Stuttering and skipping audio, and an accidental QuickTime workaround

Question

Stuttering and skipping audio, and an accidental QuickTime workaround

Hi,

I've been having periodic problems with skipping and stuttering audio since the 10.5.6 or 10.5.6 update to OS X. Lately, it's become worse. Just about all of the audio on my system, except for Flash, stutters and skips. I visited the Genius bar at the local Apple store yesterday, and he had never seen anything like it, and suggested an archive and install of the OS, which I'm not quite ready to jump to yet. So this morning, I decided to post my problem here, and I thought it would be a good idea to make a recording of my audio problem so people would know exactly what I was talking about. Since this problem also exists in iTunes, I decided to open a QuickTime Audio Recording window while I had a particular audio file playing in iTunes repetitively. So I had the audio file playing, with its stuttering and skipping, and I opened the QuickTime Audio Recording, and waited for another skipping and stuttering occurrence. To my surprise, the skipping and stuttering stopped! I let the same audio file play for about 20 minutes, and it played perfectly. Also, while the QuickTime Audio Recording window was open, all of the other sounds (alert sounds from apps, etc.) played perfectly. When I closed the Audio Recording window, the audio problems came back! So the good news is that I've apparently found a workaround to my problem. The bad news is that I still don't know how to fix it properly. The Apple Genius suggested that I download and reinstall QuickTime, which I did, but that didn't solve the problem. I have a feeling now that this problem is related to QuickTime in some way. I'm wondering if anyone can offer additional suggestions as to a fix for this. When I right-click on an audio file and select the "Open With..." option, among the choices are three QuickTime versions, 7.5.5, 7.6, and 7.6.4, which make me think that there might be leftover components from older versions of QuickTime on my system. Is there any way that I can do a "clean" install of QuickTime that's more thorough than just a download and install?

Thanks,

Ken

12 G4 PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8), 1.125 Gb RAM

Posted on Nov 18, 2009 12:53 PM

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Answer 1

Nov 18, 2009 1:06 PM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

Curious.
What happens when you right click on any audio file and choose QuickTime 7.5.5? Does that version open? How about 7.6?

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Answer 2

Nov 18, 2009 1:47 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Hi, QuickTimeKirk,

You asked an interesting question, and here are the results;

When I tried to open a file with QuickTime 7.5.5, it opened, and the About box reported that it was indeed QuickTime 7.5.5.

When I tried to open a file with QuickTime 7.6, the QuickTime menu options briefly appeared for 1-2 seconds, and then disappeared. After this, I couldn't find any indication that QuickTime was running, neither by cmd-tabbing nor by looking at the processes in Activity Monitor.

And QuickTime 7.6.4 opens fine, and is listed as the default app for opening this particular audio file.

Here's some more info. I did a Spotlight search on "QuickTime", and it found two versions of the QuickTime app. Version 7.6.4 was in the Applications folder of my system drive, and Version 7.6 was in the Applications folder of a 10.4.11 installation that I have on another partition of the same drive. I found no listing for a 7.5.5 app, but when I looked again at the 7.5.5 About box, I saw the following:

QuickTime Player
Version 7.5.5 (249.24)
Quicktime(tm) Version 7.6.4 (1327.73)
Copyright (c) 1989-2008 , Apple Inc.,
All Rights Reserved

Is this normal, to have two different versions listed for a single instance of QuickTime?

Thanks for your help.

Ken

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Answer 3

Nov 18, 2009 2:00 PM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

You can have as many different versions of the QuickTime player app as you want (obviously not in the same folder) but only one QuickTime "engine" (all of the component pieces).
You can see that in the information in the "About QuickTime Player" menu and yours says two different things:
QuickTime Player version 7.5.5
QuickTime version 7.6.4
So you are running 7.5.5 on the 7.6.4 "engine".
Neither of these is the cause of your "stuttering and skipping" audio issue.
Open the Audio MIDI Setup application (Utilities folder) and make sure the frequency is set to 44100.0 Hz. Change it if your settings are higher and test again.

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Answer 4

Nov 18, 2009 2:13 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Hi,

Thanks for the info about the different versions I took a look at the "Audio Devices" tab of Audio Midi Setup. At the top, all of the dropdowns read "Default Audio Setup", both Audio Input and Audio Output have settings of 44100.0 Hz and "2ch-16bit", so things seem to agree with what you feel are the optimal settings, right? If it matters, 44100.0 Hz is the only option available in the frequency dropdowns. Do you have any other suggestions for things to take a look at?

Thanks,

Ken

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Answer 5

Nov 18, 2009 2:17 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Hi,

Thanks for the info about the different versions I took a look at the "Audio Devices" tab of Audio Midi Setup. At the top, all of the dropdowns read "Default Audio Setup", both Audio Input and Audio Output have settings of 44100.0 Hz and "2ch-16bit", so things seem to agree with what you feel are the optimal settings, right? If it matters, 44100.0 Hz is the only option available in the frequency dropdowns. Do you have any other suggestions for things to take a look at? By the way, in the "Midi Devices" tab, there are two devices listed, "IAC Driver" and "Network". Is this a typical setup?

Thanks,

Ken

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Answer 6

Nov 18, 2009 2:17 PM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

Open one of the audio files using QuickTime Player 7.6.4 and then open the Movie Inspector window.
What does it say about your file?

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Answer 7

Nov 18, 2009 2:28 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

Besides the filename and source path, it reports the following:

Format: MPEG Layer 3, Stereo, 44,100 kHz
Data Size: 2.13 Mb
Data Rate: 95.87 kbits/s
Current Time: 0:00:00:00.00
Duration: 0:00:03:06:46

Does this look O.K.?

Thanks,

Ken

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Answer 8

Nov 18, 2009 2:33 PM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

Very standard .mp3 file.
Something you created or is it a download?

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Answer 9

Nov 18, 2009 2:54 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

It was something that i downloaded. But I'm having the stuttering problem with all sounds, apparently, except for Flash from websites or from flv files, which all play fine. Even the OS system alert sounds are stuttering, which makes it less likely that the problem is with the files themselves, but with the technology that's playing them. That's why I found it so surprising that merely opening up a QuickTime audio recording window (and not even turning on recording) seemed to fix the playback of all of the files that previously were stuttering.

Ken

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Answer 10

Nov 18, 2009 3:02 PM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

I guess we'll have to chalk this one up to computer "voodoo" and move on since your troubles seem to have abated.
I suspect the "trigger" (new QuickTime recording) may have reset some of the core audio subsets to some type of "default" configuration which "fixed" your previous issue.

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Answer 11

Nov 18, 2009 5:43 PM in response to QuickTimeKirk

I really don't want to do an OS reinstall if I can help it. I'm downloading the 10.5.8 Combo Update now, and I'm going to run that so see if it fixes the problem. I don't think I ran the Combo Update for the last couple of point releases of 10.5, so I'll give it a try and post back here with the results.

Thanks for your help,

Ken

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Answer 12

Nov 18, 2009 9:14 PM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

For what it's worth, I installed the 10.5.8 combo updater, and the stuttering problem remains...

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Answer 13

mhopeng

Level 1

0 points

Jan 20, 2010 9:34 AM in response to Kenneth Hjulstrom

FWIW, I just went through a few weeks of troubleshooting this "iTunes stuttering" issue. QT versions, disk permissions, library files, network settings, etc. Nothing worked, I finally gave up and reformatted the disk, did a clean install of 10.5, ran the 10.5.8 combo updater, QT 7.6.4, iTunes 9.0.2, etc., and it works fine now, even using the original (previously stuttering) iTunes library and music files. Keeping fingers crossed...

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