Bass is muffled...

[McLightning]

So, I've got a decent soundcard (Soundblaster Zx) and a great pair of headphones (Senn PC360). I fell in love with Musicbee because it's finally my way out of the cancer that is iTunes (have a huge library that's been building and wanted to keep my date added tags). I installed it, set it up, got everything to work...except...when I use my preferred EQ preset (electronic, the same one I use on iTunes), anything with bass is muffled. Muffled like it sounds like there's interference or like there's an issue with my headphones (which I know there isn't, cause it only happens in Musicbee).

Any ideas how to get rid of this? I really love musicbee except for that one little quirk that I can't seem to figure out...

[Steven]

My only suggestion is to tweak the equaliser settings better to your liking

[McLightning]

I tried, honestly I did...I can't seem to get rid of the muffled bass:(

[Anti]

In an effort to troubleshoot:

· Did you try switching to the 15 band equaliser in MusicBee to manually set the EQ?
· What happens when you disable musicbee EQ completely?
· When viewing the EQ window, are there any DSP plugins enabled in the bottom section?
· Is your onboard soundchip software (installed by the manufacturer) applying any EQ or 'sound effects'?
· Have you tried free EQ plugins to substitute for the musicbee EQ?
  Eg. Electri-Q http://www.savioursofsoul.de/Christian/VST/Electri-Q_posihfopit_Install.exe
  Eg. SA Stereo Tool http://www.stereotool.com/download/dsp_stereo_tool_installer.exe

[Alumni]

I suggest playing your music flat without EQ for a while, you may find that the EQ is unnecessary.

[PhantomEight]

First time poster, got MusicBee for the first time last night and been reading up like crazy.   Steven, you should be proud, about as happy with MusicBee as I have ever been with an audio player. 

Anyway, back on topic and IF you have a Creative sound card:   I had ridiculously distorted bass.  Was looking at everything from poor quality files, sound drivers, EQ settings, and finally resetting all the settings in my Creative Sound card.  The thoughts on the EQ here are interesting as well, but I took them to heart.

I found that after hitting the default settings button in the creative mixer/config/whatver app, Windows Media player sounded WAY better and it had its EQ settings all jacked up for dance/techno.  MusicBee also sounded a little better, I knew I was making progress.  I eventually found in MusicBee under the Player section in Preferences (Ctrl-O) that changing the output from DirectSound to ASIO was a night and day difference.  The sound device for me changes to "Creative ASIO", I also selected hardware mixing, and 32bit output for the heck of it... not sure what it does.

Obviously not everyone has a Creative sound card (I have an X-Fi Fatality), but I wanted to share in case some do.    I can also wildly change around my EQ settings and things are good.   I'm not sure why DirectSound sounds terrible and I would assume that Windows Media player probably uses DirectSound for compatibility sake.   Also, I never noticed distortion in Battlefield 4 or other games, so in general I am overly perplexed.   

[Bee-liever]

I also selected hardware mixing, and 32bit output for the heck of it... not sure what it does

selecting hardware mixing forces your soundcard to do the mixing rather than the default on-board audio processor.

32 bit output is a better sound output processing than the standard 16-bit output.  only a good option if your soundcard natively supports 32-bit output.