I currently have a Fujitsu Plasma TV with a (HD) Cable box, Sony Blu-Ray player, and an Apple TV unit hooked up to it. When I watch cable TV or DVD's, the sound quality coming out of the TV speakers is excellent. When I play a (store bought) CD thru the Blu-Ray Player or I listen/watch Apple TV, the sound quality takes a dive. The music and words are still audible, but its accompanied by "mosqutio noise". Almost sounds like a radio station that has not been fined tuned. Why would audio quality go from excellent to poor with the above scenario. I've double checked all connections, and TV audio settings, upgraded my HDMI's and still no luck. Any help out there? Thanks.
I can give you no real help only my 2 cents. I will express a huge distrust for Apple HiFi abilities. Apple products are great at comercial bit rates but have been extremely lax in the HiFi area. AAC has produced known artifacs in the HiFi bit rates for years (like 4) and Apple never fixed them. Their ear buds, even the more than 200 USD ones are not HiFi. The normal ones are horrid! This tells me that do not think that their customers care about HiFi. I do not doubt their lossless audio is OK. You are complaining about artifacts (sounds that aren't real). Because they are very high pitch they are probably out side the commercial quality. Only HiFi will reproduce the really high notes. What are very high pitch notes is very age dependent. Men who tend to listen to louder music lose the ability to hear 18Hz by about 20 women by 25. That is about 192 bit rate which is HiFi. Apple's target quality is 128. AAC and other Apple products are superior at this bit rate. Apple haven't fixed any in 4 years maybe they might fix them in the next 4 years. I think if you play the same audio through all Apple equipment you will not hear the artifacts. That is because Apple is constistantly poor. Your problem is you are piping the tunes out to a HiFi system so you can hear how bad it is.
Mez, Thank you for your input. Noted. A couple of days ago, I rerouted the sound output out of the BluRay Player to the TV, using component cables instead of sending it via the HDMI cable. The sound cleared up! So it sounds like you maybe correct. Thanks for confirming my thoughts.
I have always been amazed at how little it takes to effect audio. Even wires to your speakers can alter their sound let alone a wire that carries low power. If you are picky about your audio you ought to slowly eliminate Apple software and hardware. Since I d steer clear I really don't know what is weaker and what is better except the ipod is HiFi. You need to chuck their ear buds and get good ones to hear the fidelity. Why would they bundle 40 - 16,000 Hz ear buds with a unit that puts out 4-22,000 Hz?
