Turn off the iTunes Sound Enhancer.

Posted September 19th, 2008 by Oliver Chesler
Filed Under: apple

Did you know that by default iTunes is mucking up the sound of your recordings? I’m not sure with what version this started with but iTunes when first installed has its Sound Enhancer turned on. This is fine for easy listening but if you don’t know it exists it can wreak havoc on you mind when you play your own recordings.

I first noticed this when I was mastering my last album. I was listening carefully to a song called The World Will Know Us which had some alternating panned tom fills. In my DAW the toms where perfectly tickling each ear as they bounced from left to right. Later I put all my mastered songs into iTunes and was playing with the order of the songs to see how the album should be best arranged. When The World Will Know Us came on something was very wrong because the panning was strange. The toms seemed pushed to the center right ear only. I rerendered and remastering the song and again the same thing. It was pure luck I discovered that the iTunes Sound Enhancer was on and it was the culprit causing the phenomena. One good fact is iTunes remembers your settings each time you upgrade to a newer version.

“Sound enhancer is absolutely the STUPIDEST thing… App-hole also have it set to ON by default.. I have to send the following disclaimer to all my clients who listen to mixes on iTunes “Please be aware that iTunes had a setting in the preferences, under the “Audio” tab which engages something they like to call “Sound Enhancer”. This setting will increase the L-R component of the stereo signal and supress the L+R component. What does that mean? It means that anything which is only on the left, only on the right or has significantly different information in the left and right channel will be made louder (cymbals, percussion, BGVs, guitars, ambiences) and anything which is identical in the left and right channels (therefore “mono”, Kick Snare, Bass, lead vocal, etc…) will be much quieter. Please be sure that the “sound Enhancer” is OFF before you call to complain that you cannot hear the lead vocal in the chorus, etc…” Apple are ****ing idiots about pro audio…” zmix, Gearslutz.com

Have you noticed this yourself?

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6 Responses to “Turn off the iTunes Sound Enhancer.”
  1. Jonathan Webb Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 9:05 am

    Yep, I noticed this too. It’s hard to understand why that setting is enabled by default, it sounds dreadful! Trying not to be elitist, but are people generally so ignorant of how music is supposed to sound?

    I have to say that with all the ‘enhancements’ switched off, iTunes 8 doesn’t sound as muddy as v7 did. I still prefer foobar2000 but, as you say, there’s nothing to beat listening to your DAW in terms of sound reproduction quality.

  2. Vergel E Says:
    September 19th, 2008 at 9:38 am

    That would make sense on why I found Quicktime Player and iTunes play the same song differently. I have taken to normally referencing music I’m working in in Quicktime player. It just had a cleaner sound… and now I know why. Very cool!

  3. Tom P Says:
    September 20th, 2008 at 12:51 am

    I spotted this the other day when I upgraded to v8. It’s pretty annoying that Apple enable it by default. I bet if the EQ was enabled people would complain but because the “sound enhancer” is so vague to 99.9% of people and tucked away in preferences, no one does.

  4. Dave Says:
    September 20th, 2008 at 6:18 pm

    Also beware of Sound Check! It will distort many recordings.

  5. graham miller Says:
    September 21st, 2008 at 12:48 pm

    i’ve had an apple computer since 1980. i love apple computers. and what is the application that finally makes them famous, along with their ipod? itunes - probably the worst thing they’ve ever made. it has very little use for any serious music enthusiast. instead, it is clearly designed for the ‘average’ music listener, which is basically a glorified version of the kind of people that have no problem with commercial FM radio.

    it sounds like shit and assumes users have little to no knowledge of computers or music - in it’s attempt to make ‘life easier’ it makes these kinds of importing, organizational and playback assumptions that drive me insane. i hate it. clearly not designed for a techno musician, since 75% of all the music on my computer is my own stuff, loops, tracks, single shot samples, whatever…

    i actually use the quicktime player to play stuff back. i think it sounds better for some reason, and both itunes and the quicktime player are coming out of my MOTU Traveller… even with all the stupid settings off in itunes, i was still experiencing slight distortion. maybe itunes has problems handling 24-bit? i dunno.

  6. Daniel Says:
    September 22nd, 2008 at 1:12 am

    Yeah man, thanks so much for that hint. I noticed the phenomenon while listening to our last record. Everything seemed wrong… but i thought, thats becuase of my different Hifi-speakers which i use just for listening to my iTunes music.

    Shame to Apple.

    Daniel