Heavy compression on Apple Music: does anyone else hear this?

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Level 1

21 points

Heavy compression on Apple Music: does anyone else hear this?

On the first day of the new Apple Music streaming service I trying out the Beats1 station and heard a rock song that sounded compressed...heavily compressed. I'm not talking about lossy bitrate compression here, but rather the dynamic compression. I was familiar with the song and, to my ear, the compression was noticeable and did not sound good. I decided to try streaming it through the service itself and not the station to see if it was different. It wasn't.

I've been using Spotify for a few years now and did a quick A/B/C comparison of that song between Spotify, the track in my iTunes library (Apple Lossless converted through iTunes from a CD) and the streaming version of the track on Apple Music. This confirmed what I heard.

Does anyone else hear this/notice this? Does anyone have any technical info on the "Mastered for iTunes" process (that may be a culprit)? Thoughts? Observations?

I would love to switch to Apple Music service after my trial, but so far this quality will kill that choice for me. I would love to hear what others think. Bonus points if you are an audio professional as well.

Thanks,

Todd

(For what it is worth, I've been an audio professional in music and TV for the past 10+ years. All my listening for the above was done on my MacBook Pro feeding a pair of to Genelec 8020A Studio Monitors.)

Posted on Jul 29, 2015 7:17 PM

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Answer 1

Yer_Man

Level 10

165,978 points

Jul 30, 2015 8:37 AM in response to iROCK

This on one song?

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Answer 2

Jul 30, 2015 11:09 AM in response to iROCK

I agree. This is on Radio. I don't know how it is on Apple Music, becouse I do not use this service any more. But on Radio Beast 1 compression (for sound-mix output levels) is hardly noticable.

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Answer 3

BradPDX

Level 1

128 points

Jul 30, 2015 2:18 PM in response to iROCK

Interesting - as a musician, I am pretty well attuned to level compression and often hear too much on recordings. But in this case, I'm not hearing it.

It might make sense that Beats 1 radio would be dynamically compressed, following the behavior of terrestrial radio (great for use in cars). As to other tracks - no. Apple Music tracks sound identical to store bought tracks. I have compared many, but I don't listen to Beats 1 simply because it isn't to my taste.

It is possible that Apple Music is engaging something like Sound Check, which adjusts the static gain of a track (not compression). That would help to make Apple Music playlists more consistent in volume. Spotify does something similar for the same reasons.

Mastered for iTunes isn't what's going on, regardless. That program allows music producers to give Apple high resolution versions of music files (e.g., 96kHz, 24 bit depth) from which Apple creates standard 44.1kHz AAC files. This allows the AAC algorithms to do a better job when compared with 44.1kHz CD masters.

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