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iTunes skips!!

M

macgeek77

macrumors regular
Original poster
May 24, 2006
153
0
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?
 
Itunes skips

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?
 
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.
 
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.
 
Same problem with new Macbook Pro

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:
 
fasteddie12 said:
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:
Click to expand...

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 think it is iTunes

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?
 
ipodcentral112 said:
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.
Click to expand...
I would expect any format of songs to play on a MacBook Pro.
 
fasteddie12 said:
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?
Click to expand...


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


ChrisG said:
I would expect any format of songs to play on a MacBook Pro.
Click to expand...


True, but not necessarily in iTunes. ;)
 
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. :)
 
mad jew said:
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. :)
Click to expand...

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?
 
Thanks, but still no luck

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:
 
^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
 
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...
 
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
 
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!
 
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.
 
You can give Apple feedback at their Feedback site (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? :)
 
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.
 
iTunes skips

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.
 
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