iTunes and sound quality?

[perdomot]

I got an ipod shuffle and have been using iTunes to play music. Is it a good player?

 

[Squeek]

It's not great IMO, but it is convenient for me so I use it too. It's not terrible by any means, but there are much better options out there.

 

[blessingx]

Errr out of curiousity what's not great about its sound and which are "much better"?

 

[Jigglybootch]

The quality of iTunes depends entirely on whether you use Windows or the Mac. The Windows version uses DirectSound, which resamples any audio played through iTunes, thus degrading the sound quality a bit. On the Mac, there's no resampling.

 

[Squeek]

Quote:

Errr out of curiousity what's not great about its sound and which are "much better"?

For reference, I am a PC user.

It does not go loud enough for my tastes. Second, it does not have all the bells and whistles of foobar such as upsampling and kernel streaming.

I find foobar to offer superior sound quality, more options and it goes MUCH louder. However, the interface is garbage and it can be a daunting task to get up and running.

I like iTunes because it is user friendly and has a great interface. It sounds fine, but for the discerning listner, there are better options.

I have 2 iPods, therefore I am constantly in iTunes. I rarely use foobar despite the fact that I think it is a better program from strictly a "sound" standpoint.

 

[Jigglybootch]

The only reason foobar "sounds better" is because you can manipulate factors that alter the sound (upsampling, kernel streaming/ASIO, etc.). Set foobar to ouput using DirectSound, though, and it will sound no better and no worse than iTunes.

 

[bLue_oNioN]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Squeek I find foobar to offer superior sound quality, more options and it goes MUCH louder.

I'm not sure what you mean by "sound quality" here. Could you please elaborate?

Thanks so much!

 

[3lusiv3]

I'm very happy with iTunes on my PowerBook.

 

[Elephas]

I use iTunes on a PC with E-MU 1212m, playing Apple Lossless files ripped with error correction.
Crossfade, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check, and Equalizer are off.
QuickTime control panel set to waveout 44.1 kHz output.
PatchMix's Wave strip is set to Send Output to I/O Card Out.
I believe this configuration bypasses kmixer.

I've compared sound quality with Foobar playing other lossless and lossy files encoded with EAC and with various upsampling, 32bit padded, etc. settings and they are very similar.

 

[thomaspf]

@Jigglybootch

--
The only reason foobar "sounds better" is because you can manipulate factors that alter the sound (upsampling, kernel streaming/ASIO, etc.). Set foobar to ouput using DirectSound, though, and it will sound no better and no worse than iTunes.
--

That's a pretty novel way at looking at this. I thought you would use kernel streaming or ASIO to not alter the sound while DirectSound is doing exactly that.

Cheers

Thomas

 

[Jahn]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Elephas I use iTunes on a PC with E-MU 1212m, playing Apple Lossless files ripped with error correction. Crossfade, Sound Enhancer, Sound Check, and Equalizer are off. QuickTime control panel set to waveout 44.1 kHz output. PatchMix's Wave strip is set to Send Output to I/O Card Out. I believe this configuration bypasses kmixer. I've compared sound quality with Foobar playing other lossless and lossy files encoded with EAC and with various upsampling, 32bit padded, etc. settings and they are very similar.

This is exactly my setup on itunes with my EMU 0404, and honestly I can't tell a diff between this and any other "better" setup. Of course, there are tons of crappier setups, such as including EQ in the mix, etc.

Edit - quicktime control panel? is this for your vids? i use bsplayer and have no probs with vids.

 

[JiiEf]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn This is exactly my setup on itunes with my EMU 0404, and honestly I can't tell a diff between this and any other "better" setup. Of course, there are tons of crappier setups, such as including EQ in the mix, etc. Edit - quicktime control panel? is this for your vids? i use bsplayer and have no probs with vids.

Nope - itunes uses quicktime for sound processing - you could say itunes is just a front-end for quicktime. So the audio settings at quicktime ARE relevant and in fact the only way to control these aspects of iTunes playback.

/JF

 

[Elephas]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jahn Edit - quicktime control panel? is this for your vids? i use bsplayer and have no probs with vids.

Open the QuickTime control panel and under Sound Out you will see a box labelled "Choose a device for playback." Choose "waveOut."

You can compare the difference by switching between DirectSound and waveOut.

Close the QuickTime control panel after making a change, as well as stopping and then playing iTunes.

On my system, setting Sound Out to waveOut seems better, and is supposed to eliminate iTunes stuttering.

 

[averydonovan]

With my E-Mu 0404 I can tell no difference in quality between iTunes using DirectSound and foobar2000 using ASIO. iTunes is far more convenient for managing a large music collection so I use it.