MacMost Now 869: iOS Music Equalizer Settings

You can choose from a list of equalizer presets in iOS to adjust how you hear music from your Music app on your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch. The best way to use it is to play some music and try different settings. The Late Night setting is a little different as it applies to video as well. You can use iTunes on your desktop computer to get an idea about what each preset is doing.

You can also watch this video at YouTube (but with ads).

Video Transcript: Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's talk about iOS equalizer settings.
On any iOS device you can get the equalizer settings by going to Setting, I'm going to do it here on my iPhone, and scroll down to Music. Under Music you can then select the EQ section and it takes you to the equalizer settings.
So what does this do? Well, there is a variety of different settings here for different types of music. So you can select one that best suits the music you are listening to. For instance there is dance music, electronic, jazz, piano, classical and even things like Spoken Word. So you can choose one that fits the style of music you are listening to at the moment or the one that you listen to the most often.
Now notice how this was under the Music app settings. These will only affect music played by the Music app. So if you are listening to another music app like Pandora or Spotify the equalizer settings will not apply.
The one exception is a special one called Late Night. When you select Late Night that should affect all the sound coming out of your iPhone or iPad. What that does is it centers on the mid tone so it basically spoken word and it is good for listening to say movies late at night. The idea being that you can still hear words that are spoken while music and sound effects are lessened. The idea is you are listening to something late at night, everyone in the house is sleeping, and you want to keep things a little quiet then the Late Night setting for you. Give it a try if you do that.
So how do you decide on setting. Well, one of the things you should do is to play some music. So play the piece of music you are going to be listening to and go through these different settings while the music is playing and while you are using the headphones or the speakers, or whatever you are using to listen to it. You can try out the different settings and find out which one sounds right to you.
Unfortunately, there are no custom settings. You can't set it yourself. You have to use one of these presets. Those that are really interested in figuring out what these presets do you can't find out on your iOS device the exact things they are setting. But there is a way to find out.
So run iTunes on your Mac or PC and there go to Window and Equalizer. This will bring up the equalizer here on your Mac. Here you do have specific settings. Also notice you have these presets which for the most part are the same as the ones on your iPhone. If you switch to one you can see exactly what it is doing. 
So you can basically get familiar with the different settings here and then know exactly what it is that you are getting into if you set them that way on your iOS device.
Here is another thing you can do while you are in iTunes. You can select a song or group of songs and Command I to get info on them. Go to Options and you can set an equalizer preset. So I can set this one to rock. Now once I sync this song to my iOS device if I've turned off the equalizer then it should use this equalizer preset for this song. So I can take all my rock songs for instance and set them to rock and all my classical songs and set them to classical. As I go through the songs it should play them using the equalizer preset on my iOS device.
Now here is another tip. It is widely reported that having your equalizer set to off on your iPhone will save battery life. Which makes sense cause it is doing more processing of the music before it plays it back. I'm not sure how much this affects the most recent models. I haven't noticed any change on mine. But if you are very sensitive about battery life you may want to take it into account.
It is also important to realize that this is a very personal preference. An equalizer setting that sounds good to you on a certain song is not going to sound good to somebody else. It depends how good your ears are, how good your headphones are, and the speakers you are using are. So it really varies from person to person. It is a personal preference and you probably want to go through and see whether or not it is worthwhile playing with the equalizer settings to make your music listening experience better.
Hope you found this useful. Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.

MacMost Now 869: iOS Music Equalizer Settings

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