One thing I'm pleased to discover has been working properly again is Sound Check now preserves the dynamics between tracks when listening to an album. In a sense, it works like Replay Gain in that it uses "track gain" when you're listening on shuffle or a playlist with tracks from multiple albums, but it uses "album gain" when you're listening to an album, where you'd typically want the song-to-song dynamics preserved (i.e., the quiet tracks remain quiet in relation to the loud tracks instead of Sound Check trying to get all the tracks on the album on the same level).
I often switch back and forth between shuffling my library + playlists and listening to albums all the way through, so I'd find myself turning Sound Check on and off quite frequently. It was annoying. I'm happy that I can just leave Sound Check on now and albums retain their dynamics. But if you start shuffling or listening to playlists, then Sound Check tries to make everything more or less equal, as expected.
I'm not sure when it started working properly because I was so used to switching it on and off that I hadn't bothered to check in a while. In 2013, mastering engineer Ian Shepherd posted on his blog that iTunes's Sound Check had a new, unpublicized automatic "Album Mode" that worked well, but a few iTunes updates after his blog post I noticed Sound Check stopped preserving the dynamics within an album for me. I kept checking over the years until I just got used to turning it on and off. I don't know if it just broke temporarily or what (for how many years?!), but I'm glad that it's back.
I often switch back and forth between shuffling my library + playlists and listening to albums all the way through, so I'd find myself turning Sound Check on and off quite frequently. It was annoying. I'm happy that I can just leave Sound Check on now and albums retain their dynamics. But if you start shuffling or listening to playlists, then Sound Check tries to make everything more or less equal, as expected.
I'm not sure when it started working properly because I was so used to switching it on and off that I hadn't bothered to check in a while. In 2013, mastering engineer Ian Shepherd posted on his blog that iTunes's Sound Check had a new, unpublicized automatic "Album Mode" that worked well, but a few iTunes updates after his blog post I noticed Sound Check stopped preserving the dynamics within an album for me. I kept checking over the years until I just got used to turning it on and off. I don't know if it just broke temporarily or what (for how many years?!), but I'm glad that it's back.