Songs stutter/jump in new iTunes

Thanks again, but I was experiencing occasional stuttering with that release as well.

Installing the old video card version and setting to playback to direct sound seems to have fixed it for me.

anthonystjames wrote:

Thanks again, but I was experiencing occasional stuttering with that release as well.

Boo. 😟

tt2

I have done all of the above installing the alternative version and altering the settings to direct sound. All of this has improved the general copious amounts of micro stutters but didn't stop all of the odd split second dropouts of audio. Now my collection is getting on for 30,000 tracks and all albums have album art and I found just scrolling down the Album lists could trigger a split second jump, also using the internet.

SO I thought I would try turning off my wifi on my laptop whilst the music was playing and observing the task manager performance of ITunes and immediately saw a 2 or 3% increase of use on the cpu and experienced a long dropout on the audio. This happened every time I repeated this.

To continue (sorry for long explanation) I decided to sign iTunes out of my Apple ID therefore not being connected to iTunes Store (though you can still access it) within iTunes and as if by magic no more audio dropouts so far regardless of wifi on/off or internet usage???? So my guess is there is an issue within the true 64bit design of iTunes 12 to work with windows 8.1 regarding its internet connection.

If anyone else out there is having this continuing issue regardless of trying all the previous suggestions please try signing out of your Apple ID account and see if this helps alongside all other options.

After much more use and testing turning the wifi on and off can still on occasion trip the audio dropout but in general I am having far less issues with dropouts purely by not being signed into my Apple ID when signed in I am having frequent dropouts every track or so with light laptop use with this latest (alternative) iTunes update 12.1

There doesn't seem to be a "universal fix" to the 12.1 playback issues. My experience (with all three variants of 12.1 - 62-bit, 64-bit, "for older video cards" 64-bit, on both Windows 7 and 8) is that this release seems to be more susceptible to disruption by other processes including (but by no means limited to) web browsing and anti-virus scans - seems that we may be able to add Store access to that. Indeed, since web browsing seems to be more disruptive when web pages have dynamic content such as auto-update scripts, it is possible that any "intensive" traffic on a 'net connection is somehow interfering or conflicting with iTunes audio. Hopefully Apple are aware of the issues and will be working on a 12.1.1 or 12.2 update to address the problem.

Here is another workaround that might do the trick for other Windows 8.1. users, too: I realized that there are no problems with stuttering audio as long as my iTunes and Spotify client are running in parallel. You just have to keep the spotify client minimized (with no songs playing). Suddenly, the audio issues in iTunes are gone. Until there is no update, I prefer this solution much more to rolling back/uninstalling my iTunes client. Should work both with free or premium accounts.

A weird but interesting observation. 😕

More things vying for control of a resource = better? 😝

tt2

I am listening to iTunes for the last day or so without being signed into my account. So far, so good. I've got to listen for a longer period of time to make a definitive determination that the stuttering has completely stopped, though. And of course, not being signed in means no playing my music that's up in the "iCloud" for the duration. lol...Thanks for bringing up this option.

I have a different problem. I updated te iTunes 12.1.0, with my ipod touch conected, and for my surprise, all of my music ad videos disappeared! The photos, and apps, it´s ok. Have you some news for recovering my music? My library is an old version of iTunes !

See Empty/corrupt iTunes library after upgrade/crash.

tt2

I'm having the same issue 😟

Hopefully Apple will come up with a fix for this.

My iTunes is stuttering like mad since the last update. Why do Apple, who claim to be the best thing since sliced bread, keep messing up and take so long to fix. Why do they never actually admit they cocked up??

HURRY UP AND FIX THIS APPLE

Have you tried installing the "for older video cards" version referenced in previous posts? If that doesn't fix playback issues then you can roll back to 12.0. Even if there is a "quick fix" for this it may be premature for an update - 12.1 was only released a few weeks ago, so even a patch release (12.1.1) wouldn't be expected to be pushed out within a such a short time frame. Given that it as least possible that 12.1 was rushed out without sufficient QA on the Windows platform - other than the transition to a full 64-bit architecture and a few minor changes to the metadata editors, most of the 12.1 changes are Mac-specific - wouldn't it better for Apple to take the time to ensure that an update works better for the majority of users?

Thanks for the heads up. 🙂

tt2