Right. My iMac is a refurb. I bought it in the winter of 2010. The specs are as follows:
Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3.
Memory: 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3.
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB.
Software: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50b) - upgraded from Snow Leopard a couple of months ago.
The machine worked, and still works, fine in every way except sound. Sometime in the first months of owning it, something terrible happened for no apparent reason and all the audio coming from it - from the internal speakers, through headphones or external speakers and through any programme, youtube and CDs and Spotify, not just iTunes - was simply dreadful sounding. Completely flat and drab, with no flair and a horrible, distorted, boomy bass. I'd heard better sounds coming from the toilets at McDonalds. After quite a few months of jiggling around but really doing nothing, I discovered the problem was characterised by a massive amount of aliasing - that is, the computers filter was all non operational (Found out by doing this test: http://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_aliasing.php).
Eventually I managed to finally return sound quality to something much, much more pleasant by installing Lion via the app store. The music sounded much nicer to me but my girlfriend - who is a producer and has sharp ears - noticed that the mid range frequencies were being replicated much higher than what would be considered 'normal'. Didn't really matter to me as most music sounded pretty good.
Then, yesterday, a new problem occurred. I knew the moment I changed the volume and heard that little 'popping' sound that something was amiss. It didn't sound right. Sure enough, when I listened to music, it was horrible. But it's different to the previous problem - anti - aliasing is being done fine and well it appears - now, the music is simply too sharp and tinny. The beat of a song sounds so nasty it hurts my ears. High tones are way, way WAY too emphasizes - it makes listening to music a dreadful, painful experience. It sounds like this from every source - internal and external, every programme.
Yes, I have tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM. The iTunes equalizer is OFF. iTunes audio enhancement is OFF. I used to have rubbish things like Hear installed but I recently deleted them and all their plugins. All in all, I had decent (but even then not perfect) sound quality for a couple of glorious weeks, but now I'm back to tedious, unlistenable, tinny garbage. It hurts all the more cause I work from home and just need good quality music for a few hours a day over Spotify to keep my eyes sane.
I'm disgusted by the number of Apple products that malfunction and operate poorly. It almost feels like a gamble whenever I buy an Apple product - wondering if mine will be one of the many which suffer from some debilitating defect and will cough and splutter its way through a short and expensive life of repairs and break downs. I'm fed up with it. And I just want music that I can LISTEN TO! Apparently this is too much to ask of the most wealthy and powerful
corporation in the history of the World.
Can anyone help me?
Ben x
Processor: 3.06 GHz Intel Core i3.
Memory: 4 GB 1333 MHz DDR3.
Graphics: ATI Radeon HD 4670 256 MB.
Software: Mac OS X Lion 10.7.3 (11D50b) - upgraded from Snow Leopard a couple of months ago.
The machine worked, and still works, fine in every way except sound. Sometime in the first months of owning it, something terrible happened for no apparent reason and all the audio coming from it - from the internal speakers, through headphones or external speakers and through any programme, youtube and CDs and Spotify, not just iTunes - was simply dreadful sounding. Completely flat and drab, with no flair and a horrible, distorted, boomy bass. I'd heard better sounds coming from the toilets at McDonalds. After quite a few months of jiggling around but really doing nothing, I discovered the problem was characterised by a massive amount of aliasing - that is, the computers filter was all non operational (Found out by doing this test: http://www.audiocheck.net/audiotests_aliasing.php).
Eventually I managed to finally return sound quality to something much, much more pleasant by installing Lion via the app store. The music sounded much nicer to me but my girlfriend - who is a producer and has sharp ears - noticed that the mid range frequencies were being replicated much higher than what would be considered 'normal'. Didn't really matter to me as most music sounded pretty good.
Then, yesterday, a new problem occurred. I knew the moment I changed the volume and heard that little 'popping' sound that something was amiss. It didn't sound right. Sure enough, when I listened to music, it was horrible. But it's different to the previous problem - anti - aliasing is being done fine and well it appears - now, the music is simply too sharp and tinny. The beat of a song sounds so nasty it hurts my ears. High tones are way, way WAY too emphasizes - it makes listening to music a dreadful, painful experience. It sounds like this from every source - internal and external, every programme.
Yes, I have tried resetting PRAM and NVRAM. The iTunes equalizer is OFF. iTunes audio enhancement is OFF. I used to have rubbish things like Hear installed but I recently deleted them and all their plugins. All in all, I had decent (but even then not perfect) sound quality for a couple of glorious weeks, but now I'm back to tedious, unlistenable, tinny garbage. It hurts all the more cause I work from home and just need good quality music for a few hours a day over Spotify to keep my eyes sane.
I'm disgusted by the number of Apple products that malfunction and operate poorly. It almost feels like a gamble whenever I buy an Apple product - wondering if mine will be one of the many which suffer from some debilitating defect and will cough and splutter its way through a short and expensive life of repairs and break downs. I'm fed up with it. And I just want music that I can LISTEN TO! Apparently this is too much to ask of the most wealthy and powerful
corporation in the history of the World. Can anyone help me?
Ben x
Last edited:
