Apple Event: May 7th at 7 am PT
When I import certain CD's (Red Hot Chili Peppers- By the Way and Tom Petty- Wildflowers) the songs are all highly distorted, it is not to do with the CD's themselves as they play fine in CD players, and I doubt it is my disk drive as I have imported other albums with no trouble at all. But obviously it's bugging me as I can't listen to them, I have the newest versions of Itunes on my Macbook. Does anyone know how this is resolved?
MacBook Pro
I had the same problem with three Warner's CDs and scoured the web for answers. I found this and it worked: use an older CD drive. I used an old external drive, connected via USB, and the ripped discs play perfectly in iTunes. I believe it is caused by disc that have pre-emphasis (amplification, basically) built-in to them. iTunes cannot handle it and, when ripped, the extra oomph distorts the sound. This, apparently, causes no problem for older CD drives and it is believed that Warner's have some agreement with drive manufacturers as a form of copy protection, but only with newer drives. The distortion was there even if only playing, not ripping them. Older ones work fine. Hi-if drives work fine, just the newer PC CD drives that have an issue.
Frankly, I don't know what the cause actually is, just that an old external CD drive solved it for me.
I haven't had this problem on other CDs but the problem itself is only getting more surreal. The tracks have all now imported fine and playback cleanly on the MacBook Pro & the iPad but were distorting on the iPhone (6). I deleted the tracks from the phone and resented with a new playlist and yet they still distort on the phone and only the phone. I guess I'll listen back on the other devices...
Interestingly, I have three Warner Brothers CDs that have this distorted thing going on. None of them will play on my USB Superdrive which is connected to my 2013 iMac, but they import and play just fine on my 2010 Macbook Pro.
Weird.
Distorted songs via CD
