What is wrong with iTunes 11.0 sound quality?

dear mark,

once again thanks for your reply.

i actually fixed the problem via a suggestion from a friend in london who had the same issue.

before i post the resolution, if anyone's going to try this i suggest you back up your library to another HD in case of issue.

this is for a mac:

the fix is quite simple, select all your music at one time, hit command/i (file menu option > get info) - a window will pop up, select the "options" tab and change the volume adjustment to 100%. your music will now play at normal volumes.

you can also adjust the equalizer presets for an even greater boost but i found that any adjustment here introduced noise so i chose the "flat" option - which as i understand it - is the levels at which the music was originally recorded/released. so at least for me "flat" has no distortion.

hopefully this will help someone else reclaim their music!

cheers-

cindy

Cindy:

That's great! Glad to know your sound is back to normal.

As I've said all along, iTunes provides bit-perfect playback "out of the box," but that means all signal processing must be defeated: EQ, Sound Check, Sound Enhancer, etc. I hadn't thought to mention the per-song volume adjustment feature because I couldn't imagine that could happen globally to an entire library. Thanks for reporting your cure for the problem! I'm sure it will help others who run into this.

So the question I have: Why did iTunes think your songs had -50% volume adjustments after the update from 10 to 11? I assume you didn't put those volume adjustments in your song library, but had you ever used Sound Check or a third-party plugin such as iVolume, or was this just a weird update glitch? The fact that it happened to a number of people (but a small fraction of total users) tells me that there is a reason for the glitch -- other than something random like sunspots. 😉

In any case, the iTunes volume control, which operates digitally, will add noise and lower the resolution. Lowering the volume by 50% will take the resolution from 16 bits to 8 bits (I assume). That's a disaster sonically! If it's just low background music, perhaps it's not so terrible, but if you then crank it up in the analog domain at your preamp or receiver, it will sound atrocious (as you and others reported).

BTW, I use a program called Pure Music in conjunction with iTunes. It defeats the iTunes volume control and substitutes a high-resolution 32-bit volume control. In that case, a 50% volume reduction would still achieve 16-bit resolution, but in general I control the volume externally at the preamp.

Take care -- Mark

Yes this is not an issue of comparing machines but comparing a song file played on the same machine through Finder or VLC and then comparing that to how it sounds played through the same machine through iTunes. Songs are just drained of their essence through iTunes! In fact the quality is so poor through iTunes that there is a good enough argument to dump it and use something else. What are the other options to using iTunes as a music library?

filks1 wrote:

... Songs are just drained of their essence through iTunes! In fact the quality is so poor through iTunes that there is a good enough argument to dump it and use something else. What are the other options to using iTunes as a music library?

I keep repeating: iTunes provides bit-perfect audio output if you configure it correctly. That's a fact. There is no funademtal problem with the sound quality. The bug of unintended l lowered volume is extremely rare, and Cindy seems to have provided the fix above. Have you tried her solution?

There is no sonic reason to dump iTunes, but JRiver has a Mac version in alpha test that can be downloaded for free; the pre-release special price is about $35. JRiver will be the media player to beat once it's on the market.

Hi Mark

Ok I have to admit that I adjusted all the volumes to 100% in Sound Preferences and on the iTunes slider and that did in fact bring the playback experience equal to that of playing straight though the finder.

I then followed Cindy's tip of adjusting individual track volumes to 100% in the info section of each track and this has actually doubled the volume compared to that of what I was originally listening to through finder.

So are you sure that the 50% setting which appears to be default on the individual track settings in iTunes

is not the best. I can't understand why Apple would risk a lower sound quality setting if it knew that making a default setting of 100% instead of 50% was going to give an all round better result. I say that as I'm thinking now that at 100% the sound is just feeling a tad driven.

But anyway, with all that said and done I can't quite believe what a difference is made in clarity to the sound by just raising all the other volmes in Sound Preferences and on the iTunes slider to 100% and running the Equaliser flat.

Thanks for your reply, I appreciate it. I will now keep iTunes but checking out JRiver anyway.

filks1 wrote:

Hi Mark

Ok I have to admit that I adjusted all the volumes to 100% in Sound Preferences and on the iTunes slider and that did in fact bring the playback experience equal to that of playing straight though the finder.

I then followed Cindy's tip of adjusting individual track volumes to 100% in the info section of each track and this has actually doubled the volume compared to that of what I was originally listening to through finder.

...

Thanks for independently confirming Cindy's fix. Glad the sound is back.

The default setting for the iTunes "per track" volume adjustment is 100%. The 50% setting seems to be a bug that happens (very rarely) when the iTunes app is updated. Only Apple knows what's going on there. Maybe you can submit a bug report to Apple to make sure the iTunes software people do something about it. (I assume they're aware of the bug, but who knows?)

As I said earlier, volume adjustments in iTunes are done digitally, throwing out bits at the rate of 1 bit for every 6dB of level. A 50% reduction in volume will take your 16-bit tracks down to 8 bits, which will be quite bad sounding. To say the sound is drained of essence is putting it mildly!

Cindy,

Thanks for continuing to research even though most people insist that Apple could not possibly be the source of the problem. I too have been struggling with this extremely frustrating issue. I did as you suggested and there is improvement, but the quality is still lacking.

How absurd is it that Apple refuses to respond to an obvious bug with the update? Other "updates" have totally screwed up issues with iCal and contacts. I am pretty sick of Apple!

Ok I have to confirm that increasing track volumes to 100% is not the fix. Infact as I mentioned in my last posting (That Mark you failed to include in your reply) increasing track volumes to 100% does in my opinion create distortion or make the track sound a tad driven. The default setting for track volume is 'None'. Not +50% and certainly not +100%. Bit rate effects the quality when you import the track from a CD or Download, but that as far as I can see is it is it. Highering or lowering volume does not effect it as the bitrate is established on import.

It's like saying a 16 Bit photograph loses quality when you make it lighter or darker.

I think you guys were confused about this so hope this helps.

filks1 wrote:

Ok I have to confirm that increasing track volumes to 100% is not the fix. Infact as I mentioned in my last posting (That Mark you failed to include in your reply) increasing track volumes to 100% does in my opinion create distortion or make the track sound a tad driven. The default setting for track volume is 'None'. Not +50% and certainly not +100%.

Correct. Good catch. Big oops there. When people wrote that the volume should be set to 100%, they did not mean to boost it to the "+100%" setting. The "None" setting means the volume is at 100%, no boost and no cut. Definitely "None" is the correct default setting.

Highering or lowering volume does not effect it as the bitrate is established on import.

It's like saying a 16 Bit photograph loses quality when you make it lighter or darker.

I think you guys were confused about this so hope this helps.

Not correct. The photograph analogy is not apt. Digital volume controls lose 1 bit of resolution for every 6 dB of attenuation. This has nothing to do with the resolution of the source file. That's why high-end digital volume controls (and mixing studios) operate at 24 or 32 bits, even if the source file is 16 bits. Here's one explanation, but you can find more technical ones if you Google it: http://www.avsforum.com/t/170414/can-anyone-explain-the-theory-behind-digital-vo lume-attenuation-without-quality-loss

filks1 wrote:

... It's like saying a 16 Bit photograph loses quality when you make it lighter or darker.

BTW, here's the correct analogy in photography, when Photoshop has fewer bits to work with: http://x-equals.com/blog/taking-a-byte-out-of-bit-depth-jpeg-vs-raw/

So, what is the correct MAC fix? How do you delete plug-ins? and will that cause problems with external jambox speakers, etc?

This is frustrating that Apple will not address this problem!

Thanks!

Ok well I'm not a scientist but I'm talking about playback levels here, not altering the waves amplitude. So lightening or darkening an image in 16bit RAW or Tiff suffers no loss of information to the file. Just as I imagine highering or lowering output volume levels does not rid the sound file of any information, you just can't here it quite so well. Well that's my take on it!

I'll leave at this. I appreciate your help with highering all levels elsewhere as that has solved my problem.

Thanks for that!

was having trouble w itunes v 11.0.5.5 playing much quieter than the rest of system volume...found it was due to a setting on itunes not any of this plugin stuff people are talking about

edit, preferences, playback, 'Bitrate for Audio Playback'

mine was initially set at the lowest setting (44.1khz) but when i put it all the way up to 192 the sound is consistent w rest of system volume

boom

pyckle, I'm using v 11.0.5.5 and I see nothing for "Bitrate for Audio Playback" in Playback preferences...

Are you on a Mac or Windows machine?

pyckle wrote:

was having trouble w itunes v 11.0.5.5 playing much quieter than the rest of system volume...found it was due to a setting on itunes not any of this plugin stuff people are talking about

edit, preferences, playback, 'Bitrate for Audio Playback'

mine was initially set at the lowest setting (44.1khz) but when i put it all the way up to 192 the sound is consistent w rest of system volume

boom

Pyckle, this makes no sense technically, and as Droolski pointed out, there is no iTunes Playback preference related to bitrate. (Although under the CD import settings, some formats allow for customization of the bitrate. For instance, I'm a video editor who uses 48k AIFF files for editing, so I set the preference to 48k if I'm importing an audio file for editing.)

Since this is the Mac support forum, I assume you're on a Mac. The controls for setting the playback bitrate is buried in the Audio Midi Setup app. This is strictly for A/D and D/A processing, and there is really nothing to be gained by using Audio Midi to upsample a 44.1 music file to 192k. It does not affect the volume -- unless the volume control is not set to the max in Audio Midi.

The places the volume can be set on a Mac: 1) the Sound control panel; 2) Audio Midi Setup; 3) iTunes itself via the volume control (or with "Sound Enhancer" and "Sound Check" processing in the Playback preferences); 4) in the file's metadata, via the "per track" volume adjustment.

Some people on this thread have reported that the track metadata got altered during the update so that the per-track volume was set too low. That's relatively easy to fix. The vast majority of people updating to iTunes 11 or 11.0.5 (5) have not experienced any issues with volume.