Which MP3 player has proper tone control? and is the best!

jandanjan

My husband has a Sharp Mini disc which he loves but sadly after 4 years of solid use (and it was second hand when we got it!) it is on its last legs .

He is an incredibly fussy on the sound quality and all MP3 players (and a lot of stereos we have looked at too) tell you they adjust the tone automatically or to a style such as Rock or Opera - well,the person who calibrates the automatic tone levels does not have my husbands hearing and he hates and loathes not being able to adjust tone to his specific requirements. A lot of what he listens to are old recordings converted to CD's so this automatic tone does not suit them.

He needs an MP3 player and I would like to get him one for his birthday. He looked at the Creative Zen but we cant find o nthe box if this allows you to actually adjust tone manually or only with the presettings.

Does anyone know a good reasonably priced (£100 or less) MP3 player that has manual tone adjustments? Actually to be honest if it is only available in a more expensive make / model I'd probably buy it because if it doesnt have this functionality he wont use it anyway so it will be a waste of money!

All advice greatfully received

Jan

Jzpop

There is no need to rely on the outside of the box to find out the capabilities of Creative's MP3 players. Simply go to creative.com, click Support and download the manual for player that you are interested in.

As an example, I downloaded the manual for the Creative Zen, and found this information...

"Changing Audio Settings
Using equaliser (EQ)
EQ is the player's collection of equaliser settings, which you can use to enhance your music. You can select preset equaliser or customized settings to suit the genre or style of your music, or customize your own setting.

Press the Back/Options button.
You may need to do this more than once until the main menu appears.
Select System Audio Settings EQ.
Select one of the EQ menu items.
When an EQ setting is selected, appears on the Now Playing screen.
To customize an equaliser setting

In the EQ screen, select Custom EQ.
Each slider on the Custom EQ screen represents successively higher frequencies that can be adjusted.
80 controls bass frequency
250 adjusts the low mid-range frequency
1k adjusts the mid-range frequency
4k adjusts the upper mid-range frequency
13k adjusts the treble frequency.
Select a slider, and push the 5-way Navigation Joystick up and down to move the control knob up or down to vary the amount of boost or reduction in the selected frequency range.
Push the 5-way Navigation Joystick right or left to select the remaining sliders, and repeat step 2.
Select the check mark to save and enable the Custom EQ settings."

From this, I can see that this MP3 player allows you to adjust 5 separate frequency controls in the Equalizer settings. That should be enough.

On a wider point, if your husband is very fussy / sensitive, you will need to consider the whole issue, not just which MP3 player to buy.

You need to start with a high quality original recording, and use high quality hardware and software to convert to whichever digital audio format you choose. You may then need to tweak the sound again on the PC before transferring to the MP3 player. Don't forget that the quality of the headphones will make a significant difference to the quality of the sound, and very good ones will probably cost as much again as the MP3 player.

My experience is that Creative do make good quality MP3 players, with good sound. the supplied headphones are OK, but Sennheiser headphones will generally improve things appreciably.