EQ off really means on...

I was trying out my new nano and I thought "wow, this sounds awful" Before I rushed to take it back I went to make sure the EQ was set too off. It was. With a lot of music the EQ does nothing but distort the **** out of the sound. I set the nano EQ to off again. Still sounded bad. So I set it to "Flat" and then it sounded fine. But then the interface gets choppy because it's processing the flat EQ setting. (which i also hear cuts the battery life down a bit.

Why does Apple have to fiddle with stuff that isn't broken? EQ off should be EQ off. How does EQ OFF = the EQ ON that you had selected in iTunes? The old nano and the 5G don't work like this. On those iPods EQ off is EQ off.

Is this the way it's supposed to work? I reset and restored the whoe thing. Still works the same wrong way.

I guess if I didn't have any EQs assigned to tracks in iTunes it wouldn't be a problem. I really don't want to remove the EQ assignments. I spent a while getting them right and they play fine on my computer speakers. But those same EQ settings don't work on the iPod. That's why I leave the iPod EQ off. But now I have to turn the EQ on and set it to flat to turn it off. Does that make any sense?