That's the best way I can describe it. for several weeks now, iTunes has been skipping, or popping, if you prefer. when I listen to music or audio streams, there are frequent pops in the sound. It's like an audio file that's been imported from a scratched CD, but I can verify with certainty that this happens on tracks that I know are fine. And this morning, it got so bad that I had to restart iTunes. Like it was all just one big string of static.

Has anyone ever had this happen? I have noticed lately that iTunes is running up some serious processor time, way more than I think an audio player should. See image for what iTunes requires to listen to WNYC.

But like I say, this popping manifests itself in ALL AUDIO that I play in iTunes. It's beginning to make me angry.

Do you have the EQ on?

Could it be your speakers?

I think its over taxed severs at iTunes or your ISP servers on their end ? ? nothing on your end Trey.

Trey,
I can't explain your iTunes behavior on other tracks, but WNYC's feed is definitely borked. I am listening to it now, and it's doing exactly what you described, but otherwise my iTunes works perfectly.

p.s. what is it with that darned computer generated sponsor voice?!?

Yep
Scotty

Proves my point about over taxed severs - to narrow down a problem a simple reboot would shake some things out.

From what I understand it's not just streams. You both missed that he said,"when I listen to music or audio streams", I assume that means local files too, files on his HD, so it's not over taxed servers.

I had the same kind of thing happen yesterday, but I think the problem was in the interface between the laptop and AirTunes. When I sent the sound through the laptop speakers the skipping stopped, at any rate. Still, it's a pain that the AirTunes connection can't be reliable. I also had a problem with video output via iTunes. Video would just not play, period. I rebooted (thanks for the suggestion RB ) and everything was ok again. That was on the G% tower, by the way, not the laptop.

Well guys, after posting this, and having looked at the image above, I was prepared to have someone say, "well maybe you should try a reboot?" So I did, and that SEEMS to have cleared it up.

And yes, Reboot's right, it was all audio, not just streams. But for now I'll hope it's fixed.

Great Trey.

So I guess you still have to reboot a Mac, to clear the ram still ? ?

Not to clear the ram... that isn't an issue anymore.

Thats what I thought, one thing from OS9 to OSX was that you did not have to clear the ram.

Oddly
I still need to reboot the Mac, like every other month.

I still need to reboot the Mac, like every other month.

We have gotten spoiled by OS X.
6 restarts in a year.. lol.. I did that many in a day with OS 9.

One reason is to clear caches. Caches are supposed to make every OS run quicker, but every OS gets corrupt caches. I still haven't figured out why the developers, that know much more than me, haven't figured out a way to handle the corruption without a reboot.

One other item that is cleared with yours truly is also VM, which is swap space for RAM. May still be something to the RAM equation.

PPfffttt!
Whatever.

It also occurs to me that there was at least one iTunes update in there. Granted, I've gone much longer without rebooting, but with all the stuff they keep adding to iTunes, I'd guess there's some potential for getting stuffed up.

Things are still fine, BTW.