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AirTunes stuttering and failing

I have seen many posts on several forums over several years with AirTunes problems, but no solution. I hope that my description and configuration will spark someone to remember a solution.


My network:


I have two (2) wireless networks in my house, I have done extensive testing and channel separation to minimize wireless traffic collisions.


My whole-house music network consists of an Airport Extreme base station as the network center, and three (3) Airport Express base stations connected to amplifiers used as powered speakers. This network does not have Internet access.


The Airport Extreme is in a central location to give maximum coverage and is centered between the three (3) Airport Express base stations (and the Apple TV 2). The network is password protected and it is not used for any other data transfer except music and hopefully video to an Apple TV 2.


For several years I have been using a 2003 iBook G4 900 Mhz, with 640K RAM and a 60 GB drive. It has OS X 10.4.11 and iTunes 8.2. This set-up has been running great for at least 4 years and is only used as a music server.


I realized that the computer is getting old and I wanted to add a second Generation Apple TV for music and video to the network, and since I have a 2009 MacBook that I do not use as a portable anymore, I decided to use it and retire the 2003 iBook.


The Macbook is a 2 GHz Core 2 Duo with 4GB RAM and a 250 GB drive. I decided to completely erase the drive with the 7 pass security erase, Then install the latest version of 10.7. I started by installing the original OS (10.5.x) followed by 10.6.3 from a newly purchased upgrade CD which I upgraded to 10.6.8 so I could install Lion which I installed from a newly purchased USB stick. I then ran all the updates, which upgraded 10.7 to 10.7.2 I then installed iTunes 10.5.1.


I then transferred my music, which is under 3000 songs (and as of now is MP3s from my CDs and MP3s converted from AACs purchased from Apple). I also transferred my movies and TV shows. I am all set to go with an updated system!


My first test was to just see how it worked with the Apple TV, it seemed to work OK for both music and video, but it was not an extensive test.


I then disabled the Apple TV and selected the three AirPort Express base stations and started streaming music only. It seemed OK, then after a short time it started to stutter, I didn’t think much of it, but then it seemed to stutter quite frequently to the point of being very annoying. Sometimes the “stutter” was a delay of 15 or 20 seconds.


I have heard on Mac Geek Gab podcast that they think that the SATA drivers in Lion are causing application slow-downs. I have read that others think that iTunes is the culprit (prior versions of iTunes). Some have said that enabling and then disabling the computer speakers help for a short time, others think that just activating the volume keys on the keyboard help for a short time. So far I have not seen a full, long-term solution.


I am not opposed to starting over and going back to an older version of the OS, and/or an older version of iTunes (where do I get older versions of iTunes?) I just want to make sure that I can use a version of iTunes that supports the Apple TV.


I know this is a long post but I was trying to be thorough.


Any help will be much, much appreciated,



Andy D

MacBook, Mac OS X (10.7.2)

Posted on Nov 23, 2011 9:15 AM

Reply
1 reply

Nov 23, 2011 6:44 PM in response to AndyD

I don't know if anyone is reading this or not. I did some more testing this afternoon.


Since the Music network is not connected to the Internet I signed out of my iTunes Store account, just in case iTunes was trying to go to the store for some reason. I made sure to uncheck any thing in the System Preferences and iTunes Preferences that might cause an attempt to access the Internet. I turned off all instances of Spotlight just in case Spotlight was trying to index the disk.


I am unsure of how to completely disable Spotlight.


Would that be a good test to try to completely disable Spotlight?


Oh, yeah, and I do not have a Time Machine backup drive connected, so Time Machine is turned off.


It seemed that the stuttering was lessened, but not gone, or maybe it was just wishful thinking.


I did notice that the stuttering would only happen to one Airport Express/Speaker set at a time, it seemed like iTunes was buffering and sending data at different times, unlike iTunes 9 which seemed to always send all the packets to all Airports at the same time.


I then enabled the Apple TV 2, and started the streaming to the Apple TV as well.


Very strange, it seemed that as long as the music was being streamed to the Apple TV that there was no stuttering to the other Airports. Not sure if this makes sense, but I will attempt more testing Friday (must have reliable music for Thanksgiving celebration tomorrow).


The music system continues to function very well with the old iBook, but I really need to replace the iBook.


If anyone has any ideas I would really appreciate it.


Thanks,


Andy D

AirTunes stuttering and failing

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