iTunes 4 volume dropping/Non-Carbon iTunes???

[Pengu]

Heyas,

I've never noticed this before with any song, and i may not have listened to the particular song since iTunes 4 came out, but I just noticed that at a particular section of the song "The Dreaming Tree" by DMB, the volume seems to drop dramatically. I thought maybe the encoding was a bit dodgy. I opened it in Quicktime & VLC. Neither goes quiet at the same point. I played with the EQ preamp and the volume settings for the file. While the results make a slight difference, its not consistant with the rest of the song. Any one have any idea what is causing this?

Also, on an unrelated note. Does anyone have any idea when iTunes (for X at least) will cease to be a very dodgy carbon app? Where else in a program do we see the ENTIRE interface a part of the resource set? OK, so apple want iTunes to look the same on OS9. Why not continue with the same version for 9, and make a Coccoa version for X, and to satisfy the audiophiles, they could use the LAME mp3 encoder rather than the old one inherited from SoundJam MP...

feel free to abuse me about why there is nothing wrong with continually hacking SoundJam MP for 3 years after buying it.

 

[serpicolugnut]

Go to Preferences > Effects... Uncheck Sound Enhancer and Sound Check. These two effects try to normalize volume between different tracks. In my experience, they work most of the time and you don't notice them. But if you listen long enough, you will start to hear their limitations when they "over" normalize a song and drop levels during a tunes playback. IMO, they are best disabled...

As for a Cocoa iTunes.... I would have thought Apple would have re-wrote it already, since they did the same thing with iMovie 3. It might just be a matter of resources. The iMovie team has quite a bit of work to do in 2003, with the development of a PC version and continued develpment of the iTMS. After that dust settles, you might see a move to Cocoa. My guess - the developer of iTunes was the original developer of SoundJam. He's probably more adept at working in Carbon than Cocoa, and as a result, the project will probably stay a Carbon app.

 

[Pengu]

Hey thanks, I never thought about checking those before. I turned both off, and sure enough it doesn't go quiet. But, there is a very slight drop in both the vocals and instruments which i think it was over exagerrating. I tried it again with just sound enhancer, still does it. tried it with just volume adjuster, it seems fine. i guess i'll just use it with volume adjuster. thanks serpi.