iPod Poor playback with large library

[ScottyB]

Hi. I did an initial search of the forums, but haven't found an answer to a problem I'm having. I have a large mp3 library (about 250GB so far), and I'm having problems with playback quality. The files are 192kb mp3's, and they sound great when I burn a CD, or transfer them to my iPod. However, when listening through iTunes, it pops and crackles, and sometimes slows WAY up.

To be fair, I'm running a 3.0 GHz P4 (Windoze XP). I know, I know, but it's all I've got. I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas about getting this problem straightened out. Do you think I need a dedicated mp3 server to keep the files off of my internal HD?

Thanks for your help.

ScottyB

 

[nomad01]

To be fair, I'm running a 3.0 GHz P4 (Windoze XP). I know, I know, but it's all I've got. I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas about getting this problem straightened out. Do you think I need a dedicated mp3 server to keep the files off of my internal HD?

Well my library is nowhere near as large but my iTunes machine is a 1.5GHz P4 running XP and it's been fine.

I've had a quick look on Apple's support site and can't see any restrictions on library sizes. What version of iTunes are you running?

Maybe have a look at this:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93610

 

[mad jew]

iTunes for Windows is much much slower than iTunes for Mac. You'd probably have a faster library if you bought a new Mac mini and an external drive (because minis only go up to 80GB).

 

[DaftUnion]

If your on windows, it sounds like it's highly likely that it's an issue with your sound card, or sound drivers. Look into this! I had a computer once that did this and since I had the same music on two computers, I know it probably is related to this.

 

[balamw]

I was just wondering if anyone had any ideas about getting this problem straightened out.

A couple of things to check.

Fragmentation/free space on your hard drive. Windows really doesn't like to have the main hard drive over 80% full and when you run under these conditions for a while, even NTFS partitions get horribly fragmented. You can use CONTIG.EXE from sysinternals.com to defrag individual files and see if it makes a difference, or do a full defrag on C:

What else is your system doing at the time and what sound card do you have in your system? I know that I can't listen to iTunes on my home XP box without the kind of symptoms you are experiencing if I am doing anything even remotely disk or CPU intensive, and I blame this primarily on my crappy sound card that needs CPU attention. I get better results mutlitasking with iTunes on a old 750 MHz PIII box with a "smarter" sound card than my 3.0 GHz PIV.

Of course my iBook does even better. Go with mad jew's suggestion.

B