sound quality in itunes on a mac

steved · Post by **steved** » Thu Feb 19, 2009 3:10 pm

When I play 320kbps files in itunes they sound thinner and appear to have less authority than when played in quicktime. All sound enhancement and eq is turned off in itunes - and the original files were not converted in any way when they were imported - only the file link was imported. Playing some Beethoven in itunes and listening with headphones the sound made me feel distinctly queezy.

I have found links where other people have thought the same - but nothing conclusive.

I understand that itunes uses the quicktime engine - so you would think that playback would be the same.

Has anyone else experienced this ? ... or have any idea what might cause it ?

*** Just searched and realised that this is not a new topic ... sorry ***

locojohn · Post by **locojohn** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 3:46 pm

Hello. Are you sure it's not your imagination? Which version are you using? Playback quality problems were in version 6 and 7, but I read they were fixed in version 8. I actually compared playback quality between Cog X (the free player I am also using to play WAV/FLAC files) and iTunes 8 and can't tell a difference (through Grace m902B to my monitors or AKG-K400 phones).

Andrejs

john doe by choice · Post by **john doe by choice** » Fri Feb 20, 2009 8:34 pm

I don't know about the sound quality being less, I listen to itunes through my M-Audio PF610>BM5A's with no problem, and I'm pretty snobby about MP3 quality, so I'm almost always using 320kbps files, if not wave or converted FLAC.

One thing I do know is that the audio control in Itunes should stay where it is - it clips when I turn it up from the default setting, and definitely sounds bad.