Airtunes stops after end of song.

UPDATE

Have now disconnected the airport express completely, turned airtunes off on AppleTV, done a reset settings on the AppleTV (but not to factory) and the problem continues, playlists and albums loosing sound but continuing to play after every couple of tracks or so. Introducing Airport EXpress seems to have introduced a fault to my AppleTV which was working perfectly fine beforehand.

I have reported this to Lucas at Apple technical support (Greece call centre) who said he will investigate and call me back tomorrow. I will report what happens.

I am still having the problem. Apple TV, 2 airport express units and an airport extreme. All are using wired connections. The express units have wireless disabled. At the end of a song music stops coming out of the speakers but Apple TV and the remote app on my iPhone still think the song is playing. Moving the scribbler bar on the Remote app causes the music to resume. But it will inevitably drop at the end of another song.

I have done lots of testing and this happens whether I play the music through the Apple TV or initiating the playback from Apple TV via the Remote app on the iPhone. It is NOT a random drop issuue. It only happens at the end of songs. I think it might be affected by the nitrate of songs. It seems to happen with 320kbps MP3s but I have not proven that to be exclusive. All of the music is stored on the Apple TV hard drive.

I spent an hour on the phone today with Antonio from Apple support. No resolution. I asked that this be escalated to the product engineering team. I have all Apple gear, wired connections... this should work and I am getting quite frustrated with it. The only reason I bought an Apple TV was to use as a music server for the AirTunes and Remote app on the iPhone. Great concept but the drop outs are a deal breaker.

Another update

Apple support (Lucas in Greece) never called me back after my call last week, so I have just called Apple support again and spent another hour on the phone explaining the problem for a second time, to somebody else. This time I was given a case number, and told that he will escalate the problem to engineering who should respond within two days.

I had a similar experience and am also awaiting a call back from "Engineering".

The original call, they really just wanted to get rid of me indicating "network interference" as a cause on my end they had no control over. But my setup is all wired and I shut off the iPhone while playing music from the ATV via AirTunes over a wired connection.. same issue of stopping at the end of a song. I forced the guy to stay on the line while I did that. He gave me a case # and asked that I do some more testing.

I placed another call this weekend against the same case #. Spent another hour on the phone answering the same questions as previous. Was told to take my stuff down to an Apple store and try and reproduce the problem there. I am not going to do that, this is an obvious glitch in some Apple software or firmware that needs fixing. So I await a call back from "Engineering" to see what's next.

I have made some progress on diagnosing the issue on my end. This is the message I sent to the guy I have been working with at Apple Tech Support.

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Hello Antonio.

I have done more testing with my issue. As per Apple's request, I took my stuff to a friend's house and set up a network there. (at considerable hassle I might add, we're talking about dismantling my home network: 2 x airport express, 1 x airport extreme, 1 x NAS unit, 1 x apple TV). I had the exact same result.. random dropouts at the beginning (or end) of a song.

So I conducted some other tests and eventually landed on a test where I can reproduce the issue. It is still random, but I can create a scenario where the issue will inevitably re-occur.

I created 3 x 25 song playlists where the bit rate was 256kbps or less.
I created 3 x 25 song playlists where the bit rate was 320kbps.
Each of the 6 playlists had different songs on them.

I could play all the way through the 256kbps playlists without issue. I repeated this several times with different playlists and different song content within the playlists.

With the 320 kbps playlists, EVERY TIME I would play them, randomly (not at the same song every time) the songs would drop at the end (or beginning) of a song. The Apple TV would still think the song was playing. To get the song to resume, I had to jump back to the beginning or to the next song. This is the same behaviour I have always experienced. This behaviour happens whether I am playing the song from a Mac or from the Apple TV. It did not matter if I had Remote app on the iPhone running, for some of the tests where the issue did occur I had the iPhone turned off.

So there appears to be a defect in some aspect of the Airtunes capabilities that relates to bit rate of the songs.

This is a rather significant hassle for me because I have over 12,000 songs and about 40% of those are encoded at 320kbps.

What's next?

Thanks,
eg

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So in my experience and testing, it is related to the bitrate of the files. I do not know if it is just 320kbps, but I can certainly reproduce it with 320 kbps files and not with lesser bitrate files.

egg

I am so glad I found this discussion topic, I have been trying to solve this problem since upgrading to iTunes 8 when it first came out. I keep hoping that iTunes updates will fix it, but no luck. It does not seem to be related to the bitrate of songs in my case. The last time it happened was after playing an AAC 128 file and before beginning a song purchased from iTunes with the same bitrate. The volume on the host computer is fine, it is only the remote speakers that have no sound and only at the end of a song, exactly like everyone else has found. I have an AE connected to a Linksys wireless network and I am streaming from an iMac G5 running 10.5.7 and iTunes 8.2.1. All firmware and software is up to date according to Software Update and AirPort Utility. The only thing that I wonder about is if it has something to do with shuffling songs, as this is how I usually listen to my music. I was hoping that once I discovered the correct discussion topic, there would be a simple solution, but I guess not. I will keep checking back, though.

After spending dozens of hours testing and experimenting I have solved this issue *for my setup*. I do not know if this will work for other people, but I no longer get dropouts at the end (or beginning) of songs. The way this manifests itself is that the Apple TV (and also iTunes) still thinks the song is playing (scrobbler bar is moving) but there is no music coming out of ANY of the speakers (including the speakers connected directly to the Apple TV). Jumping back to the beginning of the song, or to the next song, or moving the scrobbler bar would cause music to resume coming out of the speakers.

See the post above where I tested playlists with MP3s at 320kbps and separate playlists with MP3s at 256kbps or less. I would get dropouts with the 320kbps playlists. I did NOT get any drops with the 256kbps or less playlists.

As a result I transcoded all my MP3s that were 320kbps to 256kbps VBR MP3s. Since completing the transcoding, I have not experienced any end/beginning of song drops. I've had it running for a couple of days now and have left music playing on shuffle and repeat for more than 24 hours without issue.

This is an incredibly annoying issue as I have 12,000 MP3s and about half of them were 320kbps. I used a well known Windows ripping app called dbPowerAmp on a PC that uses LAME to do the transcoding. But doing anything with 6,000 high bitrate MP3s stored on a NAS is a tedious and time consuming process.

I am happy with the results now, but I should NOT have had to spend 60+ hours resolving this problem... it should just work out of the box. This is a defect in the product introduced by a firmware update or some such because I have not always had this problem.

I have this problem as well: while iTunes continues to play song after song (visual, the bar is moving), but the music is not audible via the internal computer speakers and via Airtunes. This happens randomly after the end of a song when iTunes starts to play a new song. To get the sound to resume, I have to jump back to the beginning or to the next song, or to pause and play the song. Sometimes it also resumes automatically after having played a random number of songs songs without audio output.

My configuration:
• 1 Time Capsule 802.11n Wi-Fi Hard Drive storing my iTunes music library remotely. Firmware version 7.4.2
• 1 MacBook Pro Intel Core 2 Duo, Mac OS X 10.5.8 running iTunes version 8.2.1
• 1 AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n and AirTunes, connected to my stereo. Firmware version 7.4.2.

I have this problem since I extended my configuration with the Time Capsule. The problem seems not to be related to transcoding or bitrate, like eggman51 suggested, because it also appears with 192 kbps files. I tried various Wi-Fi channels and setups, but no breakthrough in solving this issue so far.

Hi,

I have the exact same problem, among other problems with AirTunes / iTunes.

My configuration:
- an iMac (early 2009)
- a MacBook Pro 13" (early 2009)
- a TimeCapsule 1 To (bought a month ago... Yes I'm a very recent switcher 😉
- an Airport Express base station

Everything has the latest firmware installed. My iTunes library is stored on the TimeCapsule and shared between the iMac and the MacBook Pro (well, actually the share does not work so well).

My problems are:
- iTunes loses systematically the way to the iTunes library stored on the TimeCapsule, every time I turn off the computer
- the iTunes library is not really shared, because if iTunes in open on the iMac, then I can't open the library file on the MBP
- many errors -15000, both on the iMac and the MBP
- the problem described in this thread, i.e. iTunes reads the files (MP3, 192 kbps) but at the end of a song, on a random basis, no sound comes from the speakers of my hifi system.

As a newbie in the Mac world, I'm really disappointed by the quality of the AirTunes system. Something's clearly wrong there...

Any help would be very appreciated 🙂

Message was edited by: SplinterGMD

Same problem here, as long as I use the ANALOG OUT of my Airport Express.
But, not surprisingly, everything works fine with an optical TOSlink cable connected to an external digital to analog converter. It seems that the base station, randomly, fails to trigger its built-in audio converters at the beginning of a song. The network connection works perfectly. This is not a network related issue in my opinion, and I think that the data bitrate makes no difference (I use Apple Lossless). Hope this could be fixed with a firmware update. I don't think we can found any workaround at the moment.

When using a network hard disk with iTunes, I have found that the best solution is to store all the music files on the network drive and keep the library in the internal drive of your computer. Don't forget to mount the network drive before starting iTunes.

I have been having this issue also,

However, I have pinpointed that the cause of this problem is with iTunes (not the Airport Express).

I used an application called Airfoil to see if I could stream audio through that. Sure enough, no connection/drop out issues whatsoever. This was while playing music through iTunes and having Airfoil streaming it across.

This proves that there is an issue with iTunes and the way it streams audio across to Airport Express units. Maybe yet another update might fix this once and for all...

I have the same problem.

Sound does not pass, though Itunes appears to be playing a song.

It occurs at the end of a song only, when switching to the next.

I appears to affect all bitrates.

Airfoil fixes the issue, but come on.

My setup:

MacBook Pro
Airport Extreme (with USB HD that contains my iTunes library)
Airport Express..

PLenty of ram - latest OS to date...multicast settings, Disabling IPv6 all failed to resolve.

You know it's itunes - AIRFOIL IS THE ONLY FIX?!!

Hi All,

Exact same issues as described by others above for the last couple months and I might have a temporary fix until patched.

I agree that it is an iTunes issue and not a wireless/airport issue, as I also run Airfoil with no issues.

Seeing the previous post about running iTunes through Airfoil got me thinking that this problem is actually similar to a problem I had with an earlier version of Airfoil. Their solution until patching was to enable the output through multiple speakers. I set my iTunes to use option multiple speakers (both computer and my airport) and so far have had uninterrupted playback. Fingers crossed it continues.

Of course, I can turn off my desktop speakers, so Im only hearing music over the airport express ones.

Hope this is helpful for others, and hope this issue is sorted in iTunes soon.

I have the exact problem as others in this topic, but I can add more observations:

# There is no "pattern" to this bug for me. Yesterday I played through an entire playlist uninterrupted. Today it stops at every track. Can´t see any immediate relation to bitrate or anything.

# The "multiple speaker" setup does not work here. Tracks still stop at the end. Here I even experienced that the sound stopped coming from my laptop where itunes was playing it from(while the track was still running in itunes of course)!

# Somtimes, when I enable "multiple speakers", the volume coming from the remote stereo doubles. Its as if it is not broadcasting full stream until you "reset" it.

# If I activate CROSSFADE in itunes preferences, this actually fixes the issue. Very hairy though ...

I am streaming tracks through my macbook from a remote disk connected to airport Express. I think the question remains unanswered: Everyone who is having this problem, are they connected to external disks streaming through network?

Airfoil is an interesting app I may wanna try, but I still think Apple should fix this horrible bug.

Hi all.
Not very scientific i'm afraid, but i've upgraded to snow leopard, itunes 9, and i've got the latest remote control update.
I've played about 20 tracks at 320kbps this morning without any problems.
Not one hang so far.
Fingers crossed, it may be sorted, but i don't know which of the above would be responsible. If i had to guess, it think it would be itunes 9.