I bought a "monster" adaptor at the apple store made for the iphone so I could plug in a more comfortable pair of headphones. (My earbuds that came with the phone work perfectly fine)
The problem is, when i listen to my iphone's ipod....the sound is distored. You can make out the songs but only hear part of the words.
I am also (just today) having iPhone distortion problems, and it is a hardware problem, regrettably.
My headphones popped out as I was reaching into my pocket, but upon re-entering the pin into the iPhone jack, lo, the sound had mysteriously become awful. If you need a qualification -- digitally distorted. I instantly recognized this was NOT going to have a quick solution.
My headphones, and the adapter, are not the problem. The problem is a) the files have been corrupted/altered due to a hard-drive problem (really hard to believe), or b) the connecting cable running from the headphone jack to the main board has loosened.
Though I believe it is the latter, I can't explain why I can hear something at all, nor why the resulting music sounds like a heavily (e.g. 32kbps) compressed mp3 file. All I know is that I really want to be wrong on this. If I have to get another fff device from this company **shaking fist** Very tired of rapidly depreciating technology purchases. Very, very tired.
Anyway, I'm going to do a fac reset just for kicks, place a file on the device, listen to it, and upon hearing awful distortion, I will dry my eyes and call Apple...Email Apple..or Check back here.
