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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Desktops > Short interruptions of sound when playing music on iTunes

Short interruptions of sound when playing music on iTunes
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Veltliner
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Jan 31, 2011, 10:08 PM
 
My 2.16 Ghz white 24" iMac sometimes gives small interruptions in the music that's playing on iTunes.

Like a quarter second stutter.

Does this mean my sound card is going bad, or worse, my motherboard?
     
ibook_steve
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Jan 31, 2011, 11:34 PM
 
No, it means that some other process is using CPU cycles, causing a drop in performance in playback. Open up Activity Monitor and organize processes by %CPU to find which app might be using a large amount of the processor.

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Veltliner  (op)
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Feb 1, 2011, 02:09 AM
 
Interesting, and a relief.

I had Photoshop CS5 open, Bridge CS5, Fetch, but I was not using it, taking a break and reading a book and listening to music.

So I can't really see what would have taken iTunes to interrupt.

I've had iTunes running with Photoshop saving huge TIFF files, and no interruptions.
     
reader50
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Feb 1, 2011, 02:37 AM
 
How much RAM do you have? Interruptions can happen if the system needs to swap some memory to/from cache.
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Feb 1, 2011, 06:12 AM
 
My iMac is maxed out at 3 Gb.

Anyway, as long as it's not something starting to fail I'm fine (just had a quite expensive repair of the power supply unit).

I just never had this happen before.
     
Big Mac
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Feb 2, 2011, 12:04 PM
 
Yeah, that sounds strange. I've never heard iTunes stutter on OS X. It's not a normal thing to experience. The file you were playing could be corrupt, or you may be experiencing hard drive problems.

"The natural progress of things is for liberty to yield and government to gain ground." TJ
     
P
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Feb 2, 2011, 01:18 PM
 
iTunes uses a special priority mode which means that it should never stutter (it was a big change when this arrived in 10.1), and in any case you'd have to have something saturating both cores for this to happen for CPU reasons. Unless you (or some process) had reniced iTunes, this priority mode should be able to handle anything.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Feb 3, 2011, 02:57 AM
 
I'm still on iTunes 9.1

So, no priority mode.

Today I experienced it while Photoshop was saving a large, layered TIFF file, and Bridge rendered a preview at the same time.

It doesn't bother me at all if this happens once in a while - I was only concerned if it was a hardware issue - which it isn't.
     
P
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Feb 3, 2011, 04:24 AM
 
Originally Posted by Veltliner View Post
I'm still on iTunes 9.1

So, no priority mode.
.
I meant Mac OS X 10.1, and whatever iTunes came with it. Sorry for the confusion.

Originally Posted by Veltliner View Post
Today I experienced it while Photoshop was saving a large, layered TIFF file, and Bridge rendered a preview at the same time.

It doesn't bother me at all if this happens once in a while - I was only concerned if it was a hardware issue - which it isn't.
It sounds like there is some other resource contention rather than just the CPU. Odd.
The new Mac Pro has up to 30 MB of cache inside the processor itself. That's more than the HD in my first Mac. Somehow I'm still running out of space.
     
Waragainstsleep
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Feb 3, 2011, 05:31 AM
 
Could be a hard drive on its way out. Does anything else stutter? Installers or copying files?
I have plenty of more important things to do, if only I could bring myself to do them....
     
OreoCookie
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Feb 3, 2011, 06:00 AM
 
Originally Posted by Veltliner View Post
I'm still on iTunes 9.1
That's likely part of the problem: I've also had audio hickups with iTunes 9, all of which went away with iTunes 10. You should update iTunes and then see if problems persist. In my experience, iTunes 10 is significantly faster, no more 1+ second lags when skipping songs, yay!
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Veltliner  (op)
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Feb 5, 2011, 01:18 AM
 
Originally Posted by Waragainstsleep View Post
Could be a hard drive on its way out. Does anything else stutter? Installers or copying files?
A brand new 1 Tb Hitachi Desk Star, just installed by certified repair.

Haven't noticed any other stutters.

As others noted, I think it's just an iTunes 9 thing. And my computer isn't exactly the fastest, while my files are getting larger all the time.
     
Veltliner  (op)
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Feb 5, 2011, 01:20 AM
 
Originally Posted by OreoCookie View Post
That's likely part of the problem: I've also had audio hickups with iTunes 9, all of which went away with iTunes 10. You should update iTunes and then see if problems persist. In my experience, iTunes 10 is significantly faster, no more 1+ second lags when skipping songs, yay!
You had 1 sec+ lags? That's a record.
     
reader50
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Feb 5, 2011, 02:39 AM
 
iTunes is getting smarter all the time (also developing feature bloat). You haven't said what music you are playing. It's possible iTunes is hesitating on song playback because we would too.

... just a thought.
     
   
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