iTunes problem

December 14, 2004 4:37 PM

iTunes problem: I get a lot of intermittent static-y, crackling sounds when I play certain tracks in iTunes. The same track, played at the same volume in Winamp does not give me such problems. This seems to happen with about 1 in 10 files. What causes this and what can I do to fix it?
posted by skwm to computers & internet (6 comments total)

Are you using soundcheck in iTunes? If you listen to soft stuff, it will pump of the volume (to a degree that shouldn't affect the sound) and make ripping errors (crackling) more apparent.
posted by easyasy3k at 5:34 PM on December 14, 2004

I second easy's comment, I've had issues with both sound check and sound enhancer. They seem to be aggravated when my machine is under high cpu load, or if I'm playing classical/acoustic tracks.
posted by beaverd at 6:20 PM on December 14, 2004

Yep. ANd note that they may be permanently on the track if you import with soundcheck/enhancer.
posted by SpecialK at 6:34 PM on December 14, 2004

Yes, the files I've noticed it on are old acoustic blues/folk music, but Sound Check/Sound Enhancer are both disabled. When I tested them in Winamp, I did it with the volume significantly higher, so I don't think that there are any actual errors in the encoded files.
posted by skwm at 6:35 PM on December 14, 2004

Blow the dust off the needle. That should do it. Are you playing 33's or 45's?
posted by Doohickie at 8:49 PM on December 14, 2004

This is pretty simple actually. The Winamp codec filters are pretty tight, especially the MP3 decoder, although I've had very good success with the AAC decoder also.

I'm going to take a guess that your not running bleeding edge hardware and that the eye-candy overhead of ITunes combined with a more cpu-intensive codec algorithm equals fuzz.

But I could be wrong.
posted by PissOnYourParade at 11:46 PM on December 14, 2004