iTunes 8 suspends airtunes transmissions during DLs at full speed - anyone else ?

[tkermit]

Gear & Settings: Airport Express 802.11g / Macbook 802.11g / WPA2 secured network, set to 802.11g only

I have this problem that is completely reproducible every time and I wanted to check whether anyone else can confirm it .

When I'm listening to music over airTunes while anything is being downloaded at ~700KB/s, fully utilizing the capacity of my internet connection, the music temporarily stops - the little scrubber thing actually continues to move, but no music can be heard. As soon as I pause the download, the music continues. It will also stop again when I resume the download.

I can't quite believe that the data throughput should be above what my wireless 802.11g network can handle. This also didn't seem to be a problem "pre-iTunes 8".

I appreciate any input

 

[SnakeXs]

While I don't have your exact issue, I have had some annoying "chopping up" and dropping out of Airtunes, seemingly at random. Sound will crackle and drop a second or so but continue uninterrupted.

Looks like I may have found a solid lead, though. I opened AP Grapher, to look for any noise when the issue occurs, and found none. What I did find, much quicker, was clear. Every scan AP Grapher does, marked by a blip noise, caused sound to crackle. Every, single, one.

What this means I can't say for certain, nor how to fix it, nor who's fault it is, but it is something.

 

[tkermit]

..I opened AP Grapher, to look for any noise when the issue occurs, and found none. What I did find, much quicker, was clear. Every scan AP Grapher does, marked by a blip noise, caused sound to crackle. Every, single, one.

thanks for your response! I could reproduce AP Scanner's effect on Airtunes transmissions. The scanning leading to a dropout may actually be unavoidable, but my current amateurish guess still is, that iTunes 8 fails to reserve its needed wireless bandwidth and is always ready to give up whatever bandwidth it uses, while iTunes 7 held on to it.

That's all I can currently think of - I'm not sure yet what kind of bug report I'm going to file. I also couldn't really find a strong lead in Apple's discussion forums, only seemingly random Airtunes problems that are new to iTunes 8.

 

[tkermit]

a new lead: When I open the 'network' preference panel in my system preferences for the first time after the 'system preference' application has started , the music cuts out for 2 seconds...

 

[SnakeXs]

a new lead: When I open the 'network' preference panel in my system preferences for the first time after the 'system preference' application has started , the music cuts out for 2 seconds...

Same here. :|

Like you said, iTunes must handle the bandwidth in a new way. What to report to Apple is an enigma, especially with all the other Airtunes issues getting much more attention.

 

[tkermit]

Same here. :|

Like you said, iTunes must handle the bandwidth in a new way. What to report to Apple is an enigma, especially with all the other Airtunes issues getting much more attention.

another possible explanation would be a drastic reduction in the buffer size which would lead to even small transfer interruptions stopping the music.

What surprises me is that I just realized that I get the exact same behavior by using 'Airfoil' (a 3rd party tool that enables airTunes functionality for all OS X programs). Therefore it would seem like iTunes may not even be the culprit here. Maybe the Quicktime update did it ?

Anyway, now I'm kind of confused...

 

[Fuchal]

Same for me, although iTunes 8 does a much better job of streaming. Before, music would cut out completely and never return. At least it works now.

 

[SnakeXs]

Same for me, although iTunes 8 does a much better job of streaming. Before, music would cut out completely and never return. At least it works now.

Yeah, it's nice that music still plays, but the trade off is that cutouts happen far more often, in my experience anyways.

I also have a feeling this is a more fixable issue. Once it's gotten to the bottom of. I hope.

 

[SnakeXs]

Anyone dig anything further up?

 

[blabu]

Hi,

I got the same error with my macbook air and airport express (non n version). If I stream music and start a download the music break until the download finished, than play again.

I´ve the current firmware on airport express and OSX 10.5 with itunes 8 is also up 2 date.

So maybe will will find a workaround to ply music and download. I also can´t remember that I had the problem with itunes 7 ... A downgrade to the older version of itunes is not an option because the itunes database will not work with itues 7 :-(

 

[tkermit]

hasn't been fixed in iTunes 8.0.1

 

[John01021988]

What happens to me is when I hit the pause button (ex, phone call) and hit play again, I get a 3 sec lag.... To fix the problem I have to restart iTunes, which is annoying

 

[wholsten]

Found a fix

I was experiencing the same problems so i decided to play around with a few settings in iTunes 8.0.1.

All i did was go to preferences - advanced tab - changed the streaming buffer size to large.

Not sure why it worked but i haven't had a problem since..

Hope it helps.

 

[BeMa]

iTunes 8 cut out issues

Since upgrading to iTunes 8, I had cut out issues when streaming music from iTunes to my speakers via an Airport Express. I managed to get around this by setting my Airport Extreme to 'Create closed network' which is the equivalent of stopping your SSID being broadcast by your router (if not using an Airport Extreme). I've been streaming without any cut outs at all for three days now.

iMac G5, Airport Extreme (b/g), Airport Express, Netgear 632 ADSL modem.

 

[beaner454]

All i did was go to preferences - advanced tab - changed the streaming buffer size to large. Not sure why it worked but i haven't had a problem since..

Genius, so simple why didn't I think of this. It works because iTunes decides to send more of the song over to the Airport before it starts playing. Think of it like waiting longer before you hit the play button when downloading a movie.

This way when you are downloading large files and the bandwidth is being eaten up by the browser AirTunes is still playing nice and smooth because it has more of the song downloaded already.

The downside is that the initial playing of the song takes a bit longer. But I'll take a longer start in exchange for smooth music playback any day.

 

[tkermit]

Well -my issue still exists but I've gotten used to it.

Changing the Streaming Buffer Size did not help, and I would actually think that this setting only influences the streaming of media from the web to your computer, and not airTunes music streamed over your network.

Creating a closed network, as BeMa suggested, also didn't help and would have been a very surprising solution anyway.

I am now on Snow Leopard with iTunes 9. At this point I feel that anything else than increasing the network speed by switching to 802.11n won't help much. As long as I'm holding on to my current Macbook I'm unfortunately limited to 802.11g.