Auditioning Your Approval Masters in Itunes

Auditioning Your Approval Masters in iTunes

1.Importing Your Approval Masters

Before importing your reference masters into iTunes, insure that your iTunes

'Import Settings' are set to either'WAV' or 'AIFF', so as not to significantly reduce the audio quality of your masters upon import.

Go to the main iTunes File menu, and select 'Preferences', then in the 'General Preferences' window select 'Import Settings'

In the 'Import Settings' window use the 'Import Using' dropdown menu and

select either 'WAV Encoder' (Windows) or 'AIFF Encoder' (Mac)

You are now ready to import your approval masters so that there will not be any

loss of audio quality.

2.Playback Settings

To insure that there are no 'intelligent' playback functions activated that may alter the sound of your masters, go to the 'Playback' tab of the iTunes preferences panel,

and insure that the 'Crossfade Songs', 'Sound Enhancer' and 'Sound Check' options are Not selected. Also ensure that the iTunes EQ is not active.

A word about the 'Sound Check' option

iTunes Sound Check is an intelligent 'playback normaliser' whose purpose is to avoid drastic level changes when listening to playlists or in 'Singles' mode. It works

by turning down louder songs (sometimes drastically so). As such it will have a significant impact of the relative loudness of songs. If you are curious about how it will impact the loudness of your masters, try the following test:

-Create a playlist with your approval masters as well as some well know reference songs chosen from your library.

-Listen to the playlist being mindful of the loudness differences between your masters and the other songs

-Return to iTunes 'Playback' preferences and activate 'Sound Check'

-Repeat the exercise noticing changes in relative loudness from song to song.

Note -Sound Check' is a user controllable feature (except in ITunes Radio, where it is default).