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Audio Quality

4 GoKawiil briefs on this topic

Upgrading your turntable's stylus can improve vinyl sound quality

As vinyl sales continue rising, more listeners are looking to upgrade their turntables rather than buy new high-end players. Guidance on the topic identifies the stylus, or needle, as the component most responsible for audio quality, since it reads the grooves on a record. Styluses come in several shapes—spherical, elliptical, microliner, Shibata and line contact—with spherical or conical tips being the cheapest and most durable but least detailed option.

Netflix muffled dialogue fix traced to audio format mismatch, not hardware

Many Netflix viewers experience inconsistent audio quality, with dialogue sometimes sounding distant or garbled on certain shows while others play fine. The root cause isn't a weak internet connection or poor TV speakers, but a mismatch between the audio format Netflix streams and the playback device's capabilities. Netflix says the fix typically involves a quick settings adjustment rather than new equipment or a support call.

Active Noise Cancellation: What It Fixes and What It Breaks in Everyday Use

A review of active noise cancellation (ANC) headphones outlines their benefits, including blocking steady background noise, improving audio clarity, protecting hearing by reducing the need for high volume, and aiding focus or sleep. It also highlights drawbacks: ANC struggles with sudden loud sounds, can sometimes degrade audio quality or cause ear discomfort, may reduce situational awareness in unsafe settings, and drains battery life faster than headphones without the feature.

Apple Music and Spotify offer built-in settings to boost iPhone audio quality

Apple Music and Spotify both include adjustable audio quality and equalizer settings that can noticeably improve sound on an iPhone. Users can raise streaming quality tiers in each app's settings menu, then fine-tune sound using built-in EQ presets or custom sliders. Volume normalization features like Apple's Sound Check and Spotify's Volume normalization can also be toggled to balance loudness across tracks.