itunes bad sound

It worked! Thanks a lot...

If the plist files don't show up, it's because the Finder needs to be instructed to show the Library Folder. This can be done opening a Finder window, and then pressing cmd-j. A window then shows up in which the option "Show Library Folder" needs to be checked. This Library Folder contains the "Preferences" folder, which contains these plist files. Delete both files (com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist and com.apple.iTunes.plist), restart the computer and everything should work correctly now.

Make sure you're looking for it in the user (or Home) Library folder, and not the other. There are three Library folders. The User's, Public and the System's. The public is located in /Library, yours in ~/Library (or /Users/your_user_name/Library) and System's in /System/Library.

I believe the Library folder is hidden by default since Lion. You can also access it by pressing the Option key and clicking on the Go menu in finder.

-JJR

Glad it helped!

Also, you can access the Library folder faster by pressing Option and then going to the Go menu. The Library folder will show up there. 🙂

-JJR

Indeed. When trying to empty my trash, iTunes, not running, it said the eq.plist could not be deleted. So there is apparently a stealth server component that isn't letting go and a full restart seems to be the way to clear the preferences.

Deleting those two prefs files, and restarting fixed my iTunes EQ problem. Yay! For those who are having sound problems outside of iTunes, that's a whole different problem. Good luck.

I'd imagine that the .plist files remain loaded in the OS even when in the trash. It's not until a restart is performed that new .plist files override the deleted ones. It's even possible that the only file that needs to be completely deleted is the eq .plist, but I didn't test for that. I deleted both at once and then restarted. It would be nice to isolate the specific problem, but it's cool that it has been narrowed down to these two.

Those experiencing issues outside should try to erase those two files as well. It might sound weird, but I did notice some subtle differences in sound when messing around with the iTunes EQ while listening to music from Spotify (not anymore since the fix though). Who knows, maybe the EQ could be messing around with system-wide settings. The way I see it, there's nothing to lose by trying.

cheers,

-JJR

Falcon413, I took your suggestion per Greenteabefree and all seems cool now! I was a little surprised that a corupted itune.pdlist file from upgrading to Mavericks would affect the sounds for other music related apps and url's such as pandora or youtube.......but it appears that is the case.

And thanks also to MHD_MUS

Thanks a lot,

Dave

I'm very glad about that! Means I wasn't hearing stuff. Hehe.

I was honestly extremely surprised. Didn't make sense to me and thought I was going insane. May I ask what app were you using that was affected? And can you still hear a difference if you modify the EQ? I can say that Spotify is now completely unaffected by the EQ, as it should be.

-JJR

Pandora, Youtube, MplayerX - mp3 payer, iTunes, Logic Pro X.....if played through internal speakers. I have never even tryied the EQ when using the internal Mac Air speakers..

Thanks, your method seems to be the fix for the iTunes EQ problem.

You don't even know how much I went through before finding this solution... reseting the PRAM and SMC, reinstalling OS X, deleting Bezel Service files... I went through so much stress thinking it was a hardware/sound card problem. Thank you SO much

I too can varify that this works.

Just a word of warning though, it will wipe out any custom equalizer presets you may have made.

It works only if you use the iTune EQ presets. If you make your own new EQs even after deleting the preference files, you are back to the same problem again, so making your own EQs is practicallly unusable. Seriously Apple, this is some bad coding on your part.

Reinstall iTunes. It's not complicated at all and has solved these issues for me. Simply download and open the .DMG, quit iTunes, then run the installer.

No settings were changed or lost and everything sounds fine.

Here's a support doc with more details on reinstalling. http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2311