Low quality playback of some songs on iTunes - Muffled and/or Digital Distortion and Clipping

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Level 1

4 points

Low quality playback of some songs on iTunes - Muffled and/or Digital Distortion and Clipping

I have a large music library of songs ripped from cd, purchased from iTunes in years past, and a few recent downloads from Apple Music.

I have noticed a significant number of songs are muffled or sound as if being played in a well when played back. Others have popping and digital clipping that makes them unlistenable.

The files sound fine played with another media player. The issue does not happen when streamed from apple music on the TV App or my iPhone. This clearly appears to be an iTunes issue vs file corruption issue.

Any suggestions to resolve this?

Is it possible to force iTunes to stream from Apple Music vs playing from the local drive?

I have Sound Check enabled and play using Direct Sound option, 44.1 kHz, 16 bps

I am on iTunes 12.12.5.8, Windows 11.

Windows, Windows 10

Posted on Oct 1, 2022 10:16 AM

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Answer 1

bruno75

Community Specialist

Oct 3, 2022 05:53 AM in response to kwbost

Hey there kwbost,

Great job narrowing down to music being played in iTunes on your Windows PC, as you mentioned it plays the same songs in another music player app and on Apple devices without any issues.

While you may need to contact Apple Support about this, we did have some things to rule out first:

You mentioned having Windows 11, but are the latest updates installed from Microsoft?
While we're unsure of the latest iTunes version number for Windows 11 ourselves, did you also already check for any updates for iTunes in the Microsoft Store? Here are the steps: Download and use iTunes for Windows
Sometimes a restart resolves unexpected behavior, so have you already tried one for your Windows PC?

Cheers!

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Answer 2

JessS19

Community Specialist

Oct 3, 2022 02:37 PM in response to kwbost

kwbost,

Thanks for getting back to us. Are you able to create a new user account to test and see if the issue continues? That could help to isolate the issue.

Should the issue continue you’ll need to Contact Apple Support for additional support.

We hope this helps to resolve the issue with iTunes audio.

Best wishes.

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Answer 3

kwbost Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 3, 2022 02:19 PM in response to kwbost

I have found that if I close iTunes then reopen iTunes the quality is much improved on a song that had sounded completely flattened immediately before closing and relaunching iTunes.

This leads me to suspect a memory management or other internal iTunes issue. Has anyone else experienced this issue?

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Answer 4

kwbost Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 3, 2022 02:20 PM in response to bruno75

Thanks. Windows and iTunes are up to date. That does not appear to be the issue. See latest update I just posted noting that closing and relaunching iTunes seems to immediately improve the quality.

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Answer 5

kwbost Author

Level 1

4 points

Oct 3, 2022 05:03 PM in response to JessS19

Thanks. I will try support.

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Low quality playback of some songs on iTunes - Muffled and/or Digital Distortion and Clipping

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