poor podcast sound on iphone

[friendlyfire]

Hi,
I use media monkey to maintain my library of music and enjoy it's ability to synch to my iphone with no hassles despite the fact that my collection is primarily in FLAC and when I play those music files back they sound great even after conversion.

However, I also have a number of MP3 podcasts (music + talk) and some MP3 audiobooks. As I understand it these are converted to m4a files which I believe allow the iphone to restart the audiobook where it was last left off, which is actually a pretty nice feature. My problem is that the quality of these files gets trashed during the conversion from Mp3 to M4a.

So far I haven't discovered any settings to tinker with that would affect this conversion.

Any advice guys?
Thanks!

[Lowlander]

What are the conversion settings?

[friendlyfire]

like I said, I can't find any setting related to MP3 to m4a.
In the iphone device configuration, under options, auto-conversion there all the rules have the output format set to Mp3 except for the "incompatable video" which generates MP4.

MM obviously thinks it is supposed to convert podcasts and audiobooks to M4A but the settings do no seem to be exposed

[nohitter151]

like I said, I can't find any setting related to MP3 to m4a.
In the iphone device configuration, under options, auto-conversion there all the rules have the output format set to Mp3 except for the "incompatable video" which generates MP4.

MM obviously thinks it is supposed to convert podcasts and audiobooks to M4A but the settings do no seem to be exposed

No, that's not possible. If the rule does not exist in the auto-conversion settings page, then the files will not be converted to that format.

[friendlyfire]

okay, it seems I am mistaken. When I check the file properties in MM of one of the podcasts on the iphone it shows it as a mp3. So what I am finding is
given mp3 plays fine on PC...
if loaded as a music file it sounds fine on the iphone
if loaded as a podcast or audiobook it plays like crap.
MM seems to simply copy the file over so it seems like it is more of an iphone issue but if someone has an idea that would be great.

[friendlyfire]

oh man what a brain fart.
I just discovered a teeny control on the iphone which is only visible for podcasts. It says 2x. When I press it a couple of times it cycles back to 1x and then everything is okay.
thanks and sorry for the stupid post