iTunes skips!!

[macgeek77]

For some reason, iTunes skips when it plays the songs in my libary. It even does this for downloaded songs from iTunes music store. Whats going on here?

[mad jew]

Do the songs skip if you play them with QuickTime? :)

[havokalien]

Need a little more info, like what mac? how old? did they ever play right? have you used disk utility? did you burn them to your drive? what format of songs?

[Greenjeens]

I noticed I could get the itunes tracks to skip if I had an application open and was making keystrokes. The most notible skips was having itunes open while I was Hijacking (Audio Hijack). i don't know the real reason, but it seems like all the entire system audio is hooked together with some apps, so I'll get two songs playing at once and one portion of audio, like sound effects from keys pressed effecting another audio application.

Might be a good experiment to narrow down the problem to see if you can make it skip on purpose and find out if the audio skips in the same place or a new place.

[ehayut]

I had this happen once. It had nothing to do with iTunes, my PC was just getting screwy. I think I may have had some driver issues slowing down my computer. I backed up all my stuff, reformatted, and it was good as new. It had nothing to do with iTunes or my music.

[fasteddie12]

I just got my Macbook Pro yesterday and am having the same problems noted here. I don't even have any "heavy" application installed yet. This is happening on a good amount but not all of my music library. I opened iStat on Dashboard and waited for a skip; processor usage goes from a fairly constant, low amount to around 25% right after the skip and then returns back to normal.
What could be causing this?
:confused: :confused: :confused:

[ipodcentral112]

I just got my Macbook Pro yesterday and am having the same problems noted here. I don't even have any "heavy" application installed yet. This is happening on a good amount but not all of my music library. I opened iStat on Dashboard and waited for a skip; processor usage goes from a fairly constant, low amount to around 25% right after the skip and then returns back to normal.
What could be causing this?
:confused: :confused: :confused:

It might have something to do with where you got hte songs or what format they are in etc. Its prob not directly related to itunes.

[fasteddie12]

I have been listening to a huge variety of songs, including some I just ripped from a brand new CD in LAME. It happens on many and then when I seek back to play the section over it does not happen. Quicktime worked flawlessly when I tried it. Could it be the new iTunes update?

[Shadow]

It might have something to do with where you got hte songs or what format they are in etc. Its prob not directly related to itunes.
I would expect any format of songs to play on a MacBook Pro.

[mad jew]

I have been listening to a huge variety of songs, including some I just ripped from a brand new CD in LAME. It happens on many and then when I seek back to play the section over it does not happen. Quicktime worked flawlessly when I tried it. Could it be the new iTunes update?


Possibly... Have you tried reinstalling iTunes? Do you have an iPod plugged in? :)


I would expect any format of songs to play on a MacBook Pro.


True, but not necessarily in iTunes. ;)

[fasteddie12]

I tried reinstalling but no luck. An iPod is not plugged in either.

[mad jew]

fasteddie12, try opening a new user account and seeing if the problem carries through. If the new account is fine then go back to the original and drag com.apple.iTunes.plist and com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist to the Desktop with iTunes closed (they'll be in your Preferences folder). Reopen iTunes and hear how it goes. This will put all your customised iTunes settings back to their defaults. :)

[Greenjeens]

fasteddie12, try opening a new user account and seeing if the problem carries through. If the new account is fine then go back to the original and drag com.apple.iTunes.plist and com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist to the Desktop with iTunes closed (they'll be in your Preferences folder). Reopen iTunes and hear how it goes. This will put all your customised iTunes settings back to their defaults. :)

Had a strange problem, possibly from some of many 3rd party applications interacting negatively. Creating another "user" got rid of the problem, and allowed me to get what I wanted to done, instead of having to trouble shoot the problem first. Then added only a few neccessary 3rd applications to the new user.


In the mean time, creating another user name from "Accounts" (at least with 10.3 in the System Preferences) sounds like a clever move.

From what I understand, the last step of moving the com.apple.iTunes.plist and com.apple.iTunes.eq.plist puts a nice clean set of insructions for itunes in place.

At the very worst, should replacing the itunes plists not work, and one is unable to figure out the problem, at least working through the other user name _might_ allow pop free recording. Correct?

Q's:
Is popping during iTunes, generally caused by an interruption in the data stream converson?

Would tracking during what kind of playback the popping occured, or if popping could be increased by running CPU intensive tasks , help with trouble shooting the cause?

[fasteddie12]

So I made the new user account. It seems to work fine. I then deleted the listed files and iTunes did "reset." The same problem keeps on happening though. I tried opening Photoshop why the music played, no interuptions occurred. I have no idea what this could be. :confused: :confused: :confused:

[2nyRiggz]

^So itunes is skipping on a sometime basis for you?
It doesn't skip when you open PS......plus the music files are good?

How much memory do you have in your MBP?....just out of nothing...have you tried reparing permissions?



Bless

[fasteddie12]

2NY, Yes it does not happen all the time. I know the files are good; it does it on a huge variety of files and when I seek back over the skip it plays fine. My Macbook has 2 gigs of ram...

[2nyRiggz]

I remembered my ibook G4 having that issue but it stopped all on its own....it would do a little skipping then I'll repeat the song and it would play fine....It hasn't done that in months though....ummm interesting....just for my sake repair permissions on your MBP please.



Bless

[Greenjeens]

I've been searching around on various forums and it appears other folks itunes are skipping, even with new, very capable equipment. And it doesn't seem like there is some kind of universal solution. Someting seems to be going on here IMO.

I'm a complete novice, but my wild guess is there might be some specific software bug.
I found a bug after updating Quicktime, which would not let me burn Apple Lossles files using Toast. Effected only Apple Lossless files and particular versions of Toast used with the NEW Quicktime, that was suppose to fix something else.

The point is... until I networked with other people having the same problem and found it wasn't something I screwed up (rare event), there was lots of great advice, that couldn't possibly help, because the problem was a Quicktime Toast interaction.

So, it's not out of the realm of possibility that it may be a sw bug. I suggest searching for and contacting others with skipping itunes on the various Mac Audio forums or on the Apple forums and see if the problem has been solved.
Keep trying anything reasonable, suggested by the generous and knowledgable Mac experts here...

Here's some guesses/suggestions. Make sure the audio sliders are turned all the way up on the itunes page and import some CD's. Try altering the buffer settings. Make sure and uncheck all the crossfade, soundcheck and sound enhancer settings in
itunes >preferences >playback.

Just a thought... are there any other caches that could be cleared ?

Good Luck!

[fasteddie12]

I reapplied permissions and I think I just got a skip. I'll keep you posted though. How could we tell Apple about this? If I had to guess it's just a little bug in the software.

[mad jew]

You can give Apple feedback at their Feedback site (http://www.apple.com/feedback/) (ironic or coincidental, you be the judge). As for the problem at hand, I wonder if there's a problem with a certain third party app or piece of software that might be causing this behaviour. What other apps, plugins and hacks are installed and active at the time of using iTunes? :)

[fasteddie12]

Really not too much. I just usually run Firefox while listening, sometimes others but it happens with just Firefox open. I have a couple duplicate playlist making scripts installed as well as LAME, nothing that affects iTunes very much. No plugins are installed.

[mad jew]

I have a couple duplicate playlist making scripts installed as well as LAME, nothing that affects iTunes very much.


I'm not quite sure what you mean by this, sorry. :o

[gigiuk]

Does it skip at the beginning of songs or randomly? It happened to me too, iTunes was skipping after the first few seconds of every song and it was caused by a dashboard widget called Harmonic which pulls songs lirics from the net hence running a script at the beginning of songs which caused them to skip. Then again that was on a PB G3 (Pismo) which may have just chocked due to being only 500 MHz (haven't tried Harmonic on other macs).

You need to identify the application that causes the CPU spike and remove it. Activity monitor may help you.

[fasteddie12]

THANK YOU, I have Harmonic that must have been causing it...

[gigiuk]

THANK YOU, I have Harmonic that must have been causing it...

did it fix it then? though it's a shame to throw away harmonic as the widget is cool

according to this http://www.mindquirk.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=236&sid=b5c7224df996832f4e38d497165d4747 it only does it the first time a song is played so you could leave your entire library play on its own once and only have to worry about new albums, i haven't tried it though

[Enigmah]

Mine did this all the time at the beginning of every tune !!!!!

I had 2 widget open :

1) Sing that tune - Lyric finder !!!
2) The official itune widget !

I removed sing that tune and disabled the official itunes widget and

PROBLEM SOLVED !!!

The sing that tune widget got lyrics and put them into itunes causing it to skip for a split second about 3-4 seconds into every new song played, once the lyrics where loaded for each tune it wouldn't skip on that particular song again but it got that annoying I just got rid of the widgets !

[straight blazin]

ok i saw this question while searching google because the same thing was happening to my itunes. im not sure if you've solved this already but i registered on this site just to post the answer cause i know how much it would suck to lose your music.. you have malware on your computer. you should download malwarebytes http://www.malwarebytes.org/ the free version is fine. then do a scan of your computer. remove the infected files and restart your computer. itunes worked for me after that, although i have no idea what kind of malware messes with itunes...... it could be something completely different for you though... i hope it works for you too! :)