Does it occur to you that it might be the motor, wind and/or road/tire noise interfering with that frequency range, otherwise the wiring in your car or the sound system.
Fast conclusion that it’s got to be Apple Music. Also your hearing is kind of a miracle that you can make that analysis in a car with all the noise going on.
I have a Mazda with Bose sound system and road tires and it sounds fabulous, either BlueTooth or USB. Talking about streaming lossy Apple AAC, 4G into the car.
It’s like you get a reward for bashing Apple Music. My goodness. Like a bunch of school kids who found a victim to bully.
You buy your 70.000 $ sound systems and be happy, but let others enjoy their music too please.
Others happen to have an opinion different than yours, nothing wrong with this.
It is great you are pleased with the sound in your Mazda. Enjoy it!
This isn’t my first rodeo in car audio. Tuning is evaluated parked first. However, the engine makes almost no noise parked. These new cars are stupid quiet inside.
I’ve spent a lot of time in car audio and find claims regarding road noise confusing. If you listen at 65-70 db… yes road noise will affect you perception slightly. At 90db… not really at all. Regardless… road noise is not broad spectrum noise, it’s in the midbass and low midrange predominantly. If you have a situation where you also have a perceived drop in this area I argue it is extra easy to hear problems. Road noise does not eliminate the ability to hear issues.
I tuned my old car with a active processor/EQ front stage setup and it had 0.25db steps. Parked vs driving mattered very little because I listen up at 80-85db but also go about 90db -95db for 15 minutes. When you spend a lot of time (as in years) messing with EQ in 1/3 octave steps you can more easily pick out what you think is up vs down. This is because you’ve played with and learned what happens when you change things. Most people just take a wild guess in HiFi but really have no idea what more midbass or midrange or treble would have sounded like… with an EQ you get to experiment with precision and find where the problem was and how a small change in a tiny area affects your perception of the ENTIRE frequency band.
Most people boost first which is wrong… cut first then boost… then alter proportions and find the right balance. You’d be surprised what cutting the treble does on both the B&O and Bose systems I’ve heard(I’m sure it doesn’t always work but assume companies have somewhat steady target curves). Not sure why the treble is so high… cymbal fundamental is midrange not treble. I hate when I only hear the tippy top of a cymbal which would be like the 8th or above harmonic? When I turn treble down first I hear cymbal body and crash.
I don’t listen for audiophile stuff like Diana Krall’s vocal cords … I play electric guitar and know what it should sound like and what it sounds like with different amounts of midrange presence and when it sounds good and when it sounds like utter poo. Also I know what a live drum kit sounds like. It’s not hard in my opinion to tell when a mid scoop (either EQ or system issue) has occurred. Every instrument sounds hollow on every album on multiple genres.
On a side note I hope your Bose system is better than the one in my Wife’s 370Z. It is tuned differently than the B&O. Way too much treble which is similar but it comes with too much upper midrange specifically… not much body. It turns electric guitar into a $50 amp from Walmart. It’s fine at low volume but really degrades in SQ fast. My wife came home a month ago and said she needs an amp cause it can’t be cranked.
If you like Bluetooth on the Bose I know why… it’s softens the high end and probably makes it more tolerable at higher volume… it’s effectively a tone control vs CD. We are stubborn and use CDs with treble down.
Please for the love of *** turn speed sensitive volume OFF! The Bose system with speed sensitivity on completely eliminates the bass/midbass response. You can hear the effect parked… toggle on and off progressively and observe how the system waves SQ goodbye.
@Rudolf_Appel try Vox over USB and see ? To my ears it’s enough of a difference to not use Apple… YMMV. Also have you experimented with fading to the front?
You are absolutely accurate with your comment regarding Bose systems with speed sensitivity. The system in my Z06 does truly odd things with the sound.
Frustratingly, even with the speed sensitivity off, raising the volume changes the tonal balance.
And you can’t just change me the amp or speakers. Bose speakers are notoriously low impedance, 0.5 ohm!
Of course everybody can have their opinion, but it wasn’t just an option was it.
It was a recommendation and statement that Apple Music isn’t all that good.
Perhaps that applies for Bronco owners. But based on the application @cxp rather jumps to conclusions.
It is his conclusion and opinion based on his experience. This forum is all about opinions and shared experience.
Your opinion happens to be different - which is perfectly fine. But please do not label others who disagree with you as “a bunch of school kids,” etc. It is the name calling which is inappropriate. Others’ opinions are as valid as yours.
You are pleased with the sound in your Mazda. Enjoy it!
Yeah, but even on lowly stuff like iPads, this 70 year old can tell the difference between aac and 44.1/16, between 44.1/16 and 44.1/24, and between MQA and true flac. That’s why about 3 1/2 years ago, I deleted my 800k+ iTunes library, ditched iTunes and Apple Music, and went strictly with Redbook and flac. (My ears thank me every day). And on my main system, it’s like night and day. And then, a well done DSD plays, and it’s audio orgasm time!!
Man, that doesn’t even happen in my wildest dreams.
I am lucky. I was never sucked into lesser sounding formats and avoided these issues all together.
But while I prefer to have the best sound possible I fully understand and appreciate others get just as much enjoyment listening to lossy files on earbuds as any of us achieve in our most perfect listening moments.
It really does just come down to the music.
I wasn’t generalizing but after further testing I’ll go ahead. Apple Music does in fact suck (in my observation/opinion). It’s not a CarPlay problem or a Bronco problem… it’s the Apple Music app.
The same signature detected in the Bronco is consistent over headphones. Meze 99 classics using the Apple dongle. Music samples are not super high res and are 16/44.1 lossless vs lossless eliminating issues with dongle incompatibility. Downloaded vs downloaded.
With Apple Music there is a significant veil and there is no depth to the sound field… it’s flat and makes everything one dimensional. Midbass and midrange are messed up and everything sounds very processed. This is a universal signature of the Apple app consistent across tracks and artists.
If people are curious I highly encourage Vox as it has many of the qualities I hear from Roon/Audirvana or other high quality players. Apple Music to my ears is bad SQ and lifeless. Apple statements regarding AAC vs lossless are interesting because I doubt you can hear a difference in source quality when the player has a bad sound signature like this.
That begs the question then … For us incorrigible Apple people, what sort of gear can most effectively mitigate the problems with the player app?
iPhone or Mac? @kjdemko
If Mac/Windows I would look towards future Audirvana or Roon integration.
For iPhone…. buy your music and run thru Vox. Alternatively I’m willing to bet Spotify premium beats Apple lossless due to app SQ differences. Spotify integration is in Vox.
I can hear the difference clearly over my Sony WF1000 earbuds… over Bluetooth.
I guess my primary question: Will Apple build some type of exclusive mode into the Mac OS and version of Apple Music?
This would eliminate the ridiculous mess requiring users to find out the resolution, change it in the MIDI app… repeat.
Hopefully I’m wrong but I’m pessimistic. They clearly state on website there is no difference between AAC and lossless. I argue they think that way due to their software not being transparent.
If they think that way then they probably don’t care about resampling. That’s me speculating. They are the ones that made it more complicated to get bit perfect audio out… integer mode and all.
Do they? I only ever heard Eddie Cue say he can’t hear the difference. And their AAC 256kbps does smoke similar-sized MP3. Sure they’d want to stand by what they’ve been selling us for decades now, while recognizing that most poor sods out there only have a crappy Bluetooth speaker to listen to, or a pair of Beats.
But when they say AAC is “virtually indistinguishable” from lossless, well…“virtually.” That’s obvious marketing BS language even if a poor app makes it accidentally true.
Didn’t Eddie also say “spatial” is the future of all music? Some think MQA provides a stream to users that is not what was intended by the artist… Just wait until Apple starts mass-processing streams into spatial.
I’ve said it before but the issue that really bothers me is how Apple’s genius marketing will have most consumers thinking they are hearing high resolution through their BT EarPods.
Also, isn’t Apple creating their own special criteria for lossless which is 24/48?
(I’m a long time Mac OS person)
Sadly I can’t afford to give up the convenience of Airplay, so (the idea of) 24/48 sounds great to me.
As for MQA vs spatial audio, at least MQA is aimed at audiophiles. I’ve seen no evidence that the same can be said about spatial, and despite some cautiously optimistic words from the audio press trying to stay relevant, I fully expect it to go the way of quadrophonic sound and the Touch Bar (THANK YOU Apple for auto-correcting that to caps for me…jokers).
The better apps like Audirvana reveal how MQA can sound thin and weird. We could make a case for “ignorance is bliss” where if you use Tidal app… it’s signature possibly hides the MQA sound.
From my experience the sound signature of different apps is maintained over Airplay. I was surprised a few years back when I heard Tidal vs Audirvana (streaming Tidal) over Airplay to a Denon receiver. It sounded like a component change.