 Hz and it definitely helped very considerably. Wouldn't call it solved yet but what do you think?
 
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