Macbook sound card- bass sounds weird.

With the vast majority of my music easily organized and centralized on my laptop I thought I would use it as a stereo hub, with the slick little remote coming in handy.

I hooked my Macbook up to my stereo system with a quarter inch adapter in the headphone port and into the "Aux in" port on the stereo. I play lots of music through it and it sounds pretty good, although I have noticed that the bass pounds and pops out of the mix a lot... I listen to lots of traditional ska so this is an issue.

I thought it might be the cord or the stereo, but it definitely is the Mac, because it happens through the Macbook's speakers. I tried messing with the equalizers on the stereo and the computer as well but to no avail.

Does anyone else notice this issue? I have narrowed it down to the computer, and wonder if there are any fixes... heading off to college soon and don't plan on taking any music not on the computer.

It could be the bitrate that the music was ripped at. I would suggest re-ripping at least one of those CD's at a higher rate and see if that makes a difference. If it does, then you might want to consider doing the same for the rest of your music.

No, I rip everything at a high rate... I'm sort of an audiophile, but without knowing anything about recording.

Oh yeah one person on another board blamed volume levels on each, or the fact that "Aux in" ports on stereos are crap. I was thinking about getting an external sound card, assuming it's not the stereo, could this help?

You could link up a CD player to the stereo the same way to see if this also cause the same issue. Other than that you can connect optically