[tdog10]

Hey,

I just bought a MacBook directly from the Apple Store and got it 3 days ago. I've been trying to import my CDs through iTunes. 8 CDs import very fast. However, I've been having trouble importing 3 or 4. They will import some tracks and then freeze up iTunes. I notice the discs have some VERY slight scratche(s). I try it again, and iTunes freezes up. The CD will play all the tracks, however. I tried importing the CDs with my eMac and they import just fine!

What's the deal? Is this issue worth pursuing?

Thanks!

[ibook_steve]

This really has nothing to do with MacBooks.

But in any case, you could try making a disk image of the CDs and import from the mounted image. But if it works with the eMac, just copy the tracks over.

Steve

[tdog10]

That seems like good work arounds but is the CD drive too sensitive or not sensitive?

[ibook_steve]

No clue. Can you just play the CD (without ripping) normally using iTunes?

Steve

[tdog10]

Yeah, I can play it just fine from the CD.

[mcheccone]

Originally Posted by tdog10

Hey,

I just bought a MacBook directly from the Apple Store and got it 3 days ago. I've been trying to import my CDs through iTunes. 8 CDs import very fast. However, I've been having trouble importing 3 or 4. They will import some tracks and then freeze up iTunes. I notice the discs have some VERY slight scratche(s). I try it again, and iTunes freezes up. The CD will play all the tracks, however. I tried importing the CDs with my eMac and they import just fine!

What's the deal? Is this issue worth pursuing?

Thanks!

My solution has been to copy the CDs on a (dare I say it) PC. I've found certain tracks consistently freeze the MacBook Pro but not freeze in my PC. It has been very frustrating the way iTunes hangs rather than simply skipping the track or creating an error message. Are we missing an update or is there a known issue with the drive as was implied previously? Thanks

[canasam]

I'm having the exact same import problem on my brand new 2.16Ghz Macbook Pro. Haven't been able to find a suitable workaround. Incredibly frustrating.

Perhaps there is a problem with the optical drives, which makes me want to bang my head against my desk, but at the very least there must also be a problem with iTunes -- why doesn't it just skip over the troublesome tracks or provide an error message instead of freezing up!

PS. I've tried enabling error correction -- no dice.

[depippo]

I had this issue on my new MacBook, and called Apple for a solution. It turns out there is no hardware or software "problem" at all, or at least not as they see it. Importing store-bought CD's has intentionally been disabled (or crippled) on new Macs for copyright reasons, and they offer no assistance on this matter! According to the representative to whom I spoke, iTunes is only intended for purchasing music from Apple, and any other use is unsupported. This has been a very quiet new development, but I expect many people will be outraged about this!

[gooser]

Originally Posted by depippo

I had this issue on my new MacBook, and called Apple for a solution. It turns out there is no hardware or software "problem" at all, or at least not as they see it. Importing store-bought CD's has intentionally been disabled (or crippled) on new Macs for copyright reasons, and they offer no assistance on this matter! According to the representative to whom I spoke, iTunes is only intended for purchasing music from Apple, and any other use is unsupported. This has been a very quiet new development, but I expect many people will be outraged about this!

WHAT?

[brokenjago]

Originally Posted by depippo

I had this issue on my new MacBook, and called Apple for a solution. It turns out there is no hardware or software "problem" at all, or at least not as they see it. Importing store-bought CD's has intentionally been disabled (or crippled) on new Macs for copyright reasons, and they offer no assistance on this matter! According to the representative to whom I spoke, iTunes is only intended for purchasing music from Apple, and any other use is unsupported. This has been a very quiet new development, but I expect many people will be outraged about this!

Let me second gooser's comments:

WHAT?!!?

Has anyone tried doing the above with iTunes 7 to see if it works?

[Briareus]

nice first post, depippo

(edit: nice 250th post, Briareus)

[gooser]

Originally Posted by Briareus

nice first post, depippo

(edit: nice 250th post, Briareus)

wait a minute. is there a funny smell coming from the bathroom?

[Dillon-K]

Originally Posted by depippo

I had this issue on my new MacBook, and called Apple for a solution. It turns out there is no hardware or software "problem" at all, or at least not as they see it. Importing store-bought CD's has intentionally been disabled (or crippled) on new Macs for copyright reasons, and they offer no assistance on this matter! According to the representative to whom I spoke, iTunes is only intended for purchasing music from Apple, and any other use is unsupported. This has been a very quiet new development, but I expect many people will be outraged about this!

Okay, are you joking me?! I doubt the sincerity of this, honestly.... And if it is true, oh well, it's not like I can't just A) buy it from iTunes, or B) download it from another completely legal source.

[ibook_steve]

OK, this is so not true. If Apple did that, nobody would want to use iTunes anymore? What's the point if you can't rip your own CDs? Using iTunes just for buying music is ridiculous.

Steve

[jayco]

I am having the exact same problem. I am able to play all my CDs in many CD players and PCs, but when I try to import some of them into iTunes on my new MB Pro, iTunes freezes and causes me to Force Quit. This is extremely frustrating, because the CDs are readable in nearly every CD drive.......except of course the computer I want to RIP THE STUPID MUSIC ONTO. I bought an MB Pro to store all my music. WTF.

[gooser]

Originally Posted by jayco

I am having the exact same problem. I am able to play all my CDs in many CD players and PCs, but when I try to import some of them into iTunes on my new MB Pro, iTunes freezes and causes me to Force Quit. This is extremely frustrating, because the CDs are readable in nearly every CD drive.......except of course the computer I want to RIP THE STUPID MUSIC ONTO. I bought an MB Pro to store all my music. WTF.

if you look at apple's website they advertise itunes as an application that you can rip your cd's onto. sounds to me like you may have a hardware problem. warranty time? learn to calm down your frustration when talking to them. unless tooki's around you can get away with it here. relax, there's a solution to your problem.

[ghporter]

First, I do not believe that Apple would-or could-disable ripping CDs. It's technically unfeasible, since ripping can be done in so many ways-many of which depend on the drive's ability to read plain data.

However, how many of these CDs that people are having problems with are actually standard CDs, and how many of them are "enhanced" by record companies' anti-piracy stuff? A lot of that stuff is simply bad software that probably breaks on most computers. That may be the idea, but it's NOT Apple's fault. Look at the discs and see if there's any labeling on them for having some extra copy protection. Technically, a "copy protected" CD is NOT a CD at all, because there's no copy protection in the audio CD standard.

Another issue is that some drives do better with dirty or smudged discs than other drives do. Has anyone tried cleaning the problem discs really well? I use alcohol prep pads (the things they use before they give you a shot), which I get at the drugstore for about 1 cent each. They work great at getting rid of anything that's on the disc.

Finally, jayco, WELCOME, but keep it civil, ok? There's nothing going on here that's devious or deceitful. It's a technical issue that CAN be resolved, given enough information and thought.

[jayco]

i was not trying to imply deceit... i LOVE my MBP. it runs ProTools like a dream (dual 2.0ghz + 2 gb ram), which was the main reason i bought it. it's just a bit frustrating when probably 1 out of 10 of my CDs will only rip a few tracks. i wonder if using a different encoder will help? i'm currently using the mp3 encoder in itunes 7, ripping at 192kbps.

i am 99.9% sure the problem is the discs, not the MBP. when i run into a disc that doesnt read properly in my MBP, i stick that into the "PC" pile... i've been ripping these onto my work PC (windows media player) and burning a 2nd copy. some of the CDs produce similar errors in Windows Media Player and/or skip during normal playback in CD players. but in a couple cases i've found discs that read/play/rip fine in media player, but do not in my MBP. weird.

still an apple lover,
-j

[ghporter]

Originally Posted by jayco

i was not trying to imply deceit... i LOVE my MBP.

That was more aimed at that part of the general population who think any time something they want to do doesn't work it's a conspiracy to keep them under the thumb of The Man. Particularly I was addressing depippo's assertion that copying commercial music CDs had been disabled. Not a chance-that is NOT the case.

Clean those CDs, and clean your drive, and you may get better results. I think standard CD drive cleaning discs will work in slot loading drives.

[DmbShn41]

Don't own a MB, but have experienced similar issues with PC's, and other Mac laptops. The only real workarond I have found is to copy the CD on a computer you know that will copy it, and then transfer(USB, FireWire, CD) the tracks to your MB. For instance. I bought DMB "Stand Up" and Foo Fighter "In Your Honor" on the same day. Came home to import the CD's using iTunes(on PC based Toshiba), so I can put on my iPod. iTunes imported DMB, but every track had consistent skipping and dropouts within the songs, beginning to end. When trying to import Foo Fighters, iTunes froze, and had to force an end task. Tried Foo Fighters again, same result. Started inspecting the CDs and their cases, both CDs are copyright protected and from the same parent record company. Its a way for them to combat piracy. On the CD itself, like the old EnhancedCD, there is a program that is Flash based, will let you look at pics of the band, a link to their website, and sometimes a link to a video that you can only see if you buy the CD. Anyway, whenever I tried importing the CD to iTunes, or any program, it would always produce horrid results. By running this program that is contained on the CD, with these two CDs, there is an option to copy the music to your hard drive. SO I did that. Opened up one of the files in Windows Media Player 10, and they played fine!! The tracks were encoded as copyright protected music. Mad though, because I couldn't figure out how to put onto my iPod without buying through iTMS. Fast forward one week. I was browsing DmBand.com and they had a warning about this CD and the lack of ability to import and transfer to iPod. Essentially, RCA had posted on DmBand.com and said that they have contacted Apple about this issue, and have not been able to work anything out as of yet(May 2006). But that the workaround was to use the program contained on the music CD to copy the tracks to your computer. By doing this, it would enable you to make a copy of the CD. Take the protected tracks and write them to a NEW, Blank CD. Not a re-writeable. Then take this newly written CD, and import that to iTunes. And it works. It worked for both CD, and for every CD that I have since bought that has copyright protected tracks on it. The downside.

I don't know, nor can I confirm that the program on the music CD is Mac friendly. I would have to assume it is, cause essentially it is a Flash based app. So I hope this helps with some or all of the issues. Maybe try to put the music on a PC, burn the new CD on a PC, and then try to import the new CD onto the MB. Again, hope this helps.


EDIT: I just put DMB "Stand Up" in my 366 Clamshell with Jaguar on it, and using the Flash app on the music CD, I was able to import the tracks to the HD. I wouldn't see no issues with doing this on a MB.

[depippo]

I realize many seem not to believe my story, which is understandable. But I assure you I'm no conspiracy theorist. I have been a loyal Apple user for over a decade (and will continue to be). I'm simply repeating what I was told directly by an AppleCare representative, and I urge anyone experiencing the same problem to call AppleCare themselves, if they doubt my honesty. The best workaround I've found is to use a an external CD reader, which will in fact then import perfectly with iTunes. (Burned CD's also seem to work fine).

[DmbShn41]

D,

Its not that we dont believe you, its just that whomever that AppleCare Rep was, may be ill-informed. Genereally customer service is about getting the lines cleared the quickest....I'm glad to see that you have found a workaround, and if burned CDs work fine, then generally, you're OK. Try what I posted previously, it has helped quite a few people, and with my new iMac, it helped also.

[kennedyr]

Just got a new 24" iMac. Nearly 2% of all CDs that I have tried to rip are not recognized and either get rejected (and ejected) or they just freeze up iTunes.

Every one of these CDs was checked for scratches or dirt - nada.

AND, every one of these CDs could be imported without problem in my older G5 PowerMac.

Given the number of complaints (not only on this forum) and the fact that these CDs are often playable in older PCs or Macs (per prior posts), I think it is very plausible that this is a real hardware issue with Apple's newer CD drives.

To those who have suggested making an image of the CD then importing, this is not possible since many of the CDs get auto-ejected since they are not recognized.

[niklas]

I'd like to say that although I haven't spoken to Applecare, my experience importing my cd collection to my MacBook has been abysmal, with the Macbook only succesfully importing 1 in 10. Mostly in just rejects them: brand new, old, clean, doesn't seem to matter. There are many postings on the web concerning this, but no real apple-based solutions. Whether Apple disabled the ability to burn I don't know, but my old iMac (know my daughters) would seemlessly import the cd's my MacBook rejects. I'm considering buying an external third-party cd burner as my last resort and it's a shame to make my MacBook less self-reliant, but what am I to do? Something is definitely not right with the hardware and/or hardware

[ghporter]

I have imported a number of commercial CDs with my MacBook Pro, and had not a single problem. I can't believe that Apple would deliberately do something to keep MacBook users from doing something MBP users can do easily.

As long as the discs are CLEAN, SCRATCH-FREE, and most important of all STANDARD AUDIO CDs, they should import fine. Do these problematic discs actually play through iTunes? If so, it's obvious they are being read, so they SHOULD import too. If they don't, take the discs and your MacBook to the nearest Apple Store and have a Genius explain what's going on.

[niklas]

I've tried many different cd's: brand new, old, it doesn't seem to make a difference. When I say rejects, I mean that the MacBook spits it out and won't even register it in iTunes let alone play it. Occasionally, one will get read by iTunes and import correctly. I might add that I have a huge library on an external hard drive, and some people have suggestted that things get buggy when the iTunes library gets that big. Anyway, it's now a huge hassle that I can't import/or play a brand new cd I bought.

But I actually like your idea of going to an Apple store and confronting some "genius" with mine, and many other's, problem.

[Sethro]

It seems like an inheriant problem, what I sometimes do is clean my CD with some Windex. This helps remove some dust, dirt and has proven to help clean the diks so that the slot loading drive can easily read from it.

Also there is a built in option in iTunes which is known as "Error Correcting" and this can sometimes help when some of your older CD's are having difficulty importing music into iTunes.

[Cold Warrior]

I've seen this problem on my first-gen MacBook: a small percentage of audio CD's just make iTunes lock up on import, usually on a particular track. Moving the disc to my external drive, however, results in a no-freeze rip.

[jamicweb]

I read through this thread because I have just had similar problems with my importing from my CDs into itunes on my Titanium G4 powerbook (a slightly older model than most of you are using). When I had OS X 10.2.8 with itunes 6.something, I could download all of the songs from as many CDs I wanted with absolutely no problems. I have since upgraded on this book to OS X 10.4.9 and itunes 7.3 or so. Whenever I insert a CD my drive and itunes recognizes it; through my internet connection Gracenote automatically recognizes the CD and the songs and accordingly tags all of them for me; but when I go to import any of the songs, itunes immediately gives the spinning ball, the application freezes and I am forced to force quit. Even without importing, I am unable to even play the songs on the book. On some other forum, I saw that someone said that they downloaded an older version of itunes and is having success. There was a website, oldapps.com or something like that. I downloaded them but could not install them; my computer refused to let me. Now I'm not sure what to do. I haven't yet tried copying the disks to my hard drive, but when it had worked so well before, I'm just frustrated that I now have to find some work around.

[jamicweb]

The strangest thing: I've been reading other forums on this topic. Short version: instead of trying to import by pressing Import CD button or saying yes to dialog box, I stupidly tried dragging the CD's icon on my desktop to the "Music" folder listed on the left side under the Library panel of the iTunes window. It automatically started importing the songs. I'm dumbfounded but its working. See the above message to see what had been happening but it is the same story I've been reading from a lot of you. I'm going to let it finish importing before I try to play anything, but I will only try to play songs from the imported library and not directly from the CD. Make sure you have your preferences set to just "Show CD" in the Advanced Importing section and not to automatically import. Uncheck the Sound Check and CD text buttons under Advanced Burning. (That was someone else's suggestion). FYI, the entire CD just finished importing and I could easily play the song from the library. Can someone else try this to see if it works for them?

[jamicweb]

Sorry to be monopolizing this thread, but I want to report that of course it isn't as simple as my last post. I tried just those steps on a second CD and it spectacularly failed. My first success had been after several other steps; now I just have to figure out what those steps are. I am now finally successfully downloading my 2nd CD, so as soon as I figure out what works, I'll report it here.

[amazing]

You can spend endless hours over this, or you can adopt the long range solution:
An external firewire burner, which is what I did when I had my Titanium--and which I'm still happily using with my 12" PB. Depends on how much your time is worth to you.

The advantage is that you'll be able to take it with you to the next laptop. The other huge advantage is the humongously faster burner speeds: much, much faster than any laptop burner. Plus you can use it to backup your digitized tunes, which will be of great benefit to you in the long run (namely, you won't have to do this with your next HD.)

A Pioneer 18X dual-layer burner runs $31, a firewire/usb2.0 case runs around $50 (I used the macally

Newegg.com - Pioneer Beige 18X DVD+R 8X DVD+RW 10X DVD+R DL 18X DVD-R 6X DVD-RW 16X DVD-ROM 40X CD-R 32X CD-RW 40X CD-ROM 2MB Cache E-IDE & ATAPI DVD Burner - OEM
Newegg.com - Buy Computer Parts, PC Components, Laptop Computers, Digital Cameras and more!

[dfudge]

I think there are two problems here; 1) iTunes freezes during import and 2) the CD is not even being recognized. I have the latter.

I'm trying to import songs from CDs that are about 10 years old to my MacBook. Finder nor iTunes responds when I insert some of them. I can't even copy the CD to my hard drive since finder doesn't even see them. And yes I have cleaned them. I previously imported them to my old PC and 12" Power Book without problem but now no dice....

I guess I can use an external drive but that is just not up to the Apple standard that made me a repeat customer.

Originally Posted by niklas 

I've tried many different cd's: brand new, old, it doesn't seem to make a difference. When I say rejects, I mean that the MacBook spits it out and won't even register it in iTunes let alone play it. Occasionally, one will get read by iTunes and import correctly. I might add that I have a huge library on an external hard drive, and some people have suggestted that things get buggy when the iTunes library gets that big. Anyway, it's now a huge hassle that I can't import/or play a brand new cd I bought.

But I actually like your idea of going to an Apple store and confronting some "genius" with mine, and many other's, problem.

[Cold Warrior]

Zombie thread. Please start a new thread and link to this one.