Sound quality is very poor on a brand new M2 Macbook Pro 13"

dan.barker wrote:

I'm pretty sure it's not just me, although the posts I've seen only relate to the M1 MBP. The sound quality outside of iTunes is extremely poor. Changing the EQ in iTunes only fixes the issue in iTunes. Outside of that, system wide, the sound quality sounds like it's being run through a cloth or something, it's got a muffled tone to it, and it's even noticeable while wearing my AirPods Pros (1st gen though I speculate it doesn't matter what generation.)

There is an outside application called eqMac that I was able to use to change the eq and boost the treble up quite a bit, but it uses a bunch of energy and I really don't think I should have to install a third party app the fix this.

hmmmm....

Did you test in another user account— Change Users & Groups settings on Mac - Apple Support

This will tell you if it a universal issue or isolated to your user/admin account. 

Did you test in SafeBoot mode—How to use safe mode on your Mac - Apple Support will sort many anomalies

This test will tell you if third party interference; most* extensions etc are not loaded in safe boot mode.

Login and test, reboot as normal and compare your results

iTunes - Official Apple Support