Having some serious problems importing some music from a cd

mac2x · Dec 24, 2009

Not sure what the right forum for this is; mods, feel free to move it to a better place if there is one.

I have a basic music cd, that I have imported before in mp3 format. Only now I want it in Apple Lossless, so I am doing it over. However, iTunes will not read some of the tracks. It imports all of them, but the ones it would not read are all less than 20 kb in size. Attempting to copy off the disk results in a Finder I/O error, and Finder hanging and having to be force relaunched from terminal (relaunch is no longer available if I right click the finder icon)

Now for the weird part. Each track that wouldn't read in iTunes crashes Finder if I try to open them in quicklook. Now for the even weirder part. EACH and EVERY track plays perfectly in Quicktime 7. Want something still weirder? iTunes will play the files it previously wouldn't recognize after I play them in Quicktime, yet the problem reappears if I attempt to import.

I am totally at sea as to what the heck is going on here. Obviously, the cd and the optical drive are fine since Quicktime will play the files without a hiccup. I ran onyx to do a system wide cleanup (dramatically reduced my boot time!). Still no go.

Any insight into this will be much appreciated! I'm totally baffled.

Fishrrman · Dec 24, 2009

Here's an alternative way to import the tracks into iTunes as "aif" format files. Yes, that is not "Apple Lossless", but once you have the tracks as aif files you can convert them as you wish.

To do this, you will need GarageBand (which I assume you already have).

Do this:
1. Mount the CD with the tracks you want to import on the desktop.
2. Launch GarageBand
3. Choose to create a new project. Give it whatever name you wish, and locate it wherever you wish (once the songs are imported, you can just trash the entire project).
4. The project usually opens with a "piano track" that you don't need. Just delete it from the "Track" menu. Your GB project will now be "empty"
5. Go to the "Track" menu and chose to create a new, "basic" track with no effects.
6. The track will be created with no audio. That's fine, you're going to fill it with imported audio from the CD.
7. Double click on the icon of the audio CD to open it and show the tracks in the Finder.
8. Grab the first track you want to import, and drag it into the audio region of GB. You want it to "drop" at the beginning of the "timeline", so position your cursor there and just "let it go".
9. GB will read that track off the CD and import the audio (in uncompressed format) into the project.
10. You can press the spacebar to play the audio, just to be check it out. Press the spacebar again to stop playback.
11. If things are as you want, now go to the GB "File" menu and choose "export to iTunes". GB will do its thing, and the entire track (the song you just imported) will be exported in aif format to the "home/music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Import" folder. It will also "show up" in the iTunes Library window.
12. Set up your iTunes prefs so that you will import into Apple Lossless. It _may_ be necessary once you set prefs to quit iTunes and then re-launch.
13. Select the imported aif track in iTunes, go to the "Advanced" menu, and choose to convert to Apple Lossless.

If for some reason iTunes was giving you problems "pulling in" the audio off of one or more CDs, this _may_ serve as a workaround to get the audio into aif format to where you can access it.

When you're done with the first track in GB, just select the audio and delete it. Grab Track 2, and drag and drop it into GB, and repeat.

After writing all this, I'd just like to add: if it was me, I'd just leave the stuff in mp3 format, but at a high bitrate (320). Will sound as good (or very close) to Apple Lossless, yet be in far more "exchangeable" format. But that's just me.

pcs are junk · Dec 24, 2009

upgrade to snow leopard, then try

mac2x · Dec 24, 2009

Fishrrman said: ↑

Here's an alternative way to import the tracks into iTunes as "aif" format files. Yes, that is not "Apple Lossless", but once you have the tracks as aif files you can convert them as you wish.

To do this, you will need GarageBand (which I assume you already have).

Do this:
1. Mount the CD with the tracks you want to import on the desktop.
2. Launch GarageBand
3. Choose to create a new project. Give it whatever name you wish, and locate it wherever you wish (once the songs are imported, you can just trash the entire project).
4. The project usually opens with a "piano track" that you don't need. Just delete it from the "Track" menu. Your GB project will now be "empty"
5. Go to the "Track" menu and chose to create a new, "basic" track with no effects.
6. The track will be created with no audio. That's fine, you're going to fill it with imported audio from the CD.
7. Double click on the icon of the audio CD to open it and show the tracks in the Finder.
8. Grab the first track you want to import, and drag it into the audio region of GB. You want it to "drop" at the beginning of the "timeline", so position your cursor there and just "let it go".
9. GB will read that track off the CD and import the audio (in uncompressed format) into the project.
10. You can press the spacebar to play the audio, just to be check it out. Press the spacebar again to stop playback.
11. If things are as you want, now go to the GB "File" menu and choose "export to iTunes". GB will do its thing, and the entire track (the song you just imported) will be exported in aif format to the "home/music/iTunes/iTunes Music/Import" folder. It will also "show up" in the iTunes Library window.
12. Set up your iTunes prefs so that you will import into Apple Lossless. It _may_ be necessary once you set prefs to quit iTunes and then re-launch.
13. Select the imported aif track in iTunes, go to the "Advanced" menu, and choose to convert to Apple Lossless.

If for some reason iTunes was giving you problems "pulling in" the audio off of one or more CDs, this _may_ serve as a workaround to get the audio into aif format to where you can access it.

When you're done with the first track in GB, just select the audio and delete it. Grab Track 2, and drag and drop it into GB, and repeat.

After writing all this, I'd just like to add: if it was me, I'd just leave the stuff in mp3 format, but at a high bitrate (320). Will sound as good (or very close) to Apple Lossless, yet be in far more "exchangeable" format. But that's just me.
Click to expand...

I do have GB, so I'll give this a try. Thanks!

As far as formats, I use Apple Lossless for archival purposes. I will then make high bit rate mp3 or AAC copies for my iPod.

@ pcs are junk: huh????

mac2x · Dec 24, 2009

The tracks that were causing problems merely import instantly as a huge blob of awful white noise. They still play just fine in Quicktime.

[edit] Now tracks that were previously ok will not import. I can't even copy them onto the desktop without getting finder error code -36.

mac2x · Dec 24, 2009

OK, thanks for the help. I ended up giving up and pulling the files off the disc onto a thumbdrive on the iMac which has SL 10.6.2. I had to enter metadata by hand, but it works and I now have my Apple Lossless where I want it, on the MBP's iTunes Library.

Still going "WTF?" about it though...

mac2x · Dec 24, 2009

...a look through system.log revealed this repeated numerous times:
Code:
 
disk2: unsupported mode.

SAM Multimedia: READ or WRITE failed, SENSE_KEY = 0x05, ASC = 0x64, ASCQ = 0x00

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