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You leave the back-road bliss of the country to get on the freeway, and now the music in your car doesn't have enough bass to give you that thumping rhythm you need to dodge other cars. What can you do? Without endangering anybody, you can pull over and select one of the iPod equalizer presets, such as Bass Booster.
Yes, your iPod has a built-in equalizer. Like the iTunes equalizer, the iPod built-in equalizer modifies the volume of the frequencies of the sound, and while you don't have sliders for faders like the iTunes equalizer, you get the same long list of presets to suit the type of music or the type of environment. You can use the iPod equalizer for on-the-fly adjustments.
 | You can also use the iTunes equalizer to improve or enhance the sound, assigning presets to each song, and then updating your iPod. |
Choosing an EQ preset in your iPod
To select an iPod equalizer preset, choose Settings --> EQ from the main menu, and select one of the presets as shown in Figure 1.
Figure 1: Choose an equalizer preset for fine-tuning the sound during iPod playback.
Each EQ preset offers a different balance of frequencies designed to enhance the sound in certain ways. For example, Bass Booster increases the volume of the low (bass) frequencies, while Treble Booster does the same to the high (treble) frequencies.
 | To see what a preset actually does to the frequencies, open the iTunes equalizer and select the same preset. The faders in the equalizer display show you exactly what the preset does. |
The Off setting, shown in Figure 2, turns off the iPod equalizer — no presets are used, not even one you assigned in iTunes. You have to choose an EQ setting to turn on the iPod equalizer.
Figure 2: Choose the Off setting to turn off the equalizer in your iPod.
Applying the iTunes EQ presets
If you assign a preset to the song using iTunes, the iPod uses the assigned EQ preset from iTunes when you choose an EQ preset on the iPod — the assigned EQ preset from iTunes takes precedence over the preset in the iPod.
| If you know in advance that certain songs need specific presets assigned to them, assign a preset in iTunes before copying the song to the iPod. If you don't want your songs preordained with a certain preset, and you want to experiment with the presets in the iPod to get better playback in different listening environments — wait until you have the song in your iPod. |
After assigning a preset to a song in iTunes, you turn on the iPod equalizer by choosing any EQ setting (other than Off), and the iPod uses the song's preset for playback.
Leveling your iPod volume
You can take advantage of volume leveling in your iTunes music library with the Sound Check option, and then turn Sound Check on or off on your iPod by choosing Sound Check in the Settings menu.
In iTunes, select the Sound Check option. Then, on the iPod, choose Settings --> Sound Check --> On from the main menu to turn on the sound check feature. To turn it off, choose Settings --> Sound Check --> Off.
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