Sound quality poor after upgrade
I can open an MP3 in Audacity or Quick Time and it sounds fine. When playing the EXACT SAME MP3 in iTunes, it sounds awful.
This is true regardless of the audio source; previews in the iTunes store, music in my Library or on my iPod or even playing an Audio CD back in iTunes will reproduce the effect.
This is also true regardless of the playback device. When listening through the computer speaker, plugging in headphones or speakers to the analog audio output, also when using my Harman Kardon USB Soundsticks and I even plugged my receiver into the toslink output to verify there was not an AD converter problem.
This is definitely an iTunes issue. The Equalizer settings have no bearing on the quality; turning it on and off does change the sound slightly and preamp settings on the equalizer do affect the output level. In Preferences -> Playback, all the checkboxes are cleared. (Crossfade, Sound Enhancer and Sound Check)
I've re-started the machine, zapped the PRAM, turned on/off the settings in the Playback portion in iTunes preferences and restarted iTunes countless times after adjusting those settings. NOTHING has any effect whatsoever.
Help! I'm to the point where I want to re-install iTunes, but to tell you the truth, I'm not really sure how to do that! (Can I just delete the app and get it from the iTunes store from my browser?)
Mac mini (Intel), Mac OS X (10.5.7), 1.83 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with 2 GB of RAM