Getting an ipod or your dream mp3 player is the first step, to get the splendid sound quality, you may like to discover the tricks to draw the best power of your player, let it do its best for you. It is common sense that the functions driven by a player is comprised of two aspects - hardware and software. One can improve both aspects to get the optimum condition.

From hardware aspect, use better earpiece. Why? Don’t ignore this tiny gizmo a good earpiece plays a very important role in sound quality, not to mention the price of a decent earpiece is equal to a mp3 player. This is a good way to enhance your player performance. Don’t always use the amplifier that embedded into the player. Too often use of amplifier will not only drain power quickly but also add lots of noise in the back ground of the music. Compared with the amplifier, an earpiece offers you the pure quality of the music which much more depends on the format a song is recorded. Although in most cases, there is a set of earpiece coming within the box, but they are lame and cheap. Get a branded earpiece and listen to how your music quality gets greatly improved.

From software aspect, I recommend you using the AAC music format and setting your player properly.

Music formats. Most player like ipod, creative, cowon and iriver have a large selections of music formats including mp3, WAV,WMA,AAC and etc. Most people think there is little difference among them. But they do matter differently very much in sound quality and file size. MP3, the Old file format that generally works badly at bit rates below 128kbps but can sound good at 160-196kbps, especially with Lame encoding. The biggest drawbacks is its large file sizes and lame sound quality. WMA, Microsoft format with Standard, Pro and Lossless versions. Standard outperforms MP3 only at low bit rates and sounds worse than AAC at the same bit rates. AAC, (Advanced Audio Coding) Multichannel replacement for MP3 that works well at bit rates of 96kbps and below, and produces smaller files. At 128kbps, the quality can closely match CD quality, and at 160kbps or higher, it should be equivalent to CD for most people. Personally, I recommend to use AAC as the primary music storage format. Firstly, AAC has the smallest file size, much smaller then mp3, which means more songs per Megabit. Secondly, AAC is the format that has the most excellent sound quality very close to CD quality. However, most music downloaded from website are encoded in mp3 which needs convert to AAC. Such formats convert tool can be easily found By searching the web.

Setting your player. Now many player boast the diversity of setting and customizations. In the sound effect menu, pay attention to the bass or super bass which show you the excellence of the player. The more advanced bass, the better quality and feeling of music. Turn the bass setting to maximum and hear how huge different it turns to be.