From the course: Audio Mastering Techniques

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Mastering for iTunes tips and tricks

Mastering for iTunes tips and tricks

From the course: Audio Mastering Techniques

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Mastering for iTunes tips and tricks

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So what are the tricks to get the best sound quality from an iTunes encode? It turns out that the considerations are about the same as with MP3 encoding. First of all, turn it down a bit. A song that's flat-lined at -1 dB full-scale isn't going to encode as well as the song with some headroom. This is because the iTunes AAC Encoder tends to output a tad harder than the source. So there may be inter-sample overloads that happened at that level that aren't detected on a typical peak meter. All digital audio converters on consumer and professional audio gear have different sensitivities, and some may overload while others sound clean. As a result, a level that doesn't trigger an over on your DAW's converter, may actually be an over on another playback unit. If you back it down to -0.5 or even -1 dB, the encode will sound a lot better and your listener probably won't be able to tell much of a difference in level anyway. Don't squash the master too hard. Masters with some dynamic range…

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