Howdy all. I'm a relative iTunes newbie and am not impressed with the sound variance between recordings on iTunes and all the studio noodling they stick on these 'remastered recordings'. For many years I had radio station production studios to digitally mix and equalize music to my own liking. I realize iTunes has a few tools, but they're pretty weak. I would like to know if someone has any experience using programs like TuneClone and Adobe Audition on their iTunes library for better quality. Is it doable? Can the produced music still be used on iTunes? Any replies will be greatly appreciated.
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Anyone use audio editing to make iTunes sound better?
- Thread starter stedmanalaska
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I wouldn't use destructive editing on my iTunes library. I believe Apple got rid of the built in equalizer on the latest version of iTunes. There are other ways to use an EQ though, including hardware.
hi stedmanalaska,
what is it that you don't like about the sound? your post is a bit ambiguous.
iTunes does have an eq, its still there, if you want to adjust the sound but this is primarily to adjust music to suit changing environments or speakers.
it's not to remaster the music.
mastered for iTunes is merely headline grabbing apple-speak for music that's definitely come from a good source. and you can still not like that 'good source'.
is it the iTunes playback that you don't like?
I gave up using iTunes since even though is a good at organizing playlists is ok for general public but I found it very limited at sound: the EQ only has few bands to my liking, it doesn't play natively FLAC files (sorry I'm not converting all my FLAC into ALAC because Apple wants me to do that), so my advice is to go further a get a real quality player such as:
Audirvana Plus: http://audirvana.com
The good is that Audirvana can detect your DAC and directly transfer the digital data so you won't lose any bit from your music, this player is AU compatible that means you can run a wide variety of plugins that comes natively with MacOSX, for example a nice 31-band EQ
, Parametric EQ, a bunch of acoustic effects etc., you can also control interesting parameters. The bad: it's not for free, but it's worth buying it if you are looking for an advanced music player that allows to control everything.
VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
This is such a good multimedia software that goes far beyond iTunes, it has a nicer EQ than iTunes, it plays a bunch of multimedia formats including FLAC's and video, an the best of all: it's for free.
Audirvana Plus: http://audirvana.com
The good is that Audirvana can detect your DAC and directly transfer the digital data so you won't lose any bit from your music, this player is AU compatible that means you can run a wide variety of plugins that comes natively with MacOSX, for example a nice 31-band EQ
, Parametric EQ, a bunch of acoustic effects etc., you can also control interesting parameters. The bad: it's not for free, but it's worth buying it if you are looking for an advanced music player that allows to control everything.VLC: http://www.videolan.org/vlc/download-macosx.html
This is such a good multimedia software that goes far beyond iTunes, it has a nicer EQ than iTunes, it plays a bunch of multimedia formats including FLAC's and video, an the best of all: it's for free.
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If you want the best possible sound out of iTunes, turn off all the extra rubbish, like EQ, Sound enhancer and sound check. Then iTunes is just as good as what you give it. And that is a fact proven by null tests.
Yes, different tunes from different bands recorded in different studios in different decades will sound different to each other when played back to back. That's just the way it goes.
But if you want to hear it the way the artists and engineers intended, then iTunes is more than up to the job when the above tools are left off (I've tried them all over the years and they all have their issues, which are not always apparent with every track)
Rare is the time I've opened anything up in an audio editor to tweak it. But if you really want, you can do that for individual tracks. Just make sure you start with a non compressed audio file.
Yes, different tunes from different bands recorded in different studios in different decades will sound different to each other when played back to back. That's just the way it goes.
But if you want to hear it the way the artists and engineers intended, then iTunes is more than up to the job when the above tools are left off (I've tried them all over the years and they all have their issues, which are not always apparent with every track)
Rare is the time I've opened anything up in an audio editor to tweak it. But if you really want, you can do that for individual tracks. Just make sure you start with a non compressed audio file.
+1
This is my preset, try it out
Trial version at the bottom corner of the page, http://www.globaldelight.com/boom/
But the kids LIKE the hyper exaggerated "boom, boom, thud" sound. Yes it is horribly distorted and not accurate but they like it that way.
What next you'll be tell'ing them to buy AGK studio headphones rather then the Dre Beats.