Snow Leopard vs. Lion -- sound quality?

[greg788]

Which provides better sound quality with Pure Music and Itunes? Has anyone done the comparison? I foolishly upgraded immediately to Lion and I use Pure Music. I'm debating going back to Snow Leopard if it provides better sound quality.

 

[REShaman]

greg788, despite the absence of integer mode which is temporarily (?) MIA in Lion, my experience of the sound quality after upgrading to Lion from Snow Leopard is that I do not discern a diminution in sound quality. I also use Amarra, Pure Music, Fidelia, Decibel, Audirvana, and lately mostly BitPerfect (yes, I bought them all some for for free) and have found absolutely enjoyable rendition of music playing AIFF files I convert from hard copies or conversion from Flac to AIFF from HDtracks downloads (thanks to Chris's useful video on how to early on when I began computer audio everything) or dubbing DVD/DVD-A with DVDAE. And sometimes with dBpoweramp when in Win7 via Fusion (more infrequently lately).

Obviously, that is my experience. Others may have a different experience. I would not hesitate to upgrade to Lion because of that particular reason. However, lately Lion is a pain for several other reasons that would be OT in this discussion. Good fortune with whatever you decide.

Best,

Richard

 

[wgscott]

When playback isn't disrupted, it sounds about the same to me.

 

The problem I have on my 2009 mini with 4 gig at work is that when I am doing something cpu-intensive, like compiling software, playback begins to skip and stutter, which I never had happen, even when maxing out both processors, in 10.6.X. This tells me that for whatever reason, the core audio processes are not getting the priority from the OS that they need during heavy load. Admittedly, this is a stress test, not normal music server conditions, but it was eye-opening.

 

[HiFiInsider]

My Apogee Duet 2 plays nice with Lion and I am very happy with the sound through iTunes.

 

[barrows]

not tried Lion, because of all the negative reviews, and specifically because it does not support integer playback. Darrell from Mach2 has stated that Lion runs a lot more background processes than SL, and that many of these cannot be easily terminated. WGscott's findings would seem to confirm Darrell's.

As for subjective sound quality, some have reported better SQ with Lion, and some have reported better SQ with SL. For the most part, those with better systems are generally reporting better SQ with SL (with the notable exception of Lars/Mercman, who prefers Lion) with the general subjective description that Lion appears to produce sharper, more defined transients-which some folks feel become too sharp. Considering that increased RF pollution of the audio signal will, subjectively, produce a sharper sound, with an apparent upward tilt of tonal response, my suspicion is that the more CPU intensive nature of Lion may be upping the overall RF levels and adding a higher level of artifacts to the sound.

I am sticking with SL for the moment, until more is learned about Lion. My thoughts are purely speculative, and if you are really curious you owe it to yourself to listen to the difference.

 

[Mercman]

Perhaps Lion requires relatively enormous resources to sound as good as SL. The Quad Core i7 2.3 GHz, 16GB RAM, Vertex 3 SSD of OS, Thunderbolt Promise Pegasus for Music files.

 

 

 

[barrows]

I know that you have reported better sound in your system with Lion.

What I wonder about is the increased RF level associated with more background processes. Interestingly, it has also been widely reported that the i processors emit much more noise than the previous generation, I wonder if they also consume more power to do the same tasks? Of course, most people around here already have a wifi network at home, or from neighbors, mucking up their sound.

In any case it has been widely reported that the i7 does produce better sonics-sure would be nice if things made a little more sense...and people had similar experiences with Lion. I am still loving SL with integer in Pure Music that I am going to continue to wait and see with Lion...

I definitely think that Thunderbolt drives make sense, it'll be interesting to see when small, quiet, bus powered Thunderbolt drives come out.

 

[mwheelerk]

I normally just jump right in with an upgrade like Lion but I have been so Satisfied with the latest upgrade versions of SL, iTunes and Pure Music running Integer Mode that I am reluctant to make the change.

 

[dmccombs]

Lion has a lot of junk in the trunk which affects sound quality, but iTunes is allowed to run in 64-bit mode, so there are trade-offs. If you remove/disable enough of the junk, Lion can play smoothly and sound very good. It's been a huge task, but Lion is on the way.

 

There seems to be no clear winner in this battle though. I think it depends on what hardware you are running, and which music player. Even then, it may come down to the type of sound you prefer. That's why you hear so many conflicting reports.

 

We prefer the Snow Leopard sound quality overall, but Lion can sound very good with lots of work to the OS.

 

[PeterSt]

For the most part, those with better systems are generally reporting better SQ with SL (with the notable exception of Lars/Mercman, who prefers Lion

 

... which in my view is not to be interpreted as those with the better systems are better able to judge. It will merely mean that the better system behaves better in the mean time, so better systems are to be about better in noise rejection.

 

Besides speculative, this is a wild guess in the mean time. It should fit *my* theories for Windooz though.

 

Peter

 

[Russell_L]

FWIW, I didn't notice a change right off the bat after updating from SL, but there certainly has been no deterioration with Lion. If anything, the last few times I've listened, I've noticed that I've been *really* enjoying the sound. Of course, the fact that I've been using BitPerfect (installed after I installed Lion) could very well have something to do with it.

 

Russell

 

[SteveS1]

using the same combination. I didn't notice a difference changing to Lion with Pure Music installed but the Lion/BitPerfect combination sounds terrific here. I also like the slicker operation.

 

I have Amarra (looking forward to trying the latest effort) Pure Music, Audirvana and BitPerfect which is my preferred solution currently.

 

Steve

 

[dmccombs]

Being a long time IT guy, if you had told me a couple of years ago, that I would someday spend hours upon hours, days upon days, analyzing how two different operating systems SOUND, I would have said you are crazy.

 

There are some crazy things we do in this hobby, eh?

 

[wgscott]

Frankly, what they did to Lion I think qualifies as breaking, whether it is audio or elinination of save-as, or memory use.

 

[dmccombs]

Wgscott,

 

I don't know if I would word things so harshly, but I know we agree on this in principle. ;-) It took much more R&D and work for us to get Lion sounding good.

 

 

[freddie40]

SteveS1, I agree with everything you said I am also awaiting Amarra to see if it is any better than before. It will have to be much better than BitPerfect and not exhibit any of the errors it had in the past versions, i.e. Gapless play and playing songs through iTunes like BitPerfect does Perfectly.

 

Dave

 

[Weerstandje]

When the latest Amarra came out I have been using that in Snow leopard instead of Pure Music with integer mode for a while. Amarra does not have integer mode, but I was very happy listening to it without that feature.

So since living without integer mode seemed very possible I decided to upgrade to Lion. Just to be up to to date.

Well...after a day I decided to downgrade to SL again (thanks time capsule).

 

In Lion the focus was gone. The instruments did not appear from a pitch-black background anymore, and musicians were not bodily present in front of me as it was in Snow Leopard. Using Amarra, PM or Bitperfect. I sort of came aware again that the music came out of those two speakers.

Nothing really wrong with the sound using Lion, but those things that make sound that really audiophile thing where gone for me in Lion.

 

After six hours of putting back my SL system with time machine from the time capsule disk, that great soundstage was back again. With Amarra Pure Music and Bitperect. So much for launchpad, mission control and such. Snow Leopard really handles sound quality in a better way.

 

 

[Jud]

I dual boot SL and Lion in my MacBook Pro, and with SSD the booting's very quick (a few seconds), so A/B comparisons are easy. I've done such comparisons repeatedly since Lion came out, primarily with Audirvana.

 

As I've said before, while audio in Lion does a bit better job of portraying reality in at least one specific respect (transients - realistic, but not unbalanced overemphasis), overall IMO SL provides a superior musical experience, especially evident in the overall natural quality and expressive nuances of vocals.

 

[wgscott]

We had another Save As bitch-fest on the way home today. I was preparing lectures in Keynote, which has the automatic versioning and hence no Save As command. In addition to the usual complaint about the ultra-clunky work-around, I discovered, much to my horror, that the auto-saving essentially causes keynote to freeze up every few minutes, which is intensely annoying. I am working now on an SSD, and it is much more responsive, so I guess it is hanging while stuffing my changes down the resource fork. The inability to turn off this stupid feature is just asinine. Almost every one of these features is counter-intuitive and makes the computer bog down. It would be a miracle if sound quality didn't suffer.

 

I am at the point now where I am very concerned for the future of Apple in the post-Jobs era.