ios 8.4 music app sounds muddled; start/stop points not working

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Level 1

4 points

ios 8.4 music app sounds muddled; start/stop points not working

I'm an audiophile who has always struggled with the quality & changes that Apple seems to make to its music app every 3-5 years (codec wise). I've had an iphone since orig one.

upgraded 8.3 to 8.4 (iph 6+, 128gb) & was SADLY disappointed w/new Music app. You finally (after years of being completely clueless) started respecting the EQ setting for each individual song for playback on iphone (it always worked on PC/itunes playback). While good, I no longer need it. In typical Apple fashion, you disregard issues and when you fix them, we've lived so long without them that they are no longer relevant.

But the reason I'm writing is bc in the new music app, music sounds muddled (played in $25k of equip) and the start/stop points no longer work. All my songs start playing from 0:00.0 secs vs whatever point I set.

Can you please fix the sound codecs and start/stop points?

Also, why are you changing my Album Art w/o my permission? I liked the ones I had.

PS: I called your iphone support, which of course, for a change, was clueless about everything. The rep didn't even know that you could set start/stop points for songs. That's my history with you guys, a bunch of people clueless about the software they produce and support. I always have to fix everything on my own in some creative way - in this case I just reverted to 8.3 and won't move forward until I see these issues are fixed.

Windows XP

Posted on Jul 3, 2015 12:33 PM

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Answer 1

Rysz

Level 8

44,391 points

Jul 3, 2015 12:43 PM in response to CarlosP9999

YYou are not addressing Apple here, just other users.

SUbmit your issues to Apple here: http://www.apple.com/feedback/

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Answer 2

CarlosP9999 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 3, 2015 1:41 PM in response to Rysz

I'm aware. The text in my post above comes straight out of my feedback (thus already done) post to Apple and hence the tone.

I also posted it here for anyone else who might not even have a clue yet on this issue so that they don't go through the same hassle as me in case that's important to them.

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Answer 3

CarlosP9999 Author

Level 1

4 points

Jul 4, 2015 12:17 AM in response to CarlosP9999

UPDATE: so I think I figured out the issue and it is related to the iCloud Music Library feature.

So, in my case I think the issue was that since I had iCloud Music Library turned on, it was streaming my 'own local' songs. Thus, even though the songs were available on my phone, it seems it was streaming them.

The confusing thing is that some of the songs I have duplicate versions bc I have the 'original' track and then the one I 'enhanced/equalized' to sound better. Thus, both versions of my song sounded crappy and were indistinguishable from each other - again, I'm guessing because they were both streamed from the same Apple online version.

This is probably the reason as to why they had a different Album Art than the one I had for them in my music library. Making matters even more confusing is that each of these 2 songs had the title names I had given them (original song titles with small abbreviations denoting Original track vs Mod track, and the type of enhancement done).

Similarly, since it was probably streaming the music, that's why it didn't respect my local settings for start/stop points. And the 'muddled' sound quality was likely due to perhaps misunderstanding my connection? (Wifi vs Cellular). According to Eddy Cue, bitrate depends on connection type - although I was on a good Wifi (25-30 mbps).

Lastly, I found it odd, but whenever I played any one of the two files, the other copy also displayed the double line play/pause sign.

So I've read several articles online that talk about how iCloud Music Library messes up your album art, creates dups and a whole host of other screw ups. So I'm going to keep that off until a year or two when all the kinks get worked out. I've put a lot of effort into my music library to have it all messed up. I still remember the pain of keeping my keyboard shortcuts synchronized via iCloud. It took me a few months to figure out a solution.

FUN FACT: I updated an older iphone 4 from 8.2 to 8.4 so that I could do more testing and compare my 6+ on 8.3 -- the result was that all the music Album Art on the iphone 4 was 100% deleted. And stayed missing even after doing a sync to my PC's iTumes library.

Use iCloud Library at your own risk and Good Luck!!

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