iPhone (iOS 5) High Bass Audio Distortion

Guys, I just plugged in headphones to iphone 4.0 5 minutes after upgrade and the sound is terrible - not particularly basey songs either - MY Chemical romance. Turning on sound check helps mildly - but can still hear heavy distortion - mainly in left channel only.

They have killed my phone...

@ shunu2565

That sounds plausible, it would mean the error is in the "AAC high-efficiency" decoder codec in the new 'Music' app of iOS 5.

Do you think that 'Sound check' or preset volumes can re-encode the music files? Perhaps that is the reason why some people found these options as the solution.

I checked some random songs in my library and they are mostly encoded with LAME or others. But all my files are MP3s, I don't have any AAC, do you think it would be possible to get this compression in Mp3 files?

well... I'm a huge fan of AAC, so I always convert. I've never tried all kinds of lame mp3 files, but for me the mp3 files were ok.. there might be nothing to do with encoding and sound check, if those were the things that were causeing the problem, that's because of sound peaking.

but if anyone who could not solve this problem, I highly recommend try to re-encode the file and check if what happens...

re-encoding was theonly solution in my case.

Im having the same problem. All my music isnt playing since i upgraded my phone 4 to ios5

i did the sound check thing and it didnt work..... should i have done that before syncing music?

i checked convert higher bit rate songs to 128 kbps ACC???

this is ridiculous!!!!

Ok none of those fixes work for me and for those who don't know there's a massive difference in sound quality between Wav & lossless and aac & mp3. And then there's the the big question why the @@@@ should I have to change all my music and my listening pleasure I.e the sound quality of my recordings just too try and make it work because apple has changed its music app sound levels. I think people are missing the point, mine and everyone else's recordings have all worked fine for the last 3 years and for me over 4 different iPhones, the device has sounded awesome with any format I've thrown at it.

Bottom line is this new update has ruined the sound for me and a lot of people's. All apple have to do is return the music app to what it use to be. If not then its jailbreak time to return it to the previous firmware or this iPhone will go on sale. This is a problem apple need to address its simple, more and more people are starting to notice the problem with the sound of their music and why should you have to change encoder, EQ settings, soundcheck, re sync, third party apps just to try and kill an over zealous sound engineer tweekin the bass EQ so high that it over blows all your recordings. That is the real problem.

As my posts are now more of a moan than a help to other readers I shall take a deep breath and pray that the nxt update will solve this major issue as none of the fixes work for me :(

(tho you shouldn't have too try and fix it)

Apple pls fix this problem.........

Exactly, I don't wanna spend more time guessing where is the problem, as a customer Iw ant an update/fix NOW.

I dont listen to music anymore, and I wanna downgrade to iOS4, if no quick fix from Apple.

Aslo, no one comments it, but apart of distorsion the overall volume of my songs is much lower !!! the volume adjustement of new Itunes doesn't work well.

Maybe Itunes is also guilty here, not only iOS5....

Guys this fixed the problem for me, first of all the problem is in the iTune library vs the iPhone, or better yet in the way the new iPhone softaware works with the iTune music library.

1) Open itune and click on music

2) Highlight all your songs

3) Open the information window (command i) and select option

4) In volume adjustment the volume bar will be set on "none" unless you have all your songs

set at a different level, in any case move the bar anywhere "plus" or "minus", close the window allow iTune to set all your songs to the new setting, repeat the process and bring it the bar back to "none",

again close the window, allow iTune to set all our songs to none this might take a while depending

on how many songs you have

5) Last plug your iPhone in your computer and when it shows up in iTune click the iPhone then select music and finally sync, all your songs on your iPhone will be sync to the iTune music library new setting and the problem will be permanently gone....

This seems to have fixed it for me!!! Well done.

Ok this is really strange, have followed Gianni nyc recommendations and it has worked for some of my recordings and the rest are still the same. The strange thing is all my recordings are recorded the same way encoded the same and all have had the same options volume b4 and after update strange how some have worked but others not. But I tip my hat to you sir, it's in the right direction will play around with iTunes and will post again later for an update.

I have spent most of the day playing around on iTunes and following on from Gianni nyc recommendations and for me it's still not right but it is better. After backing up my music to an external hdd I wiped iTunes off my mac then reinstalled it and then imported my music back onto it. I then followed Gianni nyc recommendation and left it to sync with my phone. Once complete I listened to the recordings and the distortion was gone but also the volume level was very low mainly as I have always set my options volume at 100%. With this in mind I then changed the options volume in itunes to 100% and resync'd my iphone and when complete I listened but the distortion was there. Ok back to square one, started again changed the volume to minus 10 let iTunes sync then changed the options volume back to 0 let iTunes resync then changed the volume again to plus 50% and resync'd my iPhone. It now sounds a little bit louder than having the options volume set to 0 but the sound still sounds like its on the thresh hold of distortion, not right in but it can still just about be herd.

For me this is still not 100% right but it makes listening my music slightly more bearable but this is still an issue that needs to be addressed by apple.

RogueRaptor, you've kind of answered one of the things I was thinking about , i.e. rebuilding the library on the new iTunes. I thought maybe the changes in the new version were being applied to files that had already had their volume increased, hence the distortion. However, I think you've disproved that.

Would you say that the reduction of distortion you've achieved is at the expense of volume? Not to undermine your considerable efforts but it might be fair to assume that the distortion is still there but can't quite be heard as the volume is limited to +50. I'm reluctant to try this as I have a very big library (100+ gb) and I don't think the +100 % we've had our music at is excessively loud; it certainly doesn't need reduction and why should we? Could it be that apple are attempting once again to dictate the volume we listen at? If so, we may not get a fix for this anytime soon.

Thoughts?

Ok. I replicated RogueRaptor's porcess regarding changing the volume levels on the tracks in my library (I didn't bother wiping iTunes and reinstalling). And I can confirm it has worked! I moved my volume levels on a sample track from +100% to 0%, synced, and found the problem had gone. I then took the same track and moved it to +50%. Unfortunately, unlike Rogue Raptor I could immediately hear distortion. So I moved all my music down to 0% and resynced. The problem has gone. And I would like to add for those who have their doubts or are concerned about sacrficing volume in order to get rid of this problem as I did, to my ears the difference in volume between +100% and 0% is now negligable. It's certainly less pronounced than it was pre iOS5 and iTunes 10.5 when if you moved the volume down from +100% to 0% it made a huge difference.

What does this mean? Well, I would describe this as an effective workaround, not a solution. If Apple are again telling us what the maximum volume should be to listen to our music then they should remove the option of the volume enhancer as all it does currently is distort high end bass and treble. It is interesting that tracks at +100% sound fine through the PC and desktop speakers but unlistenable over headphones on the iphone/ipod. Has this been done to protect listeners' ears? If so, remove the volume enhancer functionality as it does not work now and it's presence is only confusing users.

Many thanks though to RogueRaptor and originally gianni nyc.

Folks,

Now I'm no expert in music on iPhones or iTunes and I don't fiddle with much - I just like it to sound good. I've changed nothing from norm and still got the distortion ...

But one other thing, all these solutions are great but, and please correct me if I'm wrong, I can not change all these recordings by changing volume levels or whatever. For example, how do I do it for all the standard, already installed ring tones, beeps for this, notification sounds for that because they are all distorted too.

So, if I'm right and you can't 're-do' them then there is still a basic fault with the presentation of sound following the upgrade to iOS 5.0 and the workaround is flawed ...

Hi Thebosspower

Apologies for the delay in response I had to take a break from testing as it was driving me nuts. Ok here's what I've found out so far plus a little explanation of "why's and methods"

First of all why set the volume in itunes options at 100% ok most amplifier devices have a volume control but what manufacturers don't tell you is amplification will only go so far until it runs into distortion. For example a hi fi amplifier may have a volume control of let's say 1-10, 1 being low and 10 being high, now I like loud music so naturally I'd crank the volume upto 10 but I know the amplifier possibly sounds its loudest at 8 and pushing it further on to 10 will only creat distortion in the music as the amp struggles to control the sound.

So what can I do to make the amp work less and be more in control of the sound, well I can up the level of the recording or make the recording louder this will then mean I don't need as much amplification to make it sound loud. We could go into "sensertivity" or 1 watt at 1 meter distance but that opens up another can of worms so to cut a long story short I like my recordings to be as loud as possibly so that I don't have to push my iPhone volume all the way to max to make it sound loud. I use iTunes as a pre amp putting the recordings at 100% in iTunes options means I can have the volume just under the fast forward sign on the graphics in stead of having to max it out. Remember you iPhone has an amplifier built in to it and can suffer from distortion like the detail I put above about hi fi amps. A loud clean signal needs less amplification to sound loud.

Still with me?

Ok I've have tried and tested different ways of adjusting the volume of my recordings and how the sound compares over different systems. I'am fortunate that I've spent the last 20 year producing music and having to deal with different band widths and frequencys so apologies if I sound anal, I just like a pure clean loud sound.

My test kit is Apple ear buds, sennhiesser HD 25, grado 600 headphones and a full Naim hi fi system with Sonus faber speakers.

Before I forget TheBossPower mentioned that he couldn't notice the volume difference between 0% and 100% in iTunes Options. Well there is 1.5 db difference in sound loudness between the two and ok you may not notice the sound difference but how much more iPhone volume do you need to apply to make your music sound at a level your use too? But please also remember we have all got different hearing so one mans loud is anothers quiet.

After following Gianni nyc recommendations it does bannish the dreaded bass distortion but also lowers the sound output of the recordings meaning more iPhone volume required to get the same loudness as before. The only reason I wiped iTunes of my mac was to test to see if iTunes itself was the cause of the distortion but it didn't so there's no need to do it. As my previous post states I brought iTunes options volume down to 50% and while the sound is louder than 0% the music is still creeping into distortion something that never happened before update ios 5. Also I have noticed that the sound is ever so slightly different. The bass sounds a little artificial or as if someone has nudged the bass EQ up slightly, very deep bass can get muddled within the mid bass and high treble again something that never happened before.

To conclude I am without doubt that the sound has been altered in some way from previous and for me it's in a negative way. Yes I can live with lowering the iTunes options volume to 0% or even to 30% but I have to max out the iPhone volume which I know means the iPhone amp is at its limits.

Gianni NYC