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iPhone audio quality sucks

P

pixlnet

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 14, 2006
68
0
Hey all,

Hope you're enjoying the iPhone as much as I am. Couple things that are bugging me though. I used to have a 1st gen iPod Shuffle. Audio quality was pretty good for that lil thing.

When I jumped up to iPhone I'm noticing a few things. Songs purchased from the iTS sound terrible. Like completely muffled down to the point I have to reset my volume limit. I'm guessing it has to do with iTS being 128k and not 192k or above.

But seriously, I'm expecting songs I purchase on the store to sound excellent. Maybe Apple is trying to get people to buy 256k for $1.29 I don't know. I'm hoping I'm not the only one noticing this so please share your thoughts.

I was also thinking maybe it had something to do with the iPhone headphones being cheap...but there isn't an alternative I've come across that isn't 100 bucks and also has the iPhone switch/mic to answer calls with the headphones on.
 
pixlnet said:
Hey all,

Hope you're enjoying the iPhone as much as I am. Couple things that are bugging me though. I used to have a 1st gen iPod Shuffle. Audio quality was pretty good for that lil thing.

When I jumped up to iPhone I'm noticing a few things. Songs purchased from the iTS sound terrible. Like completely muffled down to the point I have to reset my volume limit. I'm guessing it has to do with iTS being 128k and not 192k or above.

But seriously, I'm expecting songs I purchase on the store to sound excellent. Maybe Apple is trying to get people to buy 256k for $1.29 I don't know. I'm hoping I'm not the only one noticing this so please share your thoughts.

I was also thinking maybe it had something to do with the iPhone headphones being cheap...but there isn't an alternative I've come across that isn't 100 bucks and also has the iPhone switch/mic to answer calls with the headphones on.
Click to expand...
Sounds like you have a problem. The earbuds will cause a distorted sound with heavy bass tracks, but if things sound "underwater" then something is broken! Also make sure soundcheck is off, it can created problems when you have big differences in resolution encoding.
 
What is soundcheck? I had it set to on so wasn't exactly what it does.
 
pixlnet said:
What is soundcheck? I had it set to on so wasn't exactly what it does.
Click to expand...

Sound check attempts to normalize the volume of your music. You may have noticed that all music is mastered at different volume levels, so you are having to constantly adjust the volume if you are in shuffle mode. iTunes will check the peak volume of all your music and adjust it accordingly. I believe it merely puts a volume coefficient in the header (or ID3?) of the MP3/AAC/etc file. Apple's players (iTunes, iPods, iPhones) will use to it adjust the output volume upon decoding, if you have it enabled. I use it and do not notice any degradation in quality.

Did disabling it effect your problem?

-steve
 
Turn off equalizer

From the iphone main menu, go to settings -> iPod settings and turn the equalizer EQ off. This should fix it.
 
To be honest with you the earphones that you get supplied with the iPhone or any other ipod are really rubbish quality. I recommend you buy the adapter to use other earphones with the iphone and buy some Sony in ear ones. I have some and there amazing.

Hope this helped
 
Amazing That Few Have Noticed

The truth is that the sound quality does suck, and it truly amazes me that more people have not noticed. Maybe it is because, until you hear good quality sound, you don't know what you are missing. I was spoiled, because previously I owned a Samsung i730, which had amazing sound quality. But my wife had an iphone G, with tons of cool aps. So I finally broke down and bought an iphone GS. I really love all of the cool aps, but was shocked at the low audio quality. To make a long story short, to date I have tried a half dozen iphones and at least a dozen earphones ranging up to $150 per set. Even the cheap $14 set from Samsung sound better that anything plugged into the iphone. The best seem to be the in ear plugs, which are also the best on the i730. But though the iphone audio sounds decent, it doesn't even come close to the sharp highs and deep base that come from the i730. You can even hear the drastic difference when plugging each of them into a good quality sound system. And you can hear the difference when using both cellphones and connecting to a computer via orb.com, which is not exactly the best quality in the plant. Someone mentioned trying to see if the audio coming from a plug at the bottom of the iphone is better, but I haven't tried that yet. I read that the ipod is better, but I haven't tried that either. But so far I have wasted a ton of time and money only to learn that the sound quality just isn't there in the iphones.
 
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Yes, This Is An Old thread

How I found the thread was by doing a google search for "iphone audio sucks", and it came up at the top. I was just curious if others had learned what I found out. I was really surprised that there were not more comments about their audio. But even if the thread is old, it seems that the problem is still there, which doesn't surprise me about Apple products. I have over a dozen Macs in my business, and spent 15 years designing databases using an Apple product called Filemaker. During those years I have talked to many of the programmers who develop that app, and they admit that there are a ton of bugs in it, but Apple/Filemaker Inc, will not even let them fix the problems. It is the same with Apple hardware. They are totally profit motivated, and what the consumer wants takes a back seat to profit, even when it costs them nothing to fix the bugs. They are just like most large corporations today, who put up a front about how consumer conscious they are, when they couldn't really care less. But it is unfortunately the world that we live in, and it's the only option around, until they get the water they recently found out of the moon :).
 
dennyhayes said:
How I found the thread was by doing a google search for "iphone audio sucks", and it came up at the top. I was just curious if others had learned what I found out. I was really surprised that there were not more comments about their audio. But even if the thread is old, it seems that the problem is still there, which doesn't surprise me about Apple products. I have over a dozen Macs in my business, and spent 15 years designing databases using an Apple product called Filemaker. During those years I have talked to many of the programmers who develop that app, and they admit that there are a ton of bugs in it, but Apple/Filemaker Inc, will not even let them fix the problems. It is the same with Apple hardware. They are totally profit motivated, and what the consumer wants takes a back seat to profit, even when it costs them nothing to fix the bugs. They are just like most large corporations today, who put up a front about how consumer conscious they are, when they couldn't really care less. But it is unfortunately the world that we live in, and it's the only option around, until they get the water they recently found out of the moon :).
Click to expand...

Give it a rest....

S-
 
audio iphone sucks

yes, definitely true to my ear, audio quality of the iphone sucks. I am also surprised not to find many people noticing this, althrough they are a few similar comments on the internet...I am into sound a lot (music prod, etc..) so my ear may be a bit oversensitive to the sound quality, but still it seems pretty obvious. I am quite disapointed since I love my iphone, but it makes usage of it as music player very limited... :-(
 
I really love all of the cool aps, but was shocked at the low audio quality. To make a long story short, to date I have tried a half dozen iphones and at least a dozen earphones ranging up to $150 per set. Even the cheap $14 set from Samsung sound better that anything plugged into the iphone. The best seem to be the in ear plugs, which are also the best on the i730. But though the iphone audio sounds decent, it doesn't even come close to the sharp highs and deep base that come from the i730. You can even hear the drastic difference when plugging each of them into a good quality sound system. And you can hear the difference when using both cellphones and connecting to a computer via orb.com, which is not exactly the best quality in the plant. Someone mentioned trying to see if the audio coming from a plug at the bottom of the iphone is better, but I haven't tried that yet. I read that the ipod is better, but I haven't tried that either. But so far I have wasted a ton of time and money only to learn that the sound quality just isn't there in the iphones.
Click to expand...

I think something is wrong with your phone. There are multiple threads on headfi praising the 3gs as one of the best portable players out there.

I have a nice pair of studio monitor headphones and two DAC/Amps (portable and desktop). The iphone sufficiently better than the portable DAC/Amp combo that I'm considering selling it.
 
Verified

Although it's the best phone I've owned it sucks when it comes to playing music.

I was plugging it into my head unit in my truck until my wife heard it. She plugged in her iriver clix and played the exact same songs as we have the same library on our server. The exact same music played WAY better on her iriver. Until that point I thought it was just the system in my truck.

It was like listening to a cassette tape vs a cd. Fidelity on the iphone just sucks. I've tried everything now in hopes that I could improve it. I've downloaded songs from itunes, tried different conversion programs, tried all the different settings via every suggestion I could find online, etc. All to no avail.

I've tried a few different iphones now from some of my clients and they're the same way so it's not just a couple of phones.

One giveaway that Apple wasn't serious when it came to music on the iphone is the lack of a multiband EQ. Come on presets??? Really lame!

Almost every other phone is way ahead, wm and andriod phones allow you to download different skins and prog's to play music. Not to mention sound like they should.
 
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mw6810 said:
Although it's the best phone I've owned it sucks when it comes to playing music.

I was plugging it into my head unit in my truck until my wife heard it. She plugged in her iriver clix and played the exact same songs as we have the same library on our server. The exact same music played WAY better on her iriver. Until that point I thought it was just the system in my truck.

It was like listening to a cassette tape vs a cd. Fidelity on the iphone just sucks. I've tried everything now in hopes that I could improve it. I've downloaded songs from itunes, tried different conversion programs, tried all the different settings via every suggestion I could find online, etc. All to no avail.

I've tried a few different iphones now from some of my clients and they're the same way so it's not just a couple of phones.

One giveaway that Apple wasn't serious when it came to music on the iphone is the lack of a multiband EQ. Come on presets??? Really lame!

Almost every other phone is way ahead, wm and andriod phones allow you to download different skins and prog's to play music. Not to mention sound like they should.
Click to expand...

I've noticed that bass sounds terrible on the iP4. Distorted even when EQ is off. Sounds great with my iPods, but distorted on the iP4.
 
and now it's a 4 year old thread get a pair of skullcandy's or other headphones the ones Apple supply suck! almost any headphones are better. also you might take it to Appleto get checked out.
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

If your bass is distorted you have a problem with your phone, headphones or track. Its true that the iphone audio isnt amazing, when plugging in from 3.5 output into home hifi I can spot the diference a mile away when comparing to cd ( of course some of that is due to the format and some to the hardware) having said tht I often use my iPhone 4 as part of my test set up kit when setting up rooms at work and recently commission newly fitted out 300 seat lecture theatre with new 600 w system. And I have to say was blown away with how good it sounded using the dock connector playing Nero's remix of CJ Cole - Sincere. (Although that track would prolly sound amazing on any system ha ha.) Definitely no bass distortion!
 
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)

Just thought of something else... I remember my old iPod going back about 5 years would distort audio at a playback level if you put on the EQ. I guess this was because Apple engineers in all their wisdom didnt realise they needed to pad down the level before applying bass (or other) boost. I'm not sure how recently this was rectified but now you can hear a quite a noticeable drop in level when you apply one of the preset EQs.
 
Well, I don’t have any issue in my iPhone. The audio and video quality is fantastic. I can’t believe that you are having issues with it, check for your volume or something.
 
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