View Full Version : Good grief! iTunes really is RUBBISH for playback.
twelvebears
02-11-2011, 17:36
OK so my new Fiio E10 USB Headphone DAC/amp has become my new favorite gadget. Small, cute, well made and gives an instant SQ boost to any laptop or PC. It's SOOO good in fact that I'm probably going to buy a couple more and have one attached to each of the Macs that we use around the house, as all casual headphone usage on a regular basis.
The only issue I did have was when playing high-res 24bit files via Audirvana, which kept giving 'choppy' playback. All I had to do to fix it was to uncheck the 'Use max I/O buffer size' option in Audirvana and all is well.
While resolving this issue, I did revert to using iTunes in the course of testing out the problem and was really shocked at how flat and lifeless iTunes made the same tracks sound!
Two tracks which particularly showed the differences, which are now far more noticeable with the E10, were from 24bit versions of Talk Talk's Happiness Is Easy (from The Colour of Spring) and Talking Heads Burning Down the House (from Speaking in Tongues) Both these tracks have some great recorded acoustics via the E10 and Audirvana, but iTunes made both sound totally 2D.
Just a quickie - Have you set the quicktime/itunes playback to 24bit/96k?
Ta,
Ant
sq225917
02-11-2011, 20:30
My money is on not.
My money is on not.
I'm with you, considering the response ;)
Ant
Yup, been there doe that,makes a world of difference.
dave2010
04-11-2011, 12:07
OK so my new Fiio E10 USB Headphone DAC/amp has become my new favorite gadget. Small, cute, well made and gives an instant SQ boost to any laptop or PC. It's SOOO good in fact that I'm probably going to buy a couple more and have one attached to each of the Macs that we use around the house, as all casual headphone usage on a regular basis.
The only issue I did have was when playing high-res 24bit files via Audirvana, which kept giving 'choppy' playback. All I had to do to fix it was to uncheck the 'Use max I/O buffer size' option in Audirvana and all is well.
While resolving this issue, I did revert to using iTunes in the course of testing out the problem and was really shocked at how flat and lifeless iTunes made the same tracks sound!
Two tracks which particularly showed the differences, which are now far more noticeable with the E10, were from 24bit versions of Talk Talk's Happiness Is Easy (from The Colour of Spring) and Talking Heads Burning Down the House (from Speaking in Tongues) Both these tracks have some great recorded acoustics via the E10 and Audirvana, but iTunes made both sound totally 2D.
I'm curious as to what equipment and output you are or have been using. I have noticed problems by simply plugging a headphone plug into the back of my iMac - the quality is really not good enough. There is signal related noise, which is obvious on some headphones, though not all.
If you are using a digital link to a DAC I'd expect results to be much better.
dave2010
24-11-2011, 06:56
Following the discovery of problems ripping CDs with iTunes 10.5 and 10.5.1 I am seriously wondering about the use of iTunes. I was fairly happy with it until (a) I bought some Sennheiser HD 202s and (b) I tried ripping using iTunes 10.5. My concern is that I do find it OK ripping mostly, and it's very convenient. I don't really notice any problems when I stream to my Squeezebox (SB3), though the quality of sound from the audio plug on my iMac leaves quite a bit to be desired. There is low level noise, and it sounds like an echo of the music sometimes. If that's a playback only problem I don't care too much, but if the problem is getting into the rips, then I'm concerned that after months of ripping I'll have a library which will need to be ripped again.
OK - many people have said I should use EAC and a PC, but (a) I don't like Windows and (b) I don't think EAC is as easy to use as iTunes - I have used it.
For the most part I'll probably carry on with iTunes for a while. Do many iMac users find the audio quality from the headphone socket questionable? I didn't notice before I bought the 202s - and I thought the problems were due to the headphones - but they're not! The phones are just good enough that they actually pass through the **** stuck out on the audio socket.
The Pink Panther
24-11-2011, 07:54
If iTunes is used correctly there is simply nothing wrong with playback. Music sounds exactly how it should sound.
dave2010
24-11-2011, 08:10
If iTunes is used correctly there is simply nothing wrong with playback. Music sounds exactly how it should sound.There's ifs and buts there. My belief is that iTunes works on my iMac OK, BUT your comment "Music sounds exactly how it should sound" is rubbish. The sound from the audio (headphone) socket on my machine is definitely not great. I get much better results as far as I can tell using my Squeezebox on the same ripped material. Also, you perhaps haven't been following the issues re some CDs played/ripped via iTunes 10.5 and 10.5.1. Blow your ears off on some CDs it would!
Vincent Kars
24-11-2011, 09:40
One of the best rippers and easy to use: dbPoweramp but it is Win.
On OSX have a look at Max or XLD
http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Secure_ripping#Mac_OS.2FX
The Pink Panther
24-11-2011, 11:07
There's ifs and buts there. My belief is that iTunes works on my iMac OK, BUT your comment "Music sounds exactly how it should sound" is rubbish. The sound from the audio (headphone) socket on my machine is definitely not great. I get much better results as far as I can tell using my Squeezebox on the same ripped material. Also, you perhaps haven't been following the issues re some CDs played/ripped via iTunes 10.5 and 10.5.1. Blow your ears off on some CDs it would!
I am talking about iTunes as a program not the headphone output from your iMac. Further more, try not to use the word rubbish when replying to a post. it's not very concise and it winds people up. I am allowed my opinion.
If iTunes is set up correctly then it will play the files correctly. It's your choice as to how you listen after these files have started playing. you can take the signal out of your headphone jack or you could send it to another DAC using a digital cable. either way your listening method determines how your music sounds........... not iTunes..........unless you have altered the EQ.
wee tee cee
24-11-2011, 11:17
I use I tunes and cant really fault it.I dont have ant high res files just CDs.I have tried comparing windows media with the same disk ripped lossless.It does sound different but not any better.
The Pink Panther
24-11-2011, 11:30
A file is either read correctly or not read correctly, the latter bringing skips and so forth to be audible.
Once the file has been read correctly its really down to how well the DAC that is used has been implemented( be it in the computer or off board). Then your speakers and room acoustics, mood etc etc should become the only major factors effecting how your music is reproduced. Minor factors might include electrical noise from a dodgy power supply.
OK - many people have said I should use EAC and a PC, but (a) I don't like Windows and (b) I don't think EAC is as easy to use as iTunes - I have used it.
For the most part I'll probably carry on with iTunes for a while.
Why not take on board the advice webby gave you here, (http://theartofsound.net/forum/showthread.php?t=12468) posts 5 and 17 and use XLD? (http://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/23430/x-lossless-decoder)
dave2010
24-11-2011, 15:36
I shall replace "rubbish" with meaningless then. Note also the thread title!
The Pink Panther
24-11-2011, 15:41
I shall replace "rubbish" with meaningless then. Note also the thread title!
No its not meaningless. and have you read the thread?
I rip with iTunes to AIFF, I have also ripped with Max and I can not tell them apart both sound excellent.
dave2010
24-11-2011, 15:54
No its not meaningless. and have you read the thread?OK. It's incorrect then, IMO.
The Pink Panther
24-11-2011, 16:02
OK. It's incorrect then, IMO.
Many Thanks
OK so my new Fiio E10 USB Headphone DAC/amp has become my new favorite gadget. Small, cute, well made and gives an instant SQ boost to any laptop or PC. It's SOOO good in fact that I'm probably going to buy a couple more and have one attached to each of the Macs that we use around the house, as all casual headphone usage on a regular basis.
The only issue I did have was when playing high-res 24bit files via Audirvana, which kept giving 'choppy' playback. All I had to do to fix it was to uncheck the 'Use max I/O buffer size' option in Audirvana and all is well.
While resolving this issue, I did revert to using iTunes in the course of testing out the problem and was really shocked at how flat and lifeless iTunes made the same tracks sound!
Two tracks which particularly showed the differences, which are now far more noticeable with the E10, were from 24bit versions of Talk Talk's Happiness Is Easy (from The Colour of Spring) and Talking Heads Burning Down the House (from Speaking in Tongues) Both these tracks have some great recorded acoustics via the E10 and Audirvana, but iTunes made both sound totally 2D.
What I'd like to know is where you got the 24 bit version of 'The Colour of Spring' - or is it a needle drop? :)
Werner Berghofer
24-11-2011, 19:34
Andrew,
I rip with iTunes to AIFF, I have also ripped with Max and I can not tell them apart both sound excellent.
some opinion here, with the exception that I rip to ALAC instead of AIFF. Playback from iTunes sounds great, can’t hear a difference when comparing playback quality from iTunes with any other of the so-called “audiophile playback software” available for Mac OS X.
Werner.
There's ifs and buts there. My belief is that iTunes works on my iMac OK, BUT your comment "Music sounds exactly how it should sound" is rubbish. The sound from the audio (headphone) socket on my machine is definitely not great. I get much better results as far as I can tell using my Squeezebox on the same ripped material. Also, you perhaps haven't been following the issues re some CDs played/ripped via iTunes 10.5 and 10.5.1. Blow your ears off on some CDs it would!
Dave, the quality of the sound from the headphone socket is reflective of the fact that your using the 'headphone socket on a computer', it will never be audiophile quality. Its like covering a speaker with a pillow and blaming the speaker for loss in quality. Play the same file out via usb into a musical fidelity v-link, then on to a quality dec and you'd fall back in love with iTunes.
Werner Berghofer
26-11-2011, 15:56
Joe,
the quality of the sound from the headphone socket is reflective of the fact that your using the 'headphone socket on a computer', it will never be audiophile quality
that’s quite true. I assumed that Dave was using a stand-alone DAC connected via USB or Toslink to his Mac. Connecting an amplifier to the 3.5 mm analogue output of a Mac (or any other computer) and expecting good playback quality would be an unbelievable crazy thing :-)
Werner.
maybe not "crazy" but unrealistic optimistic for us that know ;-)
Werner Berghofer
26-11-2011, 18:03
Jan,
maybe not "crazy" but unrealistic optimistic
you’re absolutely right. I stand corrected and bow my face in shame.
Werner.
dave2010
27-11-2011, 00:04
Hi guys,
Sorry about the audio output thing. Actually I didn't notice how awful the analogue output jack from the iMac is until recently. I also use the same computer as a source for SB->Caiman -> Bantam Gold, and the results from that are probably significantly better. My concern was then whether the audio problems are simply due to the analogue output (and maybe also the digital stuff inside the iMac), or whether the ripped audio data might have problems.
The audio from the headphone socket of the Caiman is very significantly better.
dave2010
14-12-2011, 10:06
iTunes 10.5.2 has now been released, and solves some of the problems of disgusting rips and playback on some CDs. So far I've ripped and tested three which didn't work at all well before, and now they sound acceptable.
They may be discs which had pre-emphasis. I don't know whether the latest iTunes does the de-emphasis correctly, but the results are certainly very much preferable to what we had with 10.5.0 and 10.5.1.
I couldn't possibly say whether the overall quality has changed for discs which weren't obviously affected with those earlier versions.
Dave, have you considered going with an airport express and streaming iTunes to your dac? If set up correctly I beleive it's bit perfect. What input does the SB use on the Caiman? The AE would use toslink.
I'm on iTunes 10.5 and I haven't noticed any bad rips although I use XLD so as long as I've got an AccurateRip report saying its good, then it's good. Perhaps those discs which didn't initially rip well were done towards the end of a ripping session and the drive had got hot. Maybe that might affect the drive's capabilities, I don't know. XLD also uses drive offset settings, some technical attribute of a drive that can affect rips.
Dave, have you considered going with an airport express and streaming iTunes to your dac? If set up correctly I beleive it's bit perfect. What input does the SB use on the Caiman? The AE would use toslink.
I'm on iTunes 10.5 and I haven't noticed any bad rips although I use XLD so as long as I've got an AccurateRip report saying its good, then it's good. Perhaps those discs which didn't initially rip well were done towards the end of a ripping session and the drive had got hot. Maybe that might affect the drive's capabilities, I don't know. XLD also uses drive offset settings, some technical attribute of a drive that can affect rips.
I have a Mac mini as a music server nowadays and I am slowly ripping CDs to it, usually just when I want to listen to that particular disc. I did rip a disc recently, I sadly can not remember which, and the rip was almost pure noise and distortion, one could hear the underlying music, but only just. It played fine on my CD player, and I had a much earlier rip of the same disc on my Mac pro in my office which played fine too.
If only I could remember which disc it was I would try again with v10.5.2
Certainly something happened to iTunes recently that has made me seriously look for an alternative for ripping my CDs. It sounds -much- worse than it did, and I have used it since pre-ordering the original iPod many moons ago.
I tried ALAC and AIFF, both the same.
Edit,
I tried ripping using the little USB drive for the Macmini/Macbook air and using an old LaCie firewire CD drive. Same shrieking noise with a bit of barely audible music background.
I have a Mac mini as a music server nowadays and I am slowly ripping CDs to it, usually just when I want to listen to that particular disc. I did rip a disc recently, I sadly can not remember which, and the rip was almost pure noise and distortion, one could hear the underlying music, but only just. It played fine on my CD player, and I had a much earlier rip of the same disc on my Mac pro in my office which played fine too.
If only I could remember which disc it was I would try again with v10.5.2
Certainly something happened to iTunes recently that has made me seriously look for an alternative for ripping my CDs. It sounds -much- worse than it did, and I have used it since pre-ordering the original iPod many moons ago.
I tried ALAC and AIFF, both the same.
Edit,
I tried ripping using the little USB drive for the Macmini/Macbook air and using an old LaCie firewire CD drive. Same shrieking noise with a bit of barely audible music background.Hmmmm, wanna get rid of that LaCie drive?
So, it's not the drive as you've used different drives. I assume you deleted the rip some time ago as you can't remember what it was. If you could remember which disc it was and try it again with different software then that would rule out iTunes, or not. For the record, I've never had a disc do that. I've had discs not rip for various reasons but I've never had one "kind of" rip.
Note: I have noted recently that some tracks have not ripped in XLD. iTunes succeeded in ripping them so it is a bit of a quandary this ripping malarkey! When ripping in iTunes I use the error checking. Perhaps iTunes error checking is superior to XLD's?
I have spent the past week ripping my entire cd collection to AIFF with XLD, all went well, tagged correctly and artwork found in the database. I did have a problem with a few discs though where ripping ground to a halt part way through the disc, I abandoned those rips and tried the discs with iTunes which ripped the entire disc with no problems.
My take is that error checking is more stringent with XLD which results in less than perfect discs not ripping.
sq225917
14-12-2011, 13:01
Rob, it could just be stupid, not stringent. Check the rips against a known good database for that file to see if Itunes did it right or not. But honestly, do you think you can hear a few samples of guesswork ? ;-)
sq225917
14-12-2011, 13:01
Frank, the cd you struggled with just has copy control protection on it.
dave2010
14-12-2011, 22:59
Dave, have you considered going with an airport express and streaming iTunes to your dac? If set up correctly I beleive it's bit perfect. What input does the SB use on the Caiman? The AE would use toslink.
I'm on iTunes 10.5 and I haven't noticed any bad rips although I use XLD so as long as I've got an AccurateRip report saying its good, then it's good. Perhaps those discs which didn't initially rip well were done towards the end of za ripping session and the drive had got hot. Maybe that might affect the drive's capabilities, I don't know. XLD also uses drive offset settings, some technical attribute of a drive that can affect rips.10.5.n where n<2, is known to be bad on some CDs. The latest update (n=2) fixes the problems for at least some of the discs. I doubt that the problems I experienced had anything to do with my drive or my iMac, as i got repeatable results over several similar machines, and also there were reports on other forums of problems. One of the reasons given for the latest version is to attend to audio problems with some discs. I'd recommend anyone using 10.5.0 or 1 to upgrade. Anyone one using earlier versions may wish to stick, but avoid early versions of 10.5 at all costs.
I'll come back to the Airport Express suggestion later.
dave2010
14-12-2011, 23:34
Hmmmm, wanna get rid of that LaCie drive?
So, it's not the drive as you've used different drives. I assume you deleted the rip some time ago as you can't remember what it was. If you could remember which disc it was and try it again with different software then that would rule out iTunes, or not. For the record, I've never had a disc do that. I've had discs not rip for various reasons but I've never had one "kind of" rip.
Note: I have noted recently that some tracks have not ripped in XLD. iTunes succeeded in ripping them so it is a bit of a quandary this ripping malarkey! When ripping in iTunes I use the error checking. Perhaps iTunes error checking is superior to XLD's?Lee
I could perhaps use a Mac with 10.5.0 or 1 installed to rip a problem CD, and then send you a fraction of one track just to prove that the problems mentioned are real and repeatable. Believe me, you wouldn't like it, but you might just be able to hear the music under the noise. I'm pretty sure that Frank/f1eng had a disk which showed that problem. It should be OK with 10.5.2.
I always use the error checking mode in iTunes now.
sq225917
15-12-2011, 10:16
Shall I bother saying it again, or not.
The CD has copy protection on it. The copy protection triggers the DRM in Itunes and stops you from getting a clean rip. Use something else for that particular disk. Apple may have removed this feature in current releases given the impending change in UK law regarding ripping for self use.
Hmmmm, wanna get rid of that LaCie drive?
So, it's not the drive as you've used different drives. I assume you deleted the rip some time ago as you can't remember what it was. If you could remember which disc it was and try it again with different software then that would rule out iTunes, or not. For the record, I've never had a disc do that. I've had discs not rip for various reasons but I've never had one "kind of" rip.
Note: I have noted recently that some tracks have not ripped in XLD. iTunes succeeded in ripping them so it is a bit of a quandary this ripping malarkey! When ripping in iTunes I use the error checking. Perhaps iTunes error checking is superior to XLD's?
Hi Lee, the firewire CD reader is a keeper...
I did re-rip 1 track of the disc with videoconverterultimate, which was slow but got a rip. Did somebody mention something about iTunes now not reading DRM protected discs, even for the owner?
That would be annoying to me since I really disapprove of stealing music so as a matter of principle I don't, including -not- ripping a CD then selling it.
Sad sod, aren't I?
Shall I bother saying it again, or not.
The CD has copy protection on it. The copy protection triggers the DRM in Itunes and stops you from getting a clean rip. Use something else for that particular disk. Apple may have removed this feature in current releases given the impending change in UK law regarding ripping for self use.
I have never heard of this before. I had ripped this disc without problem years ago to my main office machine using whatever version of iTunes was extant at that time.
Is this "not reading a copy protected disc" you refer to here a recent addition to iTunes?
dave2010
15-12-2011, 23:27
Frank, the cd you struggled with just has copy control protection on it.I don't see how you can be so sure, unless you have more information than I have. When I last looked, Frank didn't even seem to remember which CD it was. I certainly have no knowledge of what the CD was.
It is possible that some CDs have DRM, and that could be a source of problems. It's certainly the case that some of the CDs I've had problems with had pre-emphasis. There doesn't have to be a single cause, but right now it seems fairly certain that discs with pre-emphasis caused problems with iTunes 10.5.n (n<2). They may or may not also have DRM.
Aha, I have just been reminded which disc it was, it was still next to the CD transport since I couldn't rip it to the computer.
It was the Harmonia Mundi Faure Requiem conducted by Herreweghe. It ripped normally just now using iTunes 10.5.2
It does have a box printed on the disc with SACEM and SDRM printed in it, perhaps there is some sort of DRM, it also has SACD and SGDL printed vertically and it certainly what is known as SACD nowadays, being a 1988 disc...
Frank
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