My macbook's sound skips-very annoying

[tennismanclay]

Lately my macbook's sound has been skipping when listening to music or watching any video with sound. Even if i hook up external speakers or headphones it still skips about 1 time every 45 seconds.

any suggestions?



-Clay

 

[NAG]

What is the load on the processor and hard drive like? Is it doing a lot of stuff when you're listening to music?

 

[tennismanclay]

What is the load on the processor and hard drive like? Is it doing a lot of stuff when you're listening to music?

Last time i tried i had safari and ichat open while listening to itunes, and it was still skipping.

 

[NAG]

It happens when they aren't open though right?

 

[tennismanclay]

yes,

would it have anything to do with my fans? They've been going pretty hardcore since upgrading.


And its not skipping as much now, weird.

 

[NAG]

Okay the fan always on means something is wonky with your pmu.

I would reset it:

Shut down your computer
Unplug it and remove the battery
Hold the power button for 5 seconds
Put the battery in, plug it in and restart

 

[tennismanclay]

Okay the fan always on means something is wonky with your pmu.

I would reset it:

Shut down your computer
Unplug it and remove the battery
Hold the power button for 5 seconds
Put the battery in, plug it in and restart

i followed your directions, fans are still full blast... hmmmm


i will try again later

 

[dcorban]

Just run Activity Monitor and see what is using all of your CPU.

 

[Browzilla]

I'm having the same problem, 2.2 SR MBP. My machine'd been up and running for a good several days. Nothing heavy running, I'd just burned a disc, had like...Firefox and QS up, and obviously iTunes.

And come to think of it, I had Geektool in the background, attempting to no avail to display a text file updated every 15 seconds. I suppose that could've been what put the load over.

So unless there's another cause, I'm going with that. Since it didn't start happening until today, and I just started messing with Geektool today as well. (It was off before.)

So unless there's something wrong with iTunes 7.5.whatever or OS X.4.11.

Actually, also just today I noticed a weird faint bumping noise coming from the computer, which I thought had gone away, but now seems to be back. Crap.

 

[pistachoo]

faint tick-ticking, and problems with skipping sound

This is very interesting (and not in a good way!) - since I updated to 10.4.11 I have had skipping sound when playing .avi files (no matter the player). Haven't tried iTunes in awhile so cannot say how music plays.

I *also* hear a faint ticking or bumping sound as described in the previous post. And since I watch my weekly tv shows on the computer, I can say for certain that these symptoms started after I updated my OS.

Also notice my fan going heavy more often lately, and while I have Activity Monitor open, it never shows the CPU as fully loaded (at least, not when the sound skipping occurs - have to double check for the fan).

ANYONE know what is going on??

 

[coleshere98]

pathetic

pathetic that My iPod is more reliable than my macbook. The skipping on my itunes drives me crazy. I have to listen to music on my ipod so I don't get aggravated .. APPPLE FIX THIS SH&*

 

[jdpwnsyou]

I'm having the same issue. Here's what I've nailed down about it with some simple troubleshooting techniques.

1. It's not an Itunes problem, the sound skips across multiple music players as well as with AVI and embedded videos from the internet.

2. Mine, at least, seems to not skip when headphones or external speakers are connected...any time that the headphone jack is used.

3. I have done extensive RAM memory testing including checkboard tests, inversion tests, etc and even after a hour and a half testing session the RAM is performing well, so memory isn't the issue.

4. All the hard drive tests I've run seem to indicate that it is working properly.

5. I've reformatted and reinstalled Leopard...twice. So I'm pretty sure the ol' IT go to of "cutting it off and back on again" isn't going to work, so people can stop suggesting it.

6. It's not a routing issue. I thought perhaps my router was dropping or lagging packets, so I changed it out and that didn't fix the problem. I've plugged the computer into a CAT5 ethernet cable and that didn't solve the issue. I've tested the computer on both cable and DSL networks and it happened on both. I've disabled Airport without effect, and even gone as far as to unplug household devices such as microwaves and large CRT tv's that might have some kind of electrical interference.....all without effect.
(yes I'm so stumped on this issue that unplugging things halfway across the room seemed reasonable...)

7. I'd like to repeat that it's not a memory issue, just because I feel like people are going to continue to tell me to look at my activity monitor...2 calls to Apple support have both ended 45 minutes into the conversation after I couldn't get a representative to actually talk technical with me...it was all just simple questions like "How many programs are you running" or "Are you sure that it isn't a bad MP3 file".... gahhhh, drove me crazy. I've got itunes open and perhaps a web-browser open 95% of the time and it skips. It's not like I'm trying to render a damn High Definition video in the background, geez.

At this point it's either a motherboard or a software issue...I'm praying software because that can be fixed with an update. All I know now is that I'm a little pissed that my 4GB RAM 2.8GHZ Macbook pro can't play a damn song without skipping every 15-20 seconds...I could dust off the 5 year old IBM and I guarantee that it will, as it did for 5 years, play music flawlessly with programs running.

So, if ANYONE has an actual technical suggestion that doesn't cover anything I've posted I'd love to hear it.

Thanks!

 

[coleshere98]

jdpwns post

JDPWNSYou, thanks for your thorough post on this issue. I was glad to see it as my macbook still skips from time to time always accompanied by a clicking sound.
For me
1. this does occur on any music/video player, program, internet ect

2. it comes on for a short time and then it goes away for long periods of time. Updating iTunes and safari and anything else may or may not be making it go away.

3. Also, when this frustrating problem occurs it makes no difference if my headphone jack is in use or not. I thought originally it was a faulty jack.
But not the case
osx 10.4.11

 

[Coleys]

In a case such as this I am sure you could take it to apple store, and get your computer replaced or the issue resolved.

 

[NakedGirlsRadio]

Hardware Acceleration??

My Mac Book is doing the same thing. It is less than a year old. I am not sure if it works the same way for Mac as it does for PC but I had this problem on an Acer One pocket PC and found a forum about the problem. They talked about turning off the hardware acceleration and once I did that the problem stopped. I have been using Macs for a while now but I am not 100% on the technical aspects of them yet.

 

[ct2k7]

My Mac Book is doing the same thing. It is less than a year old. I am not sure if it works the same way for Mac as it does for PC but I had this problem on an Acer One pocket PC and found a forum about the problem. They talked about turning off the hardware acceleration and once I did that the problem stopped. I have been using Macs for a while now but I am not 100% on the technical aspects of them yet.

Why did you bump this thread from last year?

Call Apple.