Songs start skipping at about 10-11 seconds into songs

I too am experiencing this problem...except not on either of the computers in my house that have iTunes installed on them. On my Ipod mini however, about 5 of the songs i have downloaded from iTunes and i think about 1 or 2 from cd's that i have imported are skiping again.....about 10-13 into the song,,,,,,once it reaches that point, it just skips to the next song,,,,,but if i skip past the 13-15 second point in the song, the song will play.

I too am experiencing this problem...except not on either of the computers in my house that have iTunes installed on them. On my Ipod mini however, about 5 of the songs i have downloaded from iTunes and i think about 1 or 2 from cd's that i have imported are skiping again.....about 10-13 into the song,,,,,,once it reaches that point, it just skips to the next song,,,,,but if i skip past the 13-15 second point in the song, the song will play.

UGGH! Where do we go for help?

------------------------------------------------------
Thank you for contacting the iTunes Music Store.

We apologize for any inconvenience you have experienced with this
issue. However, the nature of your question falls outside the type of
support provided via email by the iTunes Music Store team. The Music Store
team answers non-technical questions about billing, customer accounts,
downloading music, and Music Store content.

We encourage you to consult the following article for more information:
You can't import or play music from an audio CD in iTunes for Windows
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93453>

Sincerely, �

iTunes Music Store Support

you folk are about the worst tech support I've ever
encountered, your response has NOTHING to do with my
issue

my proble is with already-resident mp3s, THEY DON'T
PLAY ON iTUNES! THEY SKIP - READ WHAT ALL YOUR USERS
ARE COMPLAINING ABOUT AND DO SOMETHING - IT'S BEEN
MONTHS!

this does not say much for Apple

--- mswin@apple.com wrote:

Thank you for contacting the iTunes Music Store.

If you continue to experience difficulties accessing
this feature on the iTunes Music Store, please reply
to this message with the following information:

1. Your IP address �
2. The time at which you received the error message
3. The song you were attempting to download
4. The operating system you are using (Mac or
Windows)
5. The version of the operating system
6. The version of iTunes you are using
7. The kind of network connection you are using (for
example dial-up modem or cable modem)
8. Your network connection speed (if you know it)
9. Your Internet Service Provider
10. Your network location (city and state)
11. The text of any error messages you have received


As soon as we receive this information we can
investigate the issue you are experiencing. You
should receive a response from us within 72 business
hours.

Sincerely, �

iTunes Music Store Support


Dear Center For Techincal Excellence at Apple.com,

Guess what, iTunes STILL DOESN'T Work (MusicMatch,
WinAMp, and Windows Media Player WORK GREAT!

I upgraded to iTunes 4.8.032, and my PC is in
perfect
condition, no other problems.

Playback problems are the same - songs skip and jump
while playing. Seems like you folks don't care and
are
doing nothing about it.

I'm not alone, just one of many threads on this:

Elmer Fudd, "Songs start skipping at about 10-11 seconds into songs" #13, 01:42am Jul 16, 2005 CDT

here's my former complaint log, was never fixed:
Re: problem with playback and writing; Follow-up:
9052519
--- mswin@apple.com wrote:

Thank you for contacting the iTunes Music Store.

Please verify that you are using the latest

version

of iTunes before attempting to access the iTunes
Music Store. The iTunes Music Store requires

iTunes

version 4.7 or later to access accounts,

purchasing,

authorizing, and playing purchased music. iTunes

4.8

is required for additional features such as video
downloads included as bonus features with select
content.

You can download the latest version of iTunes here
< http://www.apple.com/itunes/download/ >.

If you experience difficulties upgrading your

iTunes

application on a Macintosh computer, please refer

to

the following article:

Troubleshooting iTunes installation on Mac OS X

<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301349>

If you are upgrading from 4.6 on a Windows

computer

you may need to uninstall and reinstall your

iTunes

application prior to upgrading to the latest

iTunes.

Steps for removing iTunes for Windows are outlined
in the following article:

R

Been having the same problem - only with my 4g 20gb skipping songs and cutting songs short. I've tried every single solution that I've seen on this board - no luck. Apple has actually removed some of my posts here - I guess I sounded upset (wonder why?). I'm crossing my fingers that an update is on the way. They seem to be taking their time - I was excited when I saw there was an update yesterday, but it was for GARAGE BAND - no help there.

I'm having the same problem. I've isolated it in a number of ways trying to resolve it.

It always happens 13 seconds into playing a track. This applies whether it plays from the beginning, 1 min into the track or if I make is jump to different places. Each time, once it has played 13 seconds (ie first 13 secs or if I jump to 1 min immediately it will be at 1:13 or if I play 6 secs then jump to 1:30 it will happen at 1:37). The CPU spikes to 100%, pausing everything and leaving a 3 or 4 sec silence.

This happens regardless of track length. So a 1 hour dj set will have the CPU spike at 13 secs and then be fine for the next hour.

It seems to me to be related to some sort of buffering or something similar in Itunes. I have worked out that once it has caused the CPU spike I can restart the same track and it will play through without a hiccup. If I play the next track and then come back to the first track, though, it will glitch at 13 secs again. I can also make it glitch on a replay of the first track without playing any others by changing the tracks that are to come after it in the playlist. This seems to suggest it is related to buffering the coming track(s).

I can make the silent gaps go away by reducing the size of my music library considerably. It is over 45 gig now. If I reduce it to below 20 gig the CPU spiking occurs but not at 100% and so not causing the silences. The problems is still there, though, and itunes has played my 40 gig library fine for months without any such problems.

Recent changes have included a few software installs. I have removed those that I could (eg Nero) but I do still have one photo editing programme that I need for a current job. I had removed quicktime from my startup but seeing a suggestion that this caused such a problem I have put it back. This has not fixed the problem for me.

I have also bought a shuffle and would have probably run the software related to that. If you had a problem when you added a mini perhaps it's due to some sort of error arising from the software coming with new ipods when used with existing itunes installations? Just a guess.

If anyone can help with this I would be most grateful as it is making Itunes unusable on my computer. I'm going to have to go back to playing cds!!!

Ok ... with some more investigation and a few more restarts and reinstalls I've worked out that my problem was being caused by Itunes interaction with Avast antivirus.

By reducing my library to below 20 gig I was able to see what was spiking the CPU and it was ashserv.exe. I've uninstalled Avast and the spikes and pausing went away. I reinstalled Avast and everything is still fine (even with the larger library restored).

I have just updated Avast online, though, and this may bring back the old problem. I'll have to wait until the next reboot to check on this.

I'm not sure what the change was that triggered the problem initially as Itunes and Avast had run together happily for more than 6 months.

After the online update the problem came back. Darn (nb - had an "m" rather than "r" in there but Apple says that's an inappropriate word chuckle).

Watching things in Avast it showed that at the 10-13 second mark Avast was scanning the Itunes library. Hmmmmm. Whatever Itunes does at that point is causing Avast to scan for viruses.

I set a rule for Avast to not scan the library file. With the standard shield on high sensitivity file, however, it still scanned some temp file (it doesn't give enough info to say where this file is so I couldn't set a rule to avoid it). By changing the sensitivity back to normal it stopped Avast from scanning. Silence issue solved.

There is still a brief 100% CPU spike at 10 secs in Itunes but without Avast scanning at the same time this does not cause the sound to cut out. Hooray!

If anyone else is having this problem and is running Avast, try adjusting it so that it doesn't scan at the time Itunes maxes the CPU. Anyone else might want to look and see if their antivirus is doing something similar.

I hope this helps ppl. Let us know if it does.

I have more generalized skipping problems that seem to be unrelated to antivirus software or how long a song has been playing. My "solution" was to follow some of the suggestions I found on the discussion board. Namely, (1) dump all the files in "C:\Documents and Settings\MyUserName\Local Settings\Temp", (2) reboot, (3) reinstall the latest iTunes. This has reduced (but not eliminated) skipping. BTW, skipping seems to be worse with VBR files and with "Sound Check" enabled.

Since I don't have this problem with Winamp or WMP, I consider it to be an iTunes issue. Sad, actually, because iTunes isn't a bad program, it just seems to have a few common performance and useability issues. Oh well.

I'm having the same issue and was wondering if anyone came to any solutions. I have Windows XP, installed iTunes after that, worked fine for about a day, then starting crackling/skipping/etc.

I had other sound issues, so I thought my sound card was bad. Replaced that today.

I've been playing with iTunes since the replacement and it skips bad! I can play songs in Windows Media Player just fine- no hiccups.

Not sure what the conflict is, and I welcome any suggestions! This is driving me crazy....

Tracy

hi Tracy!

I've been playing with iTunes since the replacement and it skips bad! I can play songs in Windows Media Player just fine- no hiccups.

hmmm. let's start with this document:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93610

keep us posted.

love, b

OK b,
I did all of that (safe mode/wave out), the Sound Enhancer wasn't checked and yes, I have the latest in sound card drivers because I just installed a brand new sound card yesterday.

I'm thinking the program is just a memory hog and doesn't play nice with other programs. Seems to be OK when I only run it and don't try to toggle between other programs. But if I do, forget it... it plays fine for a while, then skips, then makes some awful screeching/static sound...

hi Tracy!

I'm thinking the program is just a memory hog and doesn't play nice with other programs. Seems to be OK when I only run it and don't try to toggle between other programs. But if I do, forget it... it plays fine for a while, then skips, then makes some awful screeching/static sound...

hmmm ... we get occasional reports of those sorts of thing happening when itunes and/or quicktime are being run in strange compatibility modes.

right-click on your itunes desktop icon, select "properties" and go to the "compatibility" tab. are
b any
of those boxes checked? which ones?

repeat the investigations with your QT desktop icons.

and yes, I have the latest in sound card drivers because I just installed a brand new sound card yesterday.

hmmm. just checking. did you use the drivers that came with the Card, or did you go online to check to make sure that you had the latest version? see:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300252

love, b

I'm having this same problem, and I've tried many things -- the Quicktime-waveout fix, various things with equalizer and preamp, checked the compatibility mode, checked my sound card drivers, etc.
No help.

I also think it is a buffering thing, because in addition to skips and crackles, sometimes the song actually speeds up - very weird.

It does seem to play better if I move it past the point where it first starts to skip -- i just tried that on the suggestion of someone in this thread -- but if I don't do that, it gets worse and worse.

4.9 played fine. Upgraded to 5 and these problems started, and are still there in the 6.0.1 version.

Another thing I've noticed is that when the song starts skipping, The page file usage history spike up. Once it drops back down, it stops skipping. This also corresponds to the spike in memory usage.

Also, when I quit out of itunes, or start it up, it take like 2 minutes. Sometimes, it never quits!! and itunes stays on in the background. When I shutdown, the itunes program it's unresponsive, but it's not called itunes any more, it's a bunch of gibberish!!!! Something's wrong with itunes, dudes and dudettes!! Nothing is wrong with your computers. I too have scoured the Internet and done everything suggested to no avail...and everyone is getting the same symptoms. Where theress smoke there's fire, and apple's got a fire on their hands. I use yahoo music, with NO PROBLEMS. I use other mp3 players (winamp, windows media) with NO PROBLEMS! It would be great if someone from apple would get on this forum and just admit to us that they messed up and they're trying to fix it. I love itunes. But if it doesn't play music, well, it doesn't do what it's made to do, and that's called a product defect. Sorry for the rant...it's just frustrating and I know I'm not the only one...

hi chiefhabeb!

Also, when I quit out of itunes, or start it up, it take like 2 minutes. Sometimes, it never quits!! and itunes stays on in the background. When I shutdown, the itunes program it's unresponsive, but it's not called itunes any more, it's a bunch of gibberish!!!!

b that's
weird ... i usually associate that one with the nastier versions of Norton Internet Security 2005 launch suppression which have been hitting us on upgrades since 4.8 ...

if you
b are
running NIS 2005, try working through the "Lorraine" technique:

Lorraine M, "NIS/i-tunes problem rectified" #2, 12:51am Oct 17, 2005 CDT

if not, post back. (of course, if you're
b absolutely convinced
it's itunes 6.0.x, not something which is fixable on your PC, don't bother.)

love, b