my ipod plays all the songs at extremely different sound levels very disturbing and somewhat injurious to my ears when it descides to blast a song extremely loud
iPod classic, Windows 7
That probably means the songs are encoded that way in your iTunes library. There's a setting called Sound Check. You need to enable it (a checkbox) in iTunes preferences Playback pane. On the iPod's onboard Settings screen, there is the equivalent setting to turn ON Sound Check. This adjusts the sound level of songs, so that they are approximately equal (on average).
NOTE: This does not help if a single song has both quiet portions and loud portions, like with classical music. It does not adjust sound level within a particular song.
Although this is now marked as "solved", the first thing I would've checked is opening iTunes, and gong:
edit -> preferences -> "playback" tab
... and make sure the "sound enhancer" box is unchecked.
Otherwise, if you're using an encoder to re-encode media, check to ensure you didn't forget to uncheck a box, where you may have boosted the audio on a one-time basis for something, and forgot to uncheck it afterwards. This is a common occurrence when re-encoding videos from a VHS source, many of which were recorded at some surprisingly low audio levels.
my ipod plays every song at an extremely different sound level from inaudible to blow out my ears it is practically unuseable
