Anyone having problems with iTunes4 ??

[uhlawboi80]

well, like always, i got the update to quicktime and iTunes almost as soon as they were posted...wanted to see what was new and see the music store.

NOW, i am studying and listening to iTunes, but its buggy. CDs i ripped yeterday are acting odd...well the MP3s that is. I have had MP3s skipping and bumpiing...and i am only running iTunes and iChat so system slowups shouldnt be that bad. ALSO i am noticing volume fluctuations in songs that were NOT there yesterday. They seem to be happening in similar or the same spot in certain tracks. I either notice the volume just drop for no reason mid song or in some instances its a constant ebbing and flowing of volume. Its subtle, but once i thought something was goofy i was relistening to tracks like 6 times and it keeps happening. Again, these are the exact tracks i listened to while studying last night and iTunes 3 didnt do this to the tracks at all! :mad:

Anyone else having iTunes4 actin up??

[Pismo]

I downloaded and installed Quicktime 6.2 and iTunes 4 and haven't had any problems. The only thing that annoyed me a little was when I tried to click on some items in the Music Store and I would get a "405" error or something like that. The problem hasn't happened for a few hours so Apple fixed it I guess.

[uhlawboi80]

well i have been further listening to my MP3 collection to see how broad or narrow the problem is. Seems that it only is affecting the 3 CDs i ripped yesterday from inside iTunes. Though, these are the only 3 CDs i have ripped in close to 6 months and they are 3 of onl 7 total ripped in iTunes. Not sure why they are doing this...seeing as the problem seems issolated i suppose i will just trash the CDs and re-rip them. guess at least now i can rip them ACC ;)

i would still be interested to learn if anyone else has had any problems of any kind with iTunes4

[andrewlandry]

i had the first hard crash in a long time while ripping a CD. also, i accidentally dragged the wrong album cover into iTunes and it won't let me change it. kind of weird. AAC sounds good though. :)

[uhlawboi80]

that does remind me...im at a coffee shop and i tossed in a CD...well the coffee shop has wireless but the authenitcator wasnt working so i couldnt really get on the internet though airport recognized a signal. EVERY time the CD would go in it would try to get the track listings online and CRASH iTunes. When it couldnt get through it just crashed the program and i had to turn off airport to stop it from doing it repeatedly.

[kylos]

Maybe your hd is getting fragmented after 6 months.

[NavyIntel007]

Anyone read the fine print when installing? It said something like to make an MP3 CD you must have an internal burner. I'm not sure if it affects AAC but I thought that was weird.

[uhlawboi80]

well as for the no external burner thing...Apple had already done that with its DVD drives...cant burn to an external DVD drive. I think its probably intentional to force upgrades.

as for my drive being fragmented..what the heck would that have to do with either of the problems i described!?! besides, Mac HDs dont fragment really badly the way PC HDs do so i doubt its very fragmented at all.

[technocoy]

on several songs..:mad:

[melchior]

i get tones like something out of space invaders on any song encoded with aac. i think i'm the only one. =(

[uhlawboi80]

yeah, i have noticed a few fluctuations in songs that werent ripped by iTunes now. But in most songs it seems to be in a set place...not random fluctuations. hmmmmm, wonder whats causing this all of a sudden. Glad someone else can coroborate so that i dont look like a nut job!

i havent encoded anything in AAC yet...now im almost afradi to!

[teabgs]

I had a little flucuations as well....Luckily I have a backup on another drive just in case :D


Im currently converting my mp3's to aac.....save s a good deal of space

I wish it would seperate the aac and mp3 files....it's gonna be a pain trashing the mp3's....Anyone know an easy way to get the mp3's out of my library without going into each album's folder?



How do you get cover art? I can't have to scan in the covers from my cd's that'd be ridiculous....there has to be a better way....please someone tell me...


Also, I had some programs (Quicktime, Final Cut Pro) quitting on me when I ad mp3's converting to aac....

[RBMaraman]

Well, so far I've encoded about 100 songs into iTunes as AAC, and I have to say....they sound AWESOME! I can really hear the difference between MP3 and AAC, and AAC kicks major boo-tay! I've decided to scrap all of my MP3's and re-encode all of my CD's as AAC.

Apple, thanks for another great piece of software!

[andrewlandry]

for finding album cover art, i recommend the all music guide. the url is: http://www.allmusic.com/

just search by artist and click on the album and you'll get a nice decent sized picture of the cover.

[mangoduck]

teabgs, plase say you're not converting from mp3 straight to aac. please say that you're re-ripping to aac from the original cd format. if not, you're shooting yourself in the foot in regards to sound quality...

no problems for me in itunes 4 so far. haven't installed qt yet so i've not messed with aac.

[teabgs]

Originally posted by mangoduck
teabgs, plase say you're not converting from mp3 straight to aac. please say that you're re-ripping to aac from the original cd format. if not, you're shooting yourself in the foot in regards to sound quality...

no problems for me in itunes 4 so far. haven't installed qt yet so i've not messed with aac.

I need the space and dont have time to re-rip until the semester is over.

I have a few videos to edit and if I can save a few gigs by converting my mp3's to aac then its fine. I dont lose any quality, and I can always rip them again later properly.

I just like that I can have the same quality and use less space until I have time to re-rip all my music....it's very time consuming...I have no time.

[applemacdude]

no problems here

[stuckwithme247]

Originally posted by teabgs
I had a little flucuations as well....Luckily I have a backup on another drive just in case :D


Im currently converting my mp3's to aac.....save s a good deal of space

I wish it would seperate the aac and mp3 files....it's gonna be a pain trashing the mp3's....Anyone know an easy way to get the mp3's out of my library without going into each album's folder?



How do you get cover art? I can't have to scan in the covers from my cd's that'd be ridiculous....there has to be a better way....please someone tell me...


Also, I had some programs (Quicktime, Final Cut Pro) quitting on me when I ad mp3's converting to aac....

well if you are like me you ripped mp3s at a bitrate higher than 128 for mp3s you can sort by bitrate separate your mp3s from aacs easily

p.s. do you think that if you convert a 192kbps mp3 to aac it loses quality?

[szark]

Originally posted by andrewlandry
also, i accidentally dragged the wrong album cover into iTunes and it won't let me change it.

Use the "Artwork" tab in the Get Info window. That will allow you to delete it.

[teabgs]

Originally posted by stuckwithme247
well if you are like me you ripped mp3s at a bitrate higher than 128 for mp3s you can sort by bitrate separate your mp3s from aacs easily

p.s. do you think that if you convert a 192kbps mp3 to aac it loses quality?

Yeah..I thought about that....so I tested it out, and they sounded about the same...I figured it wouldnt sound good, but it really doesnt get it to lose quality...

[gotohamish]

Originally posted by uhlawboi80
well i have been further listening to my MP3 collection to see how broad or narrow the problem is. Seems that it only is affecting the 3 CDs i ripped yesterday from inside iTunes. Though, these are the only 3 CDs i have ripped in close to 6 months and they are 3 of onl 7 total ripped in iTunes. Not sure why they are doing this...seeing as the problem seems issolated i suppose i will just trash the CDs and re-rip them. guess at least now i can rip them ACC ;)

i would still be interested to learn if anyone else has had any problems of any kind with iTunes4

Not related to your post, but Britain only has one 't'...

[kylos]

Originally posted by uhlawboi80
as for my drive being fragmented..what the heck would that have to do with either of the problems i described!?! besides, Mac HDs dont fragment really badly the way PC HDs do so i doubt its very fragmented at all.

As you reported it, you were having problems with skipping. That indicates a poor data stream. Since you weren't running many apps at all, it would seem that your problem isn't a small ram buffer. So it would make sense that your hd isn't in prime condition.

And mac hd's fragment badly enough. Ever notice that on a clean install of the OS, the optimization step takes almost no time, but after a while that step alone can take 20 mins?

EDIT: I just saw that it worked fine in ITunes 3. Ignore all that.:D :D :D

[uhlawboi80]

ok...can i just trash iTunes 4 and reinstall it without it causing other problems? It is now messin with Kylie, and thats where i draw the line. If i have to spend another day of studying listening to iTunes4 butchering my mp3s im gonna be pissed

[ChicagoMac]

My imac is doing the same thing in itunes4. Volume fluctuations in all of my mp3s! That's why I got on here to look and see if anyone else had the same problem. Is this going to be like the last imovie upgrade!?!? What should I do?

[melchior]

if you try encoding just with quicktime you'll find the sound is a lot better.

i'm putting this down as an iTunes bug. i pray it is fixed promptly.

[Spike Spiegel]

ive only had one weird thing happen to me so far. I was browsing my library, and i looked over to the playlist window and there was another library in there that wasnt mine. someone named metalhaze's playlist was in my itunes and i could play all several hundred of his songs without any trouble. then i noticed the eject icon in the bottom right had changed into a music note. the mouse over said that it was to disconnect from the shared music folder. what i want to know is, how did that playlist get into my itunes without my doing anything, and why is it still there after i hit disconnect?

[melchior]

iTunes has a function that searches for other shared playlists. if you are on a LAN then it will automatically be found.

on the other hand you can do it manually over the internet, check out the various threads with people's shared addresses.

[loser]

I'm having volume fluctuations also. I first noticed it listening to previews from the new music store. Thought that was strange since Steve said they were "pristine" transfers. Then noticed it on some aac's I ripped from cd. The fluctuation seems to be in the playback only and not the ripping. If I play the same file in quicktime, on my ipod, or from a cd burned from itunes, the fluctuations are not there. But everytime I play the tracks directly from itunes, the fluctuations are there.
Hope theres a fix for this soon. My mac is attached to my stereo and all my music is played through it. The fluctuations are pretty annoying.

[uhlawboi80]

melchior....im not sure about encoding with quicktime, but, at least for me, the fluctuations are in MP3s that were never encoded by iTunes, let alone iTunes4. I am actually getting fluctuations in MP3s from my old PC!

it is definately a bug, and a crappy one at that. im going to dump iTunes4 and re-install it after my torts final at 1 today and see if that fixes anything

[techne]

I had that weird fluctuations too. They seem to be worst in bass-driven songs. I first noticed it in a Erasure song. It sounded like a gate or cutout effect so I went to Preferences -> Effects. I turned off 'Sound Enhancer' effect and it stopped doing the weird volume stuff. It sounds pretty flat now (no matter what equalizer set you use). I wonder if the people who hadn't experienced this stuff have the 'Sound Enhancer' Effect disabled so they are kind of inmune to this bug.

[applemacdude]

ok now i have a problem...when i keep signing in it says error -9815 urghh:mad:

[uhlawboi80]

well i played with the sound enhancer settings and tried disabling it and it didnt seem to really change the sound fluctuations at all. Maybe you are experiencing a different problem Techne. Though, in my opinion, a flat song that doesnt respond to equalizer shifts is not a good fix :)

i just wonder why it seems to be affecting only a few people...

[teabgs]

I turned the sound enhancer off and it's solved my problems....

[uhlawboi80]

i will have to play around with it some more and seeif it really is changing things...i just tried with one song.

does it really make your songs flat and unresponsive to equalizer changes though? if so, thats not a "fix" to me. i dont like my music at a flat equalizer. Its about 65% dance music, and it was not designed to be listened to at flat equalizer settings :D

[teabgs]

Originally posted by uhlawboi80
i will have to play around with it some more and seeif it really is changing things...i just tried with one song.

does it really make your songs flat and unresponsive to equalizer changes though? if so, thats not a "fix" to me. i dont like my music at a flat equalizer. Its about 65% dance music, and it was not designed to be listened to at flat equalizer settings :D

yeah...it does make it kinda flat....which sucks a lot. But in about 2 weeks I'm going to re-rip my music as aac.....so, i'll deal with it till then

[uhlawboi80]

ok....well flat is crap to me. I have ripped things in as AAC and i still get the fluctuations in the newly ripped songs. This leads me to believe it is some sort or issue with the program itself, not any particular file - though it seems to only affect certain files.

i am simply wiping iTunes off my computer and reloading it as soon as i get a chance and see if that helps.

[teabgs]

Originally posted by uhlawboi80
ok....well flat is crap to me. I have ripped things in as AAC and i still get the fluctuations in the newly ripped songs. This leads me to believe it is some sort or issue with the program itself, not any particular file - though it seems to only affect certain files.

i am simply wiping iTunes off my computer and reloading it as soon as i get a chance and see if that helps.

Let me/us know how that works...

[techne]

Originally posted by uhlawboi80
does it really make your songs flat and unresponsive to equalizer changes though? if so, thats not a "fix" to me. i dont like my music at a flat equalizer. Its about 65% dance music, and it was not designed to be listened to at flat equalizer settings :D

I didn't say that. I said that when you turn off the "Sound Enhancer" option the song sounds flat no matter what eq set you use. Sure, you can notice the difference between "Dance", "Piano" and "Flat" sets with the sound enhancer disabled, but they aren't even close to the sound you get when you have the sound enhancer activated. Which is a shame, of course. And yes, it is a fix because it stops the weird volume fluctuations, doesn't it?

I guess I can live without it althought it is n't a subtle thing. It's like when you have passed your teenage years hearing Vinyl records and then you hear them on CD and you miss the scratches, the hiss and that nice bass sound. With the time you don't even remember it. When I was in the Matrix (i.e. I was a windoze user) there was a nice korean music player called Soritong (http://www.sorinara.com) and it blowed me away when I heard its 'Techno Enhancer' and 'Wide Stereo' effects in a .mp3 file. Winamp (http://www.winamp.com) didn't even have skin capabilities at that time.

Oh well.. I guess I'll wait until ma' Apple get aware of this as well as the USB hub related kernel errors introduced in 10.2.5. Yes, I'm one of those guys who got a nightmare installing 10.2.5 and nobody believed on it, because "oh yeah? I never got a problem with that and I don't know anybody who have problems with that.. does your Pismo have been modified? have you installed the combo or the single update? are all your peripherals from Apple? aren't they?". :D hehehe

[senseibiz]

At first I was getting a few error messages. But since last night, Its been great. I already purchased about 10 songs and requested a few more.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Kyle?
As you reported it, you were having problems with skipping. That indicates a poor data stream. Since you weren't running many apps at all, it would seem that your problem isn't a small ram buffer. So it would make sense that your hd isn't in prime condition.

And mac hd's fragment badly enough. Ever notice that on a clean install of the OS, the optimization step takes almost no time, but after a while that step alone can take 20 mins?

EDIT: I just saw that it worked fine in ITunes 3. Ignore all that.:D :D :D

Okay, Yes, Mac fragment, Yes it can be very bady. Does it cause a serious slow down on Macs? Not really.

Okay here's where your a bit confused. When you install a new file and it says optimizing. It doesn't mean degragging. It means it is prebinding the application. The reason it takes longer on an older drive is there are usually a lot of programs that need there binding fixed.

[amnesiac1984]

Originally posted by techne
I didn't say that. I said that when you turn off the "Sound Enhancer" option the song sounds flat no matter what eq set you use. Sure, you can notice the difference between "Dance", "Piano" and "Flat" sets with the sound enhancer disabled, but they aren't even close to the sound you get when you have the sound enhancer activated. Which is a shame, of course. And yes, it is a fix because it stops the weird volume fluctuations, doesn't it?

I guess I can live without it althought it is n't a subtle thing. It's like when you have passed your teenage years hearing Vinyl records and then you hear them on CD and you miss the scratches, the hiss and that nice bass sound. With the time you don't even remember it. When I was in the Matrix (i.e. I was a windoze user) there was a nice korean music player called Soritong (http://www.sorinara.com) and it blowed me away when I heard its 'Techno Enhancer' and 'Wide Stereo' effects in a .mp3 file. Winamp (http://www.winamp.com) didn't even have skin capabilities at that time.

Oh well.. I guess I'll wait until ma' Apple get aware of this as well as the USB hub related kernel errors introduced in 10.2.5. Yes, I'm one of those guys who got a nightmare installing 10.2.5 and nobody believed on it, because "oh yeah? I never got a problem with that and I don't know anybody who have problems with that.. does your Pismo have been modified? have you installed the combo or the single update? are all your peripherals from Apple? aren't they?". :D hehehe

I've never used sound enhancer. If you have a decent hi-fi you don't need it. It always made bass heavy songs clip anyway so it really did suck. The same thing with colume check or whatever, also I never use any EQ settings either, keeping the sound flat is what I do, as a sound engineer, so naturally I like to hear my music flat, and IMO if you have a serious sound system it sounds better the flatter the sound input you can get. Maybe if I was using apple's pro speakers or the Emac's built in set I would use it but not on a decent hi-fi.

[Spike Spiegel]

ive had a few of those sound fluctuations, but my main gripe with itunes 4 is the incredibly long start up. It takes like, 6-7 seconds on a dual gig on which it only took like 1 second on itunes 3.

[MacBandit]

Originally posted by Spike Spiegel
ive had a few of those sound fluctuations, but my main gripe with itunes 4 is the incredibly long start up. It takes like, 6-7 seconds on a dual gig on which it only took like 1 second on itunes 3.

You need to repair disk permissions and prebind. My dual/GHz/DDR Powermac starts iTunes 4 in just under 2 seconds.

Also about the music output as stated in a previous message if you have decent speaker then all the sound enhancer does is screw up the sound. I never use the EQ or sound enhancer it makes it sound over saturated.

[techne]

Originally posted by amnesiac1984
I've never used sound enhancer. If you have a decent hi-fi you don't need it. It always made bass heavy songs clip anyway so it really did suck. The same thing with colume check or whatever, also I never use any EQ settings either, keeping the sound flat is what I do, as a sound engineer, so naturally I like to hear my music flat, and IMO if you have a serious sound system it sounds better the flatter the sound input you can get. Maybe if I was using apple's pro speakers or the Emac's built in set I would use it but not on a decent hi-fi.

Not always, and it only sucks if you use an hi-fi. It depends on your circunstances. A lot of people just have a set of speakers for gaming and hear music while working in his/her box. I had used laptops as my main computer since 1995 so my preference isnt to travel with a hi-fi or a set of speakers else a light pair of headphones. I don't know how many laptop users do that, but if you like to travel light and still enjoy a nice sound you simply use sound enhancers in your player. Being a sound engineer you should know that not everybody use/can afford/like one specific audio set-up.

[uhlawboi80]

well i will have to agree with techne...ive never personally owned a desktop. im a student, and ive ALWAYS had laptops, as far back as when they had black and white screens and you had to get a track ball to add on to it!

that said, i listen to my computer mainly through a pair of sony headphones that are probably not the greatest. Therefore i need sound enhancer on so it doesnt sound like poo...i dont think the people at the coffee shop want me to bust out hi-fi speakers and make them all listen to alcazar;)

all the same, i still shouldnt HAVE to turn off sound enhancer to prevent my song volumes from yo-yoing like oprahs weight during the 90s! if its in the program it shouldnt screw stuff up.

[amnesiac1984]

Originally posted by techne
Not always, and it only sucks if you use an hi-fi. It depends on your circunstances. A lot of people just have a set of speakers for gaming and hear music while working in his/her box. I had used laptops as my main computer since 1995 so my preference isnt to travel with a hi-fi or a set of speakers else a light pair of headphones. I don't know how many laptop users do that, but if you like to travel light and still enjoy a nice sound you simply use sound enhancers in your player. Being a sound engineer you should know that not everybody use/can afford/like one specific audio set-up.

I guess I sort of agreed with you in my post, only I forgot to inlcude headphones along with emac speakers and apple pro speakers.

Anyway, I'm not really a sound engineer, yet. Just on my way to being one when I finish University, heh!

I agree with bandit, it does make it sound too bright, it sounds good at first, but when listening to tracks that I know very well I find all the brightness can drown out some of the finer details and subtle background instruments that I love to hear, cos you often discover them on one of your favourite songs after years of listening to it. As for clipping, I think its soundcheck that makes it clip, anyone noticed this? Certain tracks basslines just distort and fart at you, no matter what the sound is coming from be it speakers or headphones. And no its not my amp or speakers, its the actually audio output from iTunes clipping in the DAC.

I'm listening to some newly encoded AAC files now, such an improvement over MP3. It gives you that brightness but with more clarity as well, and it doesn't cut out white noise like mp3's do. The main problem I had with mp3's, no matter the bitrate is that is butchered Norah Jones's voice, and any other "breathy" female singer. Thats because it cuts out white noise, and breathy boices have a lot of white noise in them.
</rant>

[herr_neumann]

Originally posted by uhlawboi80
NOW, i am studying and listening to iTunes, but its buggy. CDs i ripped yeterday are acting odd...well the MP3s that is. I have had MP3s skipping and bumpiing...and i am only running iTunes and iChat so system slowups shouldnt be that bad. ALSO i am noticing volume fluctuations in songs that were NOT there yesterday. They seem to be happening in similar or the same spot in certain tracks. I either notice the volume just drop for no reason mid song or in some instances its a constant ebbing and flowing of volume. Its subtle, but once i thought something was goofy i was relistening to tracks like 6 times and it keeps happening. Again, these are the exact tracks i listened to while studying last night and iTunes 3 didnt do this to the tracks at all! :mad:

Anyone else having iTunes4 actin up??

I had the same thing going on. Go into the prefs and turn off the effects. That stopped mine.

[uhlawboi80]

by turrn off "effects" i assume you mean turn off the sound enhancer...but look at the last portions of the thread. Those of us not using Hi-Fi speakers/headphones to listen to our music get flat sounding output if sound enhancer is turned off.

again, i really dont consider the disabling of a feature, designed to be used under certain circumstances, a "fix" to a problem. it may stop the volume fluctuations, but then i get a new problem...flat and bad sounding output through my headphones.

[techne]

Looks like they are aware of this.. no solution yet

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93051