Apple Releases iTunes 10.5.2 with iTunes Match and Audio Distortion Fixes

[techman28]

The problem only affected CDs encoded with Pre-emphasis. Pre-emphasis encoded CDs have high frequencies boosted to some extent, and need them to be reduced after ripping. Pre-emphasis supposedly provides a better noise-floor than normal CDs, but is only of a benefit to music with a large dynamic range.

It seems that the software component of iTunes that implemented the equalisation curve developed a fault as of iTunes 10.5, producing heavily distorted discs.

Very few CDs these days are encoded with pre-emphasis - limited mainly to some independent classical labels, such as BIS and the discs provided with the BBC Music Magazine. In the past, though, it was more common, particularly with CDs pressed in Japan.

Not sure why you have been down voted, I wasn't aware of it either and having recently imported some CD's I'd like to know more about the problem. The only distortion thing I was aware of is that something corrupted a bought m4a that had been synced to an iPhone; it now warbles when playing where before it didn't.

Same here, just imported a couple of discs. No issues on them.

This would explain why I ran into this bug; about a month and a half ago, I bought an older Japanese CD and iTunes would rip it and it was full of distortion. Tried just to play the CD, same problem. Tried it on another computer with iTunes, same problem. Used a different app to play the CD, no problems.

I'd like to know more about this too. I just re-ripped almost all of my CD's onto an external HDD in Lossless format before this update and I read about the possible distortion problems before the update.

Is there aany way to find out if any of my CD's are some of the "certain" CD's that are affected by the distortion problem (without having to listen to each of them carefully to see if I hear a problem?

For the CDs that are affected and import/play with distortion, how noticeable is it? Is it very obvious when listening?

Any info would really help me out. I would hate to have to re-re-import all of the CDs again after installing the iTunes update. Thanks.

 

[Psychonix]

Does iTunes 10.5.2 automatically fix all distorted tracks?

Sorry if this sounds idiotic.. one heck of a first post heh.

 

[MacTech68]

...Is there aany way to find out if any of my CD's are some of the "certain" CD's that are affected by the distortion problem (without having to listen to each of them carefully to see if I hear a problem?...I would hate to have to re-re-import all of the CDs again after installing the iTunes update. Thanks.

So far All I can find is "Exact Audio Copy" which will apparently show a "yes" in the pre-Emphasis column when a CD is inserted. This is a Windows only program. If somebody knows of a Mac version, that would be great.

I'm not sure if Apple's implementation adds a "Pre-Emphasis" flag to the ripped track or if it DE-Emphasizes when ripping. Apparently, some rippers do this but the how, why and where is not something I'm knowledgeable on.

This would mean inserting every CD just to see if the Flag is set. Still time-consuming but perhaps the only way to find out.

The worst news is that some CDs that have some tracks with pre-emphasis and other tracks without it only set the flag per track rather than the whole disc. I believe EAC can detect this, as evidenced here.

EDIT: My only experience with Pre-Emphasis and "Exact Audio Copy" are ONLY what I've learned today. I've never used EAC.

 

[KeithJenner]

For the CDs that are affected and import/play with distortion, how noticeable is it? Is it very obvious when listening?

Any info would really help me out. I would hate to have to re-re-import all of the CDs again after installing the iTunes update. Thanks.

If it is the problem that I recently had with a couple of CDs then it is noticeable to the extent that you can barely hear the music below the distortion.

I assumed that it was a problem with the CD and just retained my old low bit rate rip. now I've got to try to remember which albums they were.

 

[StoneyG]

44MB on Snow Leopard

What annoys me is that you can no longer trim out the Universal Binary like you used to be able to.

Well, at least you still have your health.

 

[MacTech68]

If it is the problem that I recently had with a couple of CDs then it is noticeable to the extent that you can barely hear the music below the distortion.

I assumed that it was a problem with the CD and just retained my old low bit rate rip. now I've got to try to remember which albums they were.

Looks like this problem may only have existed with iTunes 10.5.0 and 10.5.1.

That would date back to Oct 11th if you jump on updates as soon as they're available.

 

[locust76]

Hmm now I have tracks stuck in "Waiting" mode and I don't have the ability to "Add to iCloud" anymore. Thanks Apple.

 

[daneoni]

Well, at least you still have your health.

There is that...at least.

 

[locust76]

And it looks like they've made some changes on the backend, too, because my tracks download lightning fast on my iPhone now, where before they took a minute or so per song on a fast connection.

 

[alphaod]

I have not used iTunes to import CDs in a long time. I have used XLD exclusively forever now.

However I do prefer Gracenote used by iTunes over FreeDB and MusicBrainz, so hopefully XLD can offer Gracenote in the future. It just seems Gracenote is more accurate in terms of metadata and whatnot.

As with iTunes Match, I don't really know why I bother with it. For me it's just a backup at the moment for me. I still sync my music like normal to my iOS devices.

I do hope with iTunes Match, they offer an option that let's recheck metadata. For example, I have an album that may have incorrect song names, or whatnot, and I can right click the album and choose a "verify metadata" or something like that.

Anyways with this update, it came up with dialog telling me it's updating my iTunes library. I'm not sure what they are doing on this one, just hope it's doesn't mess up the library that's all.

 

[JQW]

I'd like to know more about this too. I just re-ripped almost all of my CD's onto an external HDD in Lossless format before this update and I read about the possible distortion problems before the update.

Is there aany way to find out if any of my CD's are some of the "certain" CD's that are affected by the distortion problem (without having to listen to each of them carefully to see if I hear a problem?

For the CDs that are affected and import/play with distortion, how noticeable is it? Is it very obvious when listening?

Any info would really help me out. I would hate to have to re-re-import all of the CDs again after installing the iTunes update. Thanks.

Pre-emphasis was found on many early CD pressings (up to around 1986), due to it being introduced as a workaround for some of the noise issues associated with early DACs. Once DACs improved, the need for pre-emphasis diminished, although it could still be of advantage on some recordings with large dynamic ranges. Many titles were remastered without pre-emphasis, often without any indication on the CD packaging at some point, such as some Pink Floyd albums.

The Steve Hoffman forum has a thread somewhere that lists known CDs with pre-emphasis.

Some CDs (typically compilations) can feature just some tracks that use pre-emphasis.

Japan held on to pre-emphasis longer than other countries, but eventually most labels there stopped using it too. However to this day some specialist classical labels still use it on some recordings to this day.

The problem was only evident in iTunes 10.5 and 10.5.1, I believe. The distortion introduced is very noticeable - a CD baroque lute music sounded like a very overdriven electric guitar once ripped.

 

[alphaod]

Still over a hundred songs in Waiting status. Waiting for what? To be matched? To be uploaded? There's still no indication that anything's going on.

I find turning off iTunes Match and re-enabling it helps fix that issue. Anyways it seems iTunes Match does an library scan every 10-15 minutes.

So far All I can find is "Exact Audio Copy" which will apparently show a "yes" in the pre-Emphasis column when a CD is inserted. This is a Windows only program. If somebody knows of a Mac version, that would be great.

I use XLD, and it does support the pre-emphasis flag. I would say XLD is the Mac equivalent of EAC.

 

[bookemdano]

I have not used iTunes to import CDs in a long time. I have used XLD exclusively forever now.

However I do prefer Gracenote used by iTunes over FreeDB and MusicBrainz, so hopefully XLD can offer Gracenote in the future. It just seems Gracenote is more accurate in terms of metadata and whatnot.

As with iTunes Match, I don't really know why I bother with it. For me it's just a backup at the moment for me. I still sync my music like normal to my iOS devices.

I do hope with iTunes Match, they offer an option that let's recheck metadata. For example, I have an album that may have incorrect song names, or whatnot, and I can right click the album and choose a "verify metadata" or something like that.

Anyways with this update, it came up with dialog telling me it's updating my iTunes library. I'm not sure what they are doing on this one, just hope it's doesn't mess up the library that's all.

I have good news for you--you can use Gracenote with XLD--it's just done a different way than the other metadata sources. The key is to have iTunes and XLD running simultaneously. Insert the CD and let iTunes recognize it and look it up on Gracenote. Then switch to XLD and go to File->Open Audio CD. If you don't see your CD listed yet then choose Refresh from that menu and it should open right up with the Gracenote tags.

Originally I was of the same mind as you that Gracenote was better than the other sources. After ripping and tagging 1000 discs with this method I no longer think that. I saw so many inconsistencies, misspellings and just plain wrong info. The more popular discs were generally OK but some of the more obscure stuff was really bad. I ended up going full-on MusicBrainz as at least they have it as a goal to use consistent naming and style standards.

The one huge advantage of Gracenote is that they apparently have almost everything. Not once did Gracenote fail to retrieve metadata--that's mighty impressive as I have some pretty odd and obscure stuff I was sure would stump it. But nope--it found everything. It just wasn't all that accurate with spelling and capitalization consistency, etc. Oh and genres were a mess too but then again genres are a mess everywhere.

Anyway hope that helps.

 

[TheIntruder]

Well, one thing it doesn't address is the nagging dialog to log-in to permit Automatic Downloads when iTunes is launched.

Apparently, this is related to cookies that are stored in Safari/WebKit, which I don't use.

Nor do I purchase anything other than apps from the iTunes store, so I have no use for Automatic Downloads.

I wish Apple would recognize that use case, account for the preference, and stop with the annoyances.

 

[MacTech68]

So far All I can find is "Exact Audio Copy" which will apparently show a "yes" in the pre-Emphasis column when a CD is inserted. This is a Windows only program. If somebody knows of a Mac version, that would be great.

I use XLD, and it does support the pre-emphasis flag. I would say XLD is the Mac equivalent of EAC.

The difference though, is that it looks like EAC can provide a method to check for Pre-Emphasis without having to rip the disk. This would help those trying to identify which CDs might be affected. AFAIK, XLD requires you to rip and view the log.

There are other rippers that support Pre-Emphasis for Mac (iTunes is/was/is again) one of them, as is xACT, but the real difficulty seems to be with discs where the TOC (Table of Contents) doesn't have the flag turned on, but individual tracks are encoded with Pre-Emphasis.

I've managed to get a MacOS binary of cdda2wav to just output the Pre-Emphasis flag in the TOC using terminal, it's pretty clunky and doesn't deal with discs that don't flag it in the TOC but use it on the disc.

 

[steveotron]

They fixed the copy+paste function with the album artwork box on the bottom left corner. This shouldn't be something that needs to be fixed.

Apple needs to get with the program and support .flac.

 

[JQW]

They fixed the copy+paste function with the album artwork box on the bottom left corner. This shouldn't be something that needs to be fixed.

Apple needs to get with the program and support .flac.

Flac will never be supported whilst it's licensed under the GPL.

 

[emvath]

1st time I ran match it "matched" about 1,500 songs out of my 18,000. Ran it again this morning and now I'm up to about 2,100 out of 18,000. We're making progress Apple....really slowly making progress!

 

[Weaselboy]

1st time I ran match it "matched" about 1,500 songs out of my 18,000. Ran it again this morning and now I'm up to about 2,100 out of 18,000. We're making progress Apple....really slowly making progress!

Just curious, what kind of music do you have that so little of it matched?

 

[Sevenfeet]

Indeed. iTunes didn't match 3400 tracks out of nearly 19,000 for me, which I thought was pretty good. Of the "not-match" number, I expect a couple hundred tracks never to match. Everything else is fair game, but of course, not everything song/album is under contract right now at iTunes.

What's vexing right now is that some albums will only partially match...not sure what's up with that. I may try to rematch some of these to see if they got any better.

 

[HelveticaRoman]

Why does any comment, no matter how objective, that suggests an Apple product might not be 100% perfect immediately get a thumbs down?

 

[b1gted]

Didn't fix this problem for me.

Didn't fix it for me either. Very upset that I've paid $25 and it crashes my Itunes everytime!

 

[abbstrack]

To me, the opposite problem is far worse. I have songs that are incorrectly matched to a different version of the same song. I'd like to be able to force those to upload instead of putting up with a different version of the song than the one I actually want.

this is my problem, and one I have apple engineers suppossedly looking into (i say supposedly b/c i first reported the issue weeks ago and have only gotten sporadic 'we're still looking into it' answers from the itunes support folks).

in some instances, i have non-censored songs from an album replaced with a clean/censored version. This is a problem, because iTunes match is effectively altering your exisiting library.

Overall, my music listening experience has become much less enjoyable since the launch of iTunes match. The premise is great, the execution is lacking.

 

[milo]

Like others who have reported earlier, the update didn't show up in Software Update on one machine, lately I've had really spotty results with SU.

Has anyone seen specific improvements with Match? So far all I've heard is people having "error" files switch to matched or uploaded, but only with a handful of files.

Play counts have been all screwed up. Crossing my fingers...

Not sure why this was down voted (actually, looks like some yahoo down voted every post mentioning bugs at all, way to go fanboi!). Play counts ARE screwed up, they are inconsistent syncing back from one computer to another, and much much worse syncing back from iOS devices.

cant u just right click on the songs u want to re-match by clicking "add to cloud" ?

That option is generally only available to songs with the "error" (or sometimes "waiting"). And I've never heard of doing that fixing an incorrect match, or switching an uploaded file to a matched one. They really do need to add a real "retry match" feature.

1st time I ran match it "matched" about 1,500 songs out of my 18,000. Ran it again this morning and now I'm up to about 2,100 out of 18,000. We're making progress Apple....really slowly making progress!

Were the songs that switched uploaded? Or some other status (like error or waiting)? Hopefully they'll have way more songs match as time goes on, but will they swap uploaded to matched automatically or would we have to remove files from the cloud and try matching again?

 

[ShaunMac]

i want the icloud that steve described...in 1997 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yE3Ta_NK4-I
also, i want it to be in canada!