Apple Music Why is Tidal so much louder than Apple Music?

[powerbook911]

Why is Tidal so much louder with something like AirPods Pro (other headphones I have as well) than Apple Music?

While I think there's something to say about the quality of Tidal being so high before it gets sent to the AirPods at 256AAC, I think a lot of the dramatic difference I hear is down to the volume.

 

[satcomer]

Why is Tidal so much louder with something like AirPods Pro (other headphones I have as well) than Apple Music?

While I think there's something to say about the quality of Tidal being so high before it gets sent to the AirPods at 256AAC, I think a lot of the dramatic difference I hear is down to the volume.

It all depends, Tidal might be boosting their streams! However as old audio guy I know modern software is much louder than the old analog recorded music is software recorded! Find some CDs of older music before 1997 and after 1997 and you will see the differences in volumes!

 

[BrianBaughn]

Is "Sound Check" on for the Music app?

 

[powerbook911]

Is "Sound Check" on for the Music app?

I did turn that off and it made up maybe 10 percent of the difference. It was a good thing to check for sure though.

I’m starting to get really tempted by tidal.

 

[powerbook911]

Is "Sound Check" on for the Music app?

Update: I'm thinking Sound Check takes some time to process. In the middle of listening today and comparing Apple Music and Tidal, Apple Music suddenly came to life.

Now with my non-professional devices like AirPods Pro, Apple Music sounds either close to tidal, equal, or better depending on the song.

Thank you so much Brian! Glad I won't have to spring for Tidal, but it is a pretty slick service I must say. The 3D songs are pretty fun with the AirPods Pro's "Spacial Audio," on iPhones. Maybe Apple will add Spacial Audio supported songs to Apple Music eventually?

However, I strongly recommend turning Sound Check off as well as Equalizer. On my Mac (those are now automatically turned off since I turned them off on iPhone), the music sounds so much better too. It has really come to life, just in the way it was sounding with Tidal.

 

[BrianBaughn]

Sound Check is probably good when you're listening to a playlist of various songs by various artists as it will attempt to level the loudness of all songs to, in theory, make it so you don't have to adjust volume on every song.

The problem is that it also does that leveling if you're listening to a single album and messes with the relative loudness between songs in a way the artists/producers/engineers did not intend.

Also, the method used is somewhat imperfect and two "soundchecked" songs played back-to-back can still seem a good bit different in loudness.

There's some info at this site that might be interesting:

Loudness Penalty

Find out if your music will be turned down by YouTube, Spotify, TIDAL, Apple Music and more. Discover your music's Loudness Penalty score, for free.

www.loudnesspenalty.com

 

[Amara97]

Why is Tidal so much louder with something like AirPods Pro (other headphones I have as well) than Apple Music?

While I think there's something to say about the quality of Tidal being so high before it gets sent to the AirPods at 256AAC, I think a lot of the dramatic difference I hear is down to the volume.

Maybe you can turn on the Normalize volume button. Just go to the Tidal app > Settings > Playback > Normalize volume. Or, you can play the Tidal music on other players. You just need to download the Tidal tracks and remove their DRM protection with a third-party tool like the AudBite Tidal Music Converter. Then you can import the converted music files to other players or editors to adjust their volume.