[Bill O'Connell]

Picked up a Macbook Pro a couple months ago and for some reason Front Row sounds much better to my ears then Itunes. Whats up with that?
 Anybody have an explanation?
 
 Thanks,
 Bill

[Crimson]

Hi, That's odd being that both utilize Core Audio for processing. Do you have eq or normalization enabled in iTunes? Are you upsampling in Audio Midi? What's your setup?

[SFDude]

I've read that Front Row usings the QT components to play back audio whereas iTunes does not. From some people's accounts, iTunes sounds better than Front Row. I haven't really sat down to use Front Row and do a comparison so I'm not sure but if someone can chime in on this, it'd help answer some questions about how both applications output audio.

[ZLS]

Picked up a Macbook Pro a couple months ago and for some reason Front Row sounds much better to my ears then Itunes. Whats up with that?
 Anybody have an explanation?
 
 Thanks,
 Bill

    I realize this an old thread, but I recently encountered the same impression.  Front Row sounded clearly superior to Itunes.  I went so far as to turn the volume all the way down on Itunes such that I was given an alert by Itunes, but Front Row played just fine.  Is it the use of an outboard DAC that could possibly account for the difference even though I play both formats through the dac using an USB cable? 

    I wouldn't really care except that I have to create specific playlists if I use front row.  I can.t use my mouse to skip to a particular artist or album, never mind song.

    I guess what I am asking is there any way to get Itunes to sound as good as front row. 

    There was another person with me who heard the same thing; the difference was not subtle.     

[Crimson]

Z,

When comparing the output of iTunes vs Front Row, were you running volume at 100% for both? The reason I ask is, iTunes is basically a file manager for music files and uses QT components (via core audio) for audio playback. Same is the case with Front Row. iTunes does, however, have its own volume control and SRC. This could be a possible reason for the difference in sound. This difference shouldn't be there (theoretically) with both iTunes and Front Row volumes set to 100%.

[ZLS]

Z,

When comparing the output of iTunes vs Front Row, were you running volume at 100% for both? The reason I ask is, iTunes is basically a file manager for music files and uses QT components (via core audio) for audio playback. Same is the case with Front Row. iTunes does, however, have its own volume control and SRC. This could be a possible reason for the difference in sound. This difference shouldn't be there (theoretically) with both iTunes and Front Row volumes set to 100%.

J,

    Both Itunes and Front Row were set to maximum volume. 

    I gather you are not hearing any difference on your system.  I have had the pleasure of listening to your system, and it is a damn good one. 

    Is it possible that the sound is dependant on the specific type of outboard dac that is used? 

[Crimson]

Z,

I haven't compared the two, I was just surmising as to the possible cause of the difference. I'll have to try it out. I'm currently using the Sonic Studio Amarra plug-in for iTunes, so I expect there to be a difference between that and Front Row.

[truant]

I know this topic hasn't been posted in some time but I just came across it today and having recently started using my MacBook with a Havana DAC I found Bill's findings of interest.  I've been using iTunes this past week getting up to speed with computer audio. I didn't know much about Front Row at all so spent some time tonight checking it out.  Fortunately I found my Apple remote-Front Row is pretty frustrating without it. I may have to agree with Bill that Front Row sounds better than iTunes. More dynamic,
holographic, balanced, etc.  Seems kind of crazy that there would be a difference at all.  It also seems more consistently good playing all varieties of music while with iTunes I find it necessary to use the equalizer more than I'd like.

[srb]

I may have to agree with Bill that Front Row sounds better than iTunes. More dynamic....

Just thought I'd ask if both you and Bill possibly have Sound Check (compression) enabled in iTunes?
 
Steve

[ZLS]

I may have to agree with Bill that Front Row sounds better than iTunes. More dynamic....

   
 
Just thought I'd ask if both you and Bill possibly have Sound Check (compression) enabled in iTunes?
 
Steve

    In my case sound check is not enabled.  The better sound of Front Row holds true for both my MacBook and my iMac.  I am trying to listen to another outboard DAC to determine if the difference in sound attributable to one particular DAC. 

[truant]

I'll have to check.  I continued to listen into the evening last night via
Front Row and thought the music sounded substantially better than via iTunes. At least that is my impression up to this point. While I prefer the iTunes interface to FR I'll choose the sound any day.

[low.pfile]

[EDIT: Sorry guys, I forgot to mention I am on OS X 10.4 Tiger and was using FrontRow v1--so my original post below is based on that.

At work I was able to use a Leopard MBP and Front Row did not behave as I describe below and the sound was different and the iTunes equalization did not carry over to FR.]

Original post:
I normally use my older G5 as a music server, since it does not support Front Row, I transfered a few of my reference songs (AIFF) to my MacBook Pro to be able to compare. This was with a Wavelength Brick v2 DAC. I am not sure I heard any difference between the two at all. Songs: Amandrai-Ry Cooder, As Yet Untitled-Terrence Trent Darby, Burn one down-Ben Harper, Detlef Schrempf-Band of Horses, Give A Little Whistle-Julie London, Kick it around-James Hunter, Nightingale-Nora Jones, some test frequency tones.

And more importantly I noticed something when toggling between the two players mid-song: iTunes was playing the song that was just playing in Front Row. So I did a test. I turned on the iTunes equalizer and set it to a severe high end tip. This confirmed that the itunes settings are carried through to Front Row.  Can someone else check this out?

So as I expected Front Row is simply an alternative front end interface to iTunes.

As a side note, during this test  I was actually toggling between, Front Row, iTunes, and Amarra w/iTunes. More later.

cheers, ed

[low.pfile]

see EDIT above.

[srb]

So the question now is...
 
Does Front Row improve upon iTunes under Leopard, or does iTunes now sound slightly worse under Leopard than it did under Tiger?
 
This is getting interesting.
 
Steve

[truant]

a belated response to an earlier question:   Soundcheck was not enabled. Volume has been all the way up.  I was moving between FR and iTunes again last night and more often than not I preferred iTunes this time. FR sounded compressed.  If it is the case that the iTunes equalizer setting carries over into FR perhaps this had something to do with what I was hearing.  Perhaps I was simply interpreting the the EQ setting as the FR 'sound.'  Up to this point I haven't been keeping track of the EQ setting(s) while in FR. 

[low.pfile]

C'mon folks let's flush this out.

Since so many of us use iTunes as our source we really need to understand if it is compromised. I am going to try to get a friend to make his Tiger MPB available to me for further testing. I am still on Tiger on my music system for professional reasons. Maybe someone out there has multiple macs and different OSs?

Share your experiences and identify your OS version etc.

cheers,
ed

[santacore]

Very interesting findings. I'll have to compare FR with straight iTunes. Unfortunately my DAC died last night so I'm stuck for a while.

Besides the Amarra software, what else are you guys using for playback on a mac?