Ry Cooder uses iTunes to master his album

Not sure about the Sound Enhance, but any setting of equalization DOES GET APPLIED when burning a CD from within iTunes.

I discovered this when I was making some "road tunes" discs for the car. It really helped to overcome highway road noise, etc.

If the equalization is getting applied at the time of burning, is it PROVEN that the sound enhance is NOT getting applied?

I'm still calling shenanigans on the whole thing. I just don't think it makes sense. The sound enhancer is only in effect for playback. Why did a CD burned in itunes sound better because of it? It doesn't apply the processing to the CD.
I've spent years in recording studios, I once miked a metal bowl full of forks on top of a bass amp to make it sound more distorted. I helped build a platform out of chairs and plywood for a singer to stand on so he'd sound nervous while singing. So, I understand all the wacky things that are done to get a sound, but this thing sounds like someone's marketing department.

Sound engineers over time have used novel ways to get the right sound.

For example, Phil Spector's "wall of sound," where hard walls in a recording studio created echo and reverberation would, in theory, have contradicted textbook approaches.

Yet it was wonderfully effective and helped create some of the highest grossing hits of the 60s.

Wow, Andy, does that include me, too?

Other than AlMeister and nod none of you know what you're talking about. And I really mean that - you don't know anything about mixing and mastering audio. Not slamming anyone.

I'm sure that "Sound Enhancer" via iTunes is nothing more than a couple of Audio Units with predetermined settings, probably embedded in iTunes. Now the interesting question is what are they? A compressor, expander, tiny tiny tiny amount of reverb?

Interesting.

The sound enhancer sounds like nothing more than a slight compressor + EQ.

As a mastering engineer, this one has me scratching my head....

We've had to do some crazy things to please various artists, but this seems a little, uh, careless on Ry's part. And if this is just to get some publicity for his record, well I don't get that either.

If his record was sounding "over-processed" (or whatever) he needs to address that with his mastering engineer, or find a new one if he wasn't happy with the sound.

It's easy to make a CD that is "sound enhanced"; play it back in iTunes with enhancing on, and run the audio outs (analog or digital) and record into your favourite audio recorder.

I think you can also probably use something like audio hijack to route the enhanced audio from itunes right to disk (never tried it though)

In regards to AlMeister's comment, there's also the story of how Peter Gabriel and Daniel Lanois used jamboxes as their studio monitors during the recording for US - the reasoning was that "this is what the songs will be heard on by the public, so we should make sure they sound good through those."

Not only does Sound Enhancer only run on playback, but even if he had been able to burn a CD that was "sound enhanced," it would end up sounding inaccurate when played on my system, because I have Sound Enhancer enabled which would be enhancing already-enhanced audio! Double the "enhancement."