Sound Check needs work.

Posted:
in iPod + iTunes + AppleTV edited January 2014
As far as I can determine, Apple's "Sound Check" feature analyzes each song and extracts an average volume per track and then matches them all up with each other so that all of your music plays back at the same volume. The problem is that the way iTunes seems to match them up is by lowering all other music to the volume of the lowest track in your collection. I don't understand why Apple decided to do this. The lower volume songs should be raised to the loudest song in your library.



The reason this is such a bother to me is that I have a mix of audio formats, WAV, AIF, MP3, etc and iTunes doesn't seem to perform the "Sound Check" function on non-compressed files. I'll be listening along to "Sound Check" reduced volume music and then get slammed by a WAV or AIF file at full original volume.



Does anyone else experience this and have anything worth adding?

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 1
    jeffdmjeffdm Posts: 12,951member
    There might be problems with that. If it raised the quieter tracks, it would likely lead to clipping in the louder parts of those tracks, which makes the sound quality worse. Reducing the levels is generally a better way to go.



    I can't say anything about the uncompressed tracks, I don't use them.
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