iTunes - CDs play and import with distorted sound!

[musicLover68]

Hello fellow Mac users,

Three days ago I put a new CD in my iMac7,1 Intel Core 2 Duo 2 GHz in order to import the tunes into iTunes. I have done this countless times and have nearly 10,000 songs on iTunes.

The disc seemed to import okay but when I played back the files as imported onto iTunes the music was all horribly, and I mean horribly, distorted, like an amplifier with a blown loudspeaker.

I deleted the files and tried again. Same result. I then tried to play the CD live via iTunes and again the sound was very badly distorted.

I decided I needed to find out if the CD/DVD drive was faulty so I went to Finder and looked up the CD on it. I was able to open the CD on Finder and from the list of tracks I was able to select any .aiff file and play it perfectly through the Finder so this I think means the actual CD/DVD drive is fine.

I then uninstalled iTunes and reinstalled a new copy from the Apple website. It still has the above fault, i.e. any imported tracks are badly distorted and even playing a CD live via iTunes gives a horrible distorted playback but playing the CD through the Finder it plays back fine.

As I have installed a fresh copy of iTunes does this mean there is a software corruption somewhere within OSX (10.5) between the CD/DVD drive and iTunes?

If anyone else has suffered this problem or similar can you tell me please how you solved it. I fear I might have to reinstall OSX

Best regards,

Micky

musicLover68

 

[blogmywiki]

I have a very similar issue with iTunes on my iMac - only certain CDs though and they play ok in the Finder. I've removed the last.fm app and disabled the option for automatically getting CD track names from the internet (I read they can cause problems) - and same issue. I'm using iTunes 10.5.1 under OS X 10.6.8

 

[blogmywiki]

I used a 3rd-party ripper called Max - it ripped the same CD that iTunes refused to play just fine: Max from sbooth.org

 

[musicLover68]

iTunes distorted playback/ripping

Hi blogmywiki.

Glad I'm not alone in this mysterious problem. The thing is I use iTunes any time I am on my iMac as a player, gradually archiving all my CDs on it. I'm at 10,000 tracks now and then this problem has cropped up.

I have Parallels 6 with Windows XP running sometimes. I wonder if this or some other application has caused memory corruption of some OSX component that acts as interface between the optical drive and iTunes?

Yesterday I tried playing a CD using Quicktime and it worked fine. I also updated to a new (latest) iTunes version hoping that would cure the problem but no.

I think the problem is not with either the optical drive or iTunes but with some part of OSX which the two use to communicate. I think that something has got corrupted and the encoder or whatever it is has been corrupted.

Does anyone know of any OSX component that is used only by iTunes for getting the info from an optical disk? It would have to be something that neither Finder nor Quicktime use as they play the CDs fine.

Yours hopefully,

Music Lover 68

I used a 3rd-party ripper called Max - it ripped the same CD that iTunes refused to play just fine: Max from sbooth.org

 

[jackinthegreen]

distortion through itunes

Hi
As the above user I am also finding certain music tracks (whether from cd or itunes store) while being replayed through itunes are distorted.
Also, playing through Finder or Real Player seems to eliminate the problem.
I'd be happy to receive your ideas on how to resolve this annoying "feature" of itunes.
Thanks all.
JITG

 

[musicLover68]

iTunes distorted playback/ripping

Hello again folks,

Firstly by logical deduction it does not seem to be iTunes itself which is the problem as I have re-installed the existing version then I installed a new version too but the problem persists.

CDs play fine in both Finder and Quicktime so I can only say there must be a corrupted OSX software component.

May I ask what OSX does everyone have? I have 10.5 with all updates. I am asking in case it is a fault with OSX, with a particular version.

Does anyone else have Parallels 6 (or even an older or newer version of Parallels) installed on their Mac? Parallels lets you run other operating systems on top of OSX, e.g. Windows, Linux, Chrome etc. I mention Parallels because this is a major install and so are any 'foreign' OSs installed within it and it requires memory allocation etc.

Another possible avenue is the number of songs you have on iTunes. I was just reaching 10,000 tracks when the problem appeared. On the Friday it was fine, on the Saturday it was broken.

Okay. Solutions. I have ordered Snow Leopard OSX which I am going to install but you could just as easily re-install whatever version that came with your Mac. I would have reinstalled Leopard but decided to fork out £35 for Snow Leopard anyway, but I wonder if a reinstall of the OSX would replace whatever damaged software component is causing the problem. I will report back on this when my copy of Snow Leopard arrives.

Best regards,

MusicLover68

Hi
As the above user I am also finding certain music tracks (whether from cd or itunes store) while being replayed through itunes are distorted.
Also, playing through Finder or Real Player seems to eliminate the problem.
I'd be happy to receive your ideas on how to resolve this annoying "feature" of itunes.
Thanks all.
JITG

 

[jackinthegreen]

Hi ML68

I have OSX 10.6.8. I don't have Parallels nd I'm not near tp the 10k 'breaking point'!

Regards, JITG

 

[chas_m]

Good news, everyone! Apple has identified the problem and just issued a fix. Just wait for your Software Update to bring you iTunes 10.5.2 and the distortion issue will apparently be cured.

 

[jackinthegreen]

thanks Chas_m. I am eagerly awaiting the update.

Jackinthegreen

 

[dktide91]

I too have the same issue. I have somewhere in the neighborhood of 17K songs in my itunes library and about 6K CDs that I am in the process of loading. I just recently encountered this distortion issue with two CDs: Running On Empty by Jackson Browne and Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers debut CD. The thing is that it's only Track 1 on each of these that is distorted but if I let it play, SOMETIMES it will work it's way out of distortion so then I quickly restart the song and it sounds fine. At this point, I quickly try to import the song while it's working and I have been successful. All that being said, this should not be happening at all in my opinion i.e. I shouldn't have to go through this much trouble just to get a song imported.