Thanks to Slashdot for the link.
Apparently through mathematical shenanigans a British professor has found the worst day of the year. Everyone knew January sucks, but no one specifically blamed January 24. It makes sense.
I have no doubt this January 24 will be particularly bad as not only is it a Monday but also happens to follow the one weekend I am going all-night-Tokyo-clubbing.
Ah, science, how you always rip away my blissful ignorance.
So, as previously posted, I had sent my assumed-to-be-defective iPod back to the service center to be "serviced." As predicted, they did a "reset all settings" and assumed nothing was wrong with it.
But the problem remains. Most songs on the thing sound great, especially with $140+ headphones. But then there are some songs that sound like absolute crap. These, at first, I noted with embarrassment that they were songs I had ripped from my CD collection. I thought perhaps I had ripped them from CD and coded them badly. That would make my entire Apple-bashing platform moot.
So for the hell of it, I tried normalizing an already-coded song that I use as my "test song" for "the crap effect." Normalizing didn't help. On a lark, I decided to try the same exact song from Apple's iTunes Music Store. I figured it absolutely had to be encoded well if they were selling it.
The problem remains. In sections of heavy bass, the sound distorts like crazy. I am using the EQ function, and the only way to remove such distortion is to use the "bass reducer" preset. Most songs sound great, but I am somewhat of an audiophile and distortion really drives me nuts, even on a few songs.
My question is this. I know a few of my readers (well, casual glancers, at least) have iPods. Has anyone had a problem with something like this? Does every song sound crystal clear?