iTunes 10.1.2

[wgscott]

Anyone hear a difference? More open soundstage? Tighter bass? Tremulodic trebble? Jitterless transmission? New libmindread.dylib sample rate adjustment? wav-aiff duality? Less lossy lossless playback?

 

[mwheelerk]

I believe the following are the updates to 10.1.2

 

"iTunes 10.1.2 provides a number of important stability and performance improvements.

 

iTunes 10.1 came with several new features and improvements, including:

 

• Use AirPlay to instantly and wirelessly stream videos from iTunes to the all-new Apple TV.

 

• Sync with your iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch with iOS 4.2."

 

[bernardl]

I believe that the sound quality is in a totally different league when playing the track 8 of the Sttellla CD "The dark side of the moule". The difference is hard to describe yet pretty striking between 1:23 and 1:27.

 

Blame it on your ears if it doesn't jump at you, even my dog told me it felt like listening to a live event, as if a veil had been lifted.

 

:-)

 

Cheers,

Bernard

 

 

[mwheelerk]

I was going to post how I don't really hear a difference but then again I shouldn't since I am only using iTunes as a data manager and use Pure Music as my playback software.

 

If it did auto switching of sampling rates maybe I would try it without PM.

 

[wgscott]

Do you hear any differences between the databases?

 

 

 

[agentsmith]

Still no auto sample rate switching?

 

Why is this so difficult?

 

[wgscott]

OK, so now we have to be serious for a moment:

 

Apple won't "fix" the sample rate issue because from their point of view, it isn't broken, but is rather doing exactly what it is supposed to do. As far as they are concerned, a program (even their own) that automatically switches the sample rate to (say) 96kHz, introduces the possibility of breakage, because not all output devices will accept that output. So they will never "fix" it because it works the way it is designed to.

 

Now back to our originally scheduled dissing of the 98MB download that changed nothing other than compatibility for a phone that doesn't exist yet.

 

[bdiament]

I believe Apple also addressed an issue some folks (including myself) noticed with 10.0, where separation between channels was quite compromised, along with a bit of right-heaviness in the almost mono presentation and a concurrent loss of fine detail.

 

I wonder how many folks who did not notice this, commented on how their other "better sounding than iTunes" apps gave a "wider, deeper soundstage" and "more detail". ;-{

 

The issue appears to be fixed and iTunes, in my experience, is once again delivering sonics that match playback of the masters used to create the discs ripped into iTunes.

 

Best regards,

Barry

www.soundkeeperrecordings.com

www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

 

[mwheelerk]

Barry are you now using iTunes as your playback software. I thought you were using a third party software for playback.

 

[bdiament]

Hi mwheelerk,

 

"...Barry are you now using iTunes as your playback software. I thought you were using a third party software for playback..."

 

There are a number of third-party apps on my machine (primarily so I could find out what, if anything, each offers). But iTunes has always been (and remains) my prime "server" app.

 

I much prefer its interface to anything else I've tried and most importantly, it delivers the same sound (to me) as playing the master files.

 

This last is my criterion for assessing the sound of this type of app:

Does it match the master used to create the CD I ripped into iTunes - or the high res master played in the software I used to record it?

 

Anything else, regardless of how "pleasant", would be a departure from the original, which I would deem a "distortion". I want my server to provide the sound of the master. In my experience, iTunes does this. (The good news is the other apps I've tried also do this. So for me, it comes down to interface and in this regard, I find iTunes without competition.) While I do wish iTunes switched sample rates automatically, I don't have a problem doing this manually for "critical" listening.

 

Just my perspective, of course.

 

Best regards,

Barry

www.soundkeeperrecordings.com

www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

 

[wgb113]

I was beginning to think I had cloth ears with all of these alternatives to the dreaded iTunes sound.

 

Wait...unless we both have cloth ears!!!

 

Bill

 

[bdiament]

Hi Bill,

 

"...I was beginning to think I had cloth ears with all of these alternatives to the dreaded iTunes sound."

 

"Wait...unless we both have cloth ears!!!.."

 

Almost anything is possible.

 

But when I capture the live playback from different apps, from just in front of the DAC chip in my ULN-8, I can null any of the ones I have against the others as well as against the master, 100%.

 

I haven't been able to do that with things I find to sound different from each other. (Perhaps I'm missing something but if so, I have yet to discover what that might be. I remain open to any possibilities but have not found any so far.)

 

Best regards,

Barry

www.soundkeeperrecordings.com

www.barrydiamentaudio.com

 

 

[Bob Stern]

@wgscott:

 

Actually, I reported in an old thread somewhere on this forum that an Apple core audio engineer did acknowledge one aspect of the sample rate issue to be a bug. He said it was a bug that iTunes failed to notice when the user changed the sample rate in Audio MIDI after iTunes was launched.

 

To illustrate this bug, suppose Audio MIDI is set to 44.1, then you launch iTunes, then you change Audio MIDI to 96, then you play a 96 file in iTunes. Almost any music player other than iTunes would simply play the 96 file without SRC because it matches the sample rate currently set in Audio MIDI. However, as a result of the bug, iTunes will convert the audio from 96 to 44.1 (to match the Audio MIDI sample rate when iTunes was launched), then Core Audio will convert it back to 96 (to match the current setting of Audio MIDI).

 

The Apple engineer said fixing this bug was on their to do list, but not a high priority. I imagine it will remain a very low priority unless Apple starts selling high-res audio from the iTunes Store.