iTunes playback sound quality?

by **jkhuri44** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 11:41 pm

Gday guys,

just got word from a band i produced that the final master (mastereed by reputable mastering house) sounds wierd/bad when they are listening to the cd using the iTunes player.....but the master sounds AWESOME, stress awesome on all other play back systems., playback on Windows Media player sounds good too....

however,the band said that ripping or listyening to other cd's sounded good listening on itunes...

Do you guys know whats going on?

by **rick** » Thu Jul 02, 2009 11:51 pm

you know i cannot get a handle on how and why itunes goes wrong ,

i get that kind of phone call a bit , then i say to the band "are you sure you didnt change the way the masters sound by importing them as a lower rez file into intunes ?" , they say "nah i am sure" , i say "did you start with the cd i gave you or is it one your drummer copied for you ....?
then they say "yeah its a copied one .. "

"ok see if you can find out if the drummer lowered the rez by mistake on the one he gave you .."

next day the phone call comes in .. "yeah sorry bout our f@#$ up it sounds great " :)

by **rick** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 12:02 am

oh yeah , i'll presume since i have not seen your smiling face for a while jamil i am not the owner of the "reputable
master house"
maybe it was something they did wrong...:)
but probably not

by **Thirteen** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 12:08 am

I think that people don't understand that when you burn a CD from iTunes you are making an AIFF from a crappy compressed file, so the CD is going to sound even worse than the mp3 in iTunes.

by **Kurt** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 12:43 am

The iTunes player has built in dsp's does it not? (never infected my machine with it) Maybe the dsps are making it sound different....

Burning cd's from mp3 will not sound worse than the mp3, it will sound the same.. The mp3 is decoded for playback or decoded to be burnt, result is the same.

by **jkhuri44** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:12 am

nah rick, its not yours :P I told them we should go to turtlerock, their "manager" thought otherwise....so whatever, i wasnt in the mood at that stage to start a war.

the master sounds awesome. no problem with it...

i played it in my itunes....and i dunno if i heard anything different or bad? i think i need to go to the person's house and check it out for myself...i dunno what the hell is going on

thanks kurt for the dsp reminder..i will check that out...assuming though their DSP player is on while listening to other music....

i've been through the whole "check the rip rate thing' wth the band...they're ripping at 128 k...and say it sounds bad..im like "DERRR" but they say that all their other 128K rips dont sound bad....so... (shrugs)

by **Chris H** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:22 am

Thirteen wrote:I think that people don't understand that when you burn a CD from iTunes you are making an AIFF from a crappy compressed file, so the CD is going to sound even worse than the mp3 in iTunes.

Not necessarily so.( unless i'm totaly off the mark) When importing to iTunes (on a mac) you have the option of choosing the file type on import. I always set it to AIFF. Another option: i don't always import from iTunes but drag and drop from the CD.
In the ITunes Preferences you can turn off (or on) Crossfade, Sound Enhancer and Soundcheck. So if you play your CD in someone elses computer unless you check the pref's you don't know whats being done on playback. And if you import it without checking the import settings then you are in the dark as to what you will end up with. eh?

by **jkhuri44** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:29 am

thanks chris and others for the tips.

i loath itunes like the plague, i probably shouldnt ..being in the music game, its probably stupid of me....heck :(

but yeah...i will check that stuff out, thanks Chris H/kurt for those tips!

by **Text_Edifice** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 8:33 am

check that they haven't got sound enhancer or sound check selected under playback options - these screw around with spectral / spatial content and dynamic range to make it sound 'better'.

by **musikwerks** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 8:46 am

Sound Enhancer.

iTunes is just a playback device. At it's core is quicktime, the foundation of most digital media.

It's "sound" is determined by your import and playback settings.

by **jkhuri44** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 10:30 am

will get to the bottom of this asap...

what gets me in the knots is my iTunes is playing back pretty nicely....and there's isnt ,and they are insisting they're not doing anything dumb! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRGHH!!!

whats really confusing is that the sound enhancer would also be turned on for the music they are comparing their EP to...so im not sure turning it off will be doing anything...coz when we tested our EP against other stuff, the boys liked their EP...buy the same token, the Sound enhancer should be doing the same thing both to their Ep and other bands references.....

.....will get to the bottom of this damn it!

by **Martin** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:21 pm

yeah itunes sound enhancer is a horrible thing, first thing to do when you install itunes is turn that shizer off

by **Gian** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:27 pm

there was an article back in AT in the mac section which described a better way of importing it. Anyone remember the issue no.?

Sound enhancing might also be on by default, I remember going in an turning it off.

by **jkhuri44** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:30 pm

just reclarifying, even playback on the cd sounded bad....and if sound enhancer IS on, its also on for the other music playing (which they are using to compare).

by **Gian** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 1:46 pm

jkhuri44 wrote:just reclarifying, even playback on the cd sounded bad....and if sound enhancer IS on, its also on for the other music playing (which they are using to compare).

So, to clarify even further, it sounded bad playing directly from the CD in iTunes?

Who asked if the CD was a copy of the original?

by **jkhuri44** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 2:03 pm

the cd copy was fine, we checked it before i gave it to em :) sounded good on all other systems.

by **heathen** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 2:24 pm

So what's wrong with it it, describe the sound? Have you tried it on different computers with the itunes player?

by **jkhuri44** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 2:45 pm

they said it was quieter, and duller...than the other music on iTunes...

but when we tested the same songs on stereo, they were the same quality and volume?!

im pissed i cant go to their house today and check it out...this thread is probably moot to alot of you guys here! :(

by **musikwerks** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 3:15 pm

I reckon it's not your problem. You're their audio producer, not their IT guy.

by **TimS** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 3:32 pm

musikwerks wrote:I reckon it's not your problem. You're their audio producer, not their IT guy.

Valid point K..
If it went out to them sounding perfect, then its their issue, not yours Jamil..

by **Gian** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 4:35 pm

musikwerks wrote:I reckon it's not your problem. You're their audio producer, not their IT guy.

they may have loaded the songs on iTunes, as you can set that up as default - and it may have done that automatically, and then it plays from the hard-disk version instead of directly from the CD and when it copied it was compressed heaps.

also, are they using a mac or a pc, a laptop or a desktop, what playback system are they using.

by **heathen** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 4:53 pm

musikwerks wrote:I reckon it's not your problem. You're their audio producer, not their IT guy.

Yeah I agree, if it sounds the same as other cd's played in a stereo then it's fine and the guy with the itunes player has done something verzÃ¶gert.

by **Text_Edifice** » Fri Jul 03, 2009 7:17 pm

jkhuri44 wrote:they said it was quieter, and duller...than the other music on iTunes...(

would that be the other music on iTunes (in their library / on their hardrive) that's being affected by sound check / enhancer?

iTunes playback sound quality?

iTunes playback sound quality?

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