Music imported from CD skips on Computer and IPod

Sometimes this is due to computer not being fast enough. A coworker had this problem when ripping CDs. Their computer was old and barley met minimum spces for iTUnes. Files I ripped and files from iTunes store worked fine.

If slowness is the issue, and it was occurring as the cd was being converted to the itunes friendly aac format you could try ...
-getting the cd ready, but not inserting yet
-restart the computer to clear its memory
-make sure at least twenty percent of the hard dive is free space
-disconnect from the internet and close all programs you can such as print monitors, widgets, software updaters, messenger clients and other things that run in the background or down in the system tray. You could even try turning off the anti-virus if you're comfrotable with that - remember disconnect from the Internet first!
If that turned out to be the problem after all, you could probably make a customized startup to use when you are going to import cd's using "MSConfig" form Windows run menu.

I had problems importing audio CDs into iTunes. The imported tracks would skip during playback. To rule out faulty playback by iTunes, I used Windows Media player to playback the imported files (MP3, AIFF). The same skipping was there also. This meant the problem was in the way iTunes imported the tracks.

To rule out a problem with the CD/DVD ROM drive or CD media, I experimented with importing the audio CD tracks using Windows Media Player (creating WMA files). I found no skipping, no glitches during playback.

I read a few threads online that pointed towards system configuration, system load, and quality of the optical drive. But why would Windows Media Player work and iTunes not work on the same system? The problem still seemed to be with iTunes, not with my system.

Making matters worse, the problem was elusive because the skipping and glitches were slightly different from trial to trial, but the file size would be exactly the same each time. Also, the first track imported during a session seemed to have more errors than subsequent tracks. This left me suspicious of all imported tracks.

I disabled "Play songs while importing or converting" but that alone did not make a difference.

Finally I found something that worked. When I originally configured iTunes for CD importing, I selected "Use error correction" even though I had not experienced any prior problems. I had selected it as a precautionary measure. When I finally disabled error correction, the skipping went away. Just to check, I re-enabled error correction and the problem returned.

Edit > Preferences > Advanced Tab > Importing Tab

Option "Play songs while importing or converting"

Option "Use error correction when reading Audio CDs"

If the problem reoccurs, I will replace my CD/DVD ROM drive. One user said that worked.

I still have more testing to do. The first track imports fine. I still have to test importing an entire CD and listening for errors. But I am fairly confident that the problem is fixed.

As you have found, nice troubleshooting by the way, iTunes sometimes has trouble ripping from CD when other programs do not.

If you are ripping to mp3 format then it doesn't really matter which program you use to do the ripping. Some users have preferences with which encoder is used. I have Audiograbber installed with LAME encoder for when iTunes is being fussy.