iTunes 2 = pile of steaming poo

[EnglishBoy]

Hello everyone. I've been a spectator to these forums for ages and finally decided to contribute by starting this controversial (and somewhat debated already) thread.
These are my main problems with iTunes:
1) Encoding in v.2 is awful on some CDs - loads of popping/cat-screaming-type-noises.
2) Playlists cannot be nested - how many of you out there have a huge list of playlists? Isn't the idea of playlists to make navigation simpler. The iPod features this - so why not iTunes?
3) Visuals, although good in an acid-trip kind of way, are far too slow. I mean come on - I get more than 20fps playing quake. Hmm... a complex 3D engine versus a pretty pattern generator...
4) 'Biggest Complaint' - how can any mp3 player take up upwards of 15% of the cpu on a 400Mhz G4?

The reason the last one is my biggest complaint is that I don't care what anyone says - I can notice a decrease in performance when iTunes is running. I now use Mint audio - it provides an easily accessible tiny control panel and an EQ. And the cpu usage? Less than 7%.

Apple, eat my shorts... :cool:

[juanvaldes]

I've never had a problem with iTunes 2 encoding. Though I have done the majority of my mp3's with iTunes 1 because 2 wasn't out yet... I for one don't have that many playlists...but could iTunes 1 do that? If the iPod can I would put my money on it will show up with the next update. I totally agree with the visuals, though I suspect it's because iTunes dosen't use 100% of the CPU like Quake does. As for CPU use, yes this defiantly needs to get batter.

[moreno]

i'm wondering if the music player (cocoa application) which shipped with the public beta uses less CPU consumption than it counterpart iTunes?

[itistoday]

what would be cool is if iTunes2 had an option to let you choose how much cpu usage it would take while running visuals, that way, i could get probably 50 frames/sec on my sh*tty little iMac DV 500 mhz. I would just set it to 100% cpu usage or something while running visuals at full screen.
right now i get about 12 frames/sec running it full screen. very dissapointing. in quake i get around 30 - 60 frames.

[foamy]

I have to agree with the frame rate business.

On my Ti550 with a Radeon no less,
Large = 6-7 fps
Med. = 10 fps
Small = 17 fps

That is a joke.

An even bigger joke is the 30% cpu with iTunes minimized.

2.0.3 help?

[Michael T. Doyle]

Just click the options button when visuals are running in window mode and disable capped frame rates.

It may not give you smooth window visuals but your full-screen visuals will as smooth as they were under OS 9.

[mr_sonicblue]

Originally posted by EnglishBoy:
<STRONG>2) Playlists cannot be nested - how many of you out there have a huge list of playlists? Isn't the idea of playlists to make navigation simpler. The iPod features this - so why not iTunes?</STRONG>

Are you talking about how the iPod allows you to choose an artist, then an album (or vice-versa)?

If so, click the BROWSE button in the main window (when the main playlist is showing).

[Cellery]

Originally posted by foamy:
<STRONG>I have to agree with the frame rate business.

On my Ti550 with a Radeon no less,
Large = 6-7 fps
Med. = 10 fps
Small = 17 fps

That is a joke.

An even bigger joke is the 30% cpu with iTunes minimized.

2.0.3 help?</STRONG>

I just downloaded 2.0.3, and am getting the following framerates on a Ti550/512MB/10.1.1.

This is just from watching the framerate counter for a few minutes at each setting and seeing where it hovers around. Of course the framerate changes depending on the visualization. I have IE, Omniweb, and Entourage open in addition to iTunes.

(Playing in the iTunes Window, not Fullscreen)

Large: 15 (Peak 21)
Medium: 22 (Peak 32)
Small: 30 (Peak 48)

[ 12-14-2001: Message edited by: Cellery ]

[GatoVolador]

you're killing me Apple, whats the deal? what is holding you back from making iTunes the sweetest thing on my desktop? right now it is SOUR and in a few minutes I will find out if his update will do anything to lessen the pain.

my complaint?

pretty simple, really. I have a third-party internal (read: NOT FIREWIRE) CDRW...its not like the thing is a super-obscure brand. its a Philips, so why is it not supported yet? I CAN'T even PLAY CDS or import tracks off my own legally owned wonderful compact discs...because when I do, I can look forward to a hard-restart. very unsweet. anyone else?

[Marook]

Hi All.

Just made this suggestion on the Max OS X feedback page:

Hi Apple.

It's a nice feature to have playlists i iTunes, but they could be much better.

I would like to make dynamic playlists whose content is based on some search criteria like, Song title, Artist, Genre, Song year etc..

This would make administrating playlists much more easyer.
Interface? Make a Get Info on a playlist would enable the user to switch to a 'dynamic' playlist and add 1 or more search patterns.

Something like: Artist="M People" AND Genre=Pop.
or maybe: Year&lt;=1988 AND Year&gt;=1990
or maybe: Artist=Beatles OR Artist=Doobie Brothers.

I can't wait to see this feature!

[Jelle Monkmater]

With full-screen visuals, iTunes 2.0.3 does appear to make full use of the CPU. Tunnelling to my G4 DP 500 and doing a 'top -u' reveals the following:

328 iTunes 115.1% 14:45.51 9 143 233 9.41M 6.26M 11.9M 75.9M

And the framerate? 20fps.

Moreover, I have iTunes skip sometimes, especially when I have a Terminal window open and do some cli stuff, like an 'ls -l'. On a G4 DP 500. Whether 2.0.3 does the same remains to be seen, but 2.0.1 sure did.

[cutterjohn]

iTunes 2 worked weel for me when I remembered that to encode files I had to actually select them from the CD and NOT the playlist, which is HIGHLY annoying. I *WISH* that Apple would allow encoding from the playlist.

Encoding quality: encoding at 192kbps works well for me, but I must mention that I have not tried lower encoding resolutions. Additional note, I have only tried playing encoded mp3s from iTunes to date, but will eventually be burning a CD collection for play on a portable CD/CD-mp3 player($80 cheapo one that works for me, lists support only to 128kbps encoded mp3s but has played every 192kbps mp3 that i have thrown at it to date. Test mp3s were generated under OS9.x & audion. It also supports ID3 tags which is nice/essential & limited folder nesting.)
BTW: decide to go get it so I could add model info:
CLASSIC
MODEL: CM415

purchased between 10/2000 & 12/2000.

decent audio quality with good headphones, and fair battery life 14 or so hours. Fair feature set. 12 button, probably a 10 character LCD display. (out of batteries right now, so I can't say for certain. Also I'm nom audiophile freak, so sound quality commentary is really up to the enduser to judge for their needs and/or capabilities.)

[tie]

Originally posted by EnglishBoy:
<STRONG>3) Visuals, although good in an acid-trip kind of way, are far too slow. I mean come on - I get more than 20fps playing quake. Hmm... a complex 3D engine versus a pretty pattern generator...</STRONG>

The pretty pattern generator is more CPU-intensive than Quake, which can pass the drawing off to specialized graphics hardware. PC music visualizers also get much slower framerates than 3D games -- it doesn't have anything to do with iTunes or Macs. If you find this annoying, maybe you can write ATI and nVidia to try to get them to optimize pretty pattern generation. :)

[gee308]

I agree, itunes is a steaming pile of poop.

[Sarc]

Originally posted by moreno:
<STRONG>i'm wondering if the music player (cocoa application) which shipped with the public beta uses less CPU consumption than it counterpart iTunes?</STRONG>

Actually I'm intrested as well, can anyone try to get this app. ?

[Sarc]

I just can't face the fact that on shitty Win98 on a PII300 Machine, winamp sucks mere 5% out of the CPU ... come on Apple, beat the shit out of them !!!

[Archangel]

Originally posted by gee308:
<STRONG>I agree, itunes is a steaming pile of poop.</STRONG>

And like all poop: it's free.

[Mactoid]

Originally posted by Archangel:
<STRONG>And like all poop: it's free.</STRONG>

Not all poop is free (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004W62O/qid=1008400264/sr=8-5/ref=sr_8_71_5/104-3771850-9607116) :D

[Scrod]

Thank you very much for letting me know about this. All this time I had thought that there was a real program called iTunes on my computer. And to think it was actually just a big turd!

[Archangel]

Originally posted by Mactoid:
<STRONG>

Not all poop is free (http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004W62O/qid=1008400264/sr=8-5/ref=sr_8_71_5/104-3771850-9607116) :D</STRONG>

Oh, you got me there. I stand corrected. But see, that's real "high" quality poo there.

I guess farmers pay for poo too to fertilize their fields. Hmm. . .man, if you can't even get poo for free, what can you get for free? Well, you can get iTunes for free. Oh wait, that's poo too. Or some claim.

[OverclockedHomoSapien]

Just click the options button when visuals are running in window mode and disable capped frame rates.

How do I do this? There is an "options" button on the upper right when I'm not in full screen mode, but it's greyed out and I cannot click on it.

I have the same problem, visuals (G-Force) are too slow in the OS X version. I also have problems with the G-Force images being off-center. I can center them by boosting the resolution, but then the framerates are so low that it's no good.

Framerates hover in the 7-9 region. :(


Thanks for any tips!

[ 12-15-2001: Message edited by: OverclockedHomoSapien ]

[Jelle Monkmater]

Originally posted by OverclockedHomoSapien:
<STRONG>

How do I do this? There is an "options" button on the upper right when I'm not in full screen mode, but it's greyed out and I cannot click on it.

I have the same problem, visuals (G-Force) are too slow in the OS X version. I also have problems with the G-Force images being off-center. I can center them by boosting the resolution, but then the framerates are so low that it's no good.

Also, how do I measure framerates? Is there a function key for this?

Thanks for any tips!</STRONG>

You have to have the visuals running in order to access the options for them. However, I don't think G-Force allows you to set the options like that, though you can probably access G-Force's options by pressing 'h' or '?'. The same goes for the framerates.

As to your problem of visuals being off-center, I bet that that also happens when you switch resolutions on your desktop to 640x480. Try that, then calibrate the screen so it's nicely aligned, switch back to your everyday resolution and try the visuals again.