iTunes 8 Sounds Awful - Everything Else Sounds Fine
I installed iTunes 8 and the sound is all messed up. It echoes and sounds really tinny. All other apps sound great. I checked the EQ setting, etc. Any ideas?
I get the same problems with itune 8 sound is tinny and distorted an upgrade I don't think.
It sounds like a cheap speakers from the seventies pretty poor upgrade
Keep in mind that custom settings on the EQ are hosed in iTunes 8. Once a song with a custom EQ preset plays, iTunes 8 keeps using the custom EQ preset instead of reverting to the normal setting. This makes all songs sound screwy except for the ones with a custom EQ.
That may not be your problem, but it was mine for a few days until I figured it out.
After installing iTunes 8.0 I also now have terrable sound. I know what the problem is but no way to correct it. The gain is set too high on the songs. It is as if you went into the settings and set the gain up to +100%. Way too much gain. For the record it is via digital and my analog outputs. Is there any way to turn down the gain? NOT the volume bar at the top. That does not help.
Have you tried turning Sound Check off? I'm not having any trouble with it, but maybe you've got some bogus Volume values? (You can see those values in the Summary pane of the Info panel -- only in the single-track view, of course).
The "sticky" custom EQ presets were causing me problems too. After I noticed this bug, I changed the EQ preset to "Flat" on all songs that didn't already have custom EQ preset. This seems to be a satisfactory temporary workaround until Apple comes out with a fix.
@ARWilson -
is your audio output from your Mac 'split' by anything, i.e. do you have an audio-splitter plugged into your audio-output which sends a signal to speakers and headphones or the like?
I was being driven crazy by same symptoms as you (tinny treble, muffled audio, audible compression artifacts) and after being loco for the last three hours searching for fixes, found some odd stuff and fix;
Changing left/right balance (via Audio MIDI Setup in Utilities folder, or easier in System Prefs. > Sound) to either all left or all right channel completely resolved: treble tinniness gone, muffled sound gone, awful audible compression artifacts gone, etc.; plus all sound still came through both speakers and headphones which shouldn't happen if I'm running only all left/right - so something goofy was happening. On weird hunch I unplugged the audio splitter I have plugged into my Macbook audio-out port (I had headphones plugged into one output on it and speakers into the other; it's a Belkin splitter). All audio problems completely resolved once I removed the audio-out splitter and yes, I changed channels/balance back to 'normal' so I'm hearing normal two-channel, balanced sound, both left and right.
I've never had an issue w/ my audio splitter on three different Mac's in eight years, but something in either recent iTunes 8.0.x update or Quicktime is having a meltdown w/ my splitter and was causing the awful iTunes sound (echoes/tinniness) so I'll be manually changing speakers/headphone connection when I switch between them. I'm curious if you're also using a splitter - hope this might help, as well.
