Hello there, i'm not really sure if i'm posting this in the right area or not but i was wondering if anyone else experiences the problem that i do or maybe i just have really sensitive ears

Anyway, the problem i seem to have is that when i burn a CD of wavs from mp3s that i've downloaded, it seems that at higher volumes, i will experience piercing levels of sound, i dont think the treble is set to high....these are my eq settings on my car cd player ....Bass +4, Mid -2, Treble +2. Yet when the volume gets to half or more, i will cringe at certain parts in a song such a highs in vocals or guitar....is this normal, or is this a cause of decoding the mp3 to a wav? if you dont know what i mean by ear piercing maybe i can explain better...plesae let me know and thanks for any replies!

EDIT: THis happens even with ReplayGained files through Foobar2000

it's not clipping is it? car EQs tend to be digital nowadays, and it's possible that when you jack up the volume it will start to clip (i've got a Sony Discman that clips at half-max volume - 5 out of 10. really poor form there, but possibly very common).

of course, it might be that it's simpy too loud and you're damaging your hearing... if your ears ever ring, you've damaged them permanently (though by a very very small amount).

no i dont think its clipping...the files are replaygained....its just that the high frequencies usually hurt my ears

i don't think he means the musics clipping, i think he means the head unit is clipping because the volume level is too high.

does it go away when you drop the treble ?

have you got a car amp that you can get your hands on, try hooking that up with your head unit and see if that soves it.

may be you could ripp a pressed cd you own, and convert it to a simlar bitrate and if you can find out which encoder was used and encode with that. and compare the pressed verus the copied version.

do you have the problem with pressed CD's?

what volume level to you usually have it with normal cd's compared with the replaygained discs.