Itunes Music Skipping

My problem is the same as Jon (31 Mar 2007) and SireeBob (
18 Apr 2007) ... Is there a fix for these Creative drivers vs iTunes/Quicktime? iTunes doesn't seem to be able to properly use the soundcard to decode the music as it uses majorly more CPU usage than any other music program I've tried. (iTunes is a bigger and more complex program, and so uses more memory, but that shouldn't affect CPu usage much...)

I get 5-10% CPU usage while playing a song on iTunes vs 0-1% on any other program,a nd I have a FX-60 dual core CPU...

EDITOR'S NOTE: Maybe this will help: http://askbobrankin.com/itunes_alternatives.html

iPod Service and Apple Mobile Device have been killed. I'm running ONLY iTunes and Firefox 2.0 on a fully-up-to-date-on-all-drivers-and-software system with XP, 1.5GB of RAM, and a 2.8GHz P4. There is NO reason iTunes should be skipping like it does, but the fact remains, it is. Especially when I type or if I open new tabs in Firefox. This editor has no idea how to fix it. I'm glad he helped others, but he certainly doesn't have all the answers. Thanks for nothin, Bob.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Sounds like you missed some of the great suggestions in the reader comments. Did you try some of the iTunes settings tweaks mentioned there?

My PC is an E6600 Core 2 Duo, 4GB of memory, and a Sound Blaster X-Fi. iTunes still skips when using Firefox (opening tabs, refreshing JavaScript heavy pages). Only iTunes though.

iTunes also uses 5% CPU for playing MP3s? The problem is not the OS, the problem is iTunes and crap Apple coding. My 486 could play MP3s with that much CPU usage when using the old WinAmp, and WMP has no such problem.

my itunes skips when i listen to radio stations through it. it just started yesterday. help or suggestions?

thanks much.

Thanks for the info! This has made listening to itunes so much more enjoyable while I am web surfing!

Music skipping, especially when it's happening with only certain songs, and skips always at the same location on playback, could also be a sign of a bad AAC file that was being delivered by iTunes Store.

I had one such problem recently with music I had purchased and did not play back correctly (songs would skip at the same spot every time). I contacted Apple, was given a refund, and told they would investigate the files and that I should try downloading the material again in a few weeks.

Thanks for the great info. However, most of these suggested fixes seem to be for Windows. What about Mac? I opened Quicktime in OS and there don't seem to be options to change the synthesizer default or enable safe mode. I'm using OS 10.4 and iTunes v7.

In addition to skipping songs during the burn, I'm also getting the occasional random song truncating. Muy annoying. Love my Mac but am very disappointed in Apple SW lately.

Good call. Saved me from going insane.

I am running iTunes and there is no way my skipping problem is caused by a lack of RAM. I am using it on a laptop with a 1.73 GHz dual-core with 2Gb DDR2 RAM. When I'm running iTunes in the background while playing World of Warcraft, I still have almost 1Gb of RAM free. I hate iTunes when it skips but I love my iPod and iTunes does such a great job of organizing music. I guess I'll deal with the skipping until Apple gets this figured out.

Ive got a dual core AMD Turion 64 X2 TL-50 and from what I have read on the net and can work out, the music skips due the second core powering up and down. There is a powersave feature built in which activates the second core when the load on the CPU reaches a certain threshold but then powers it off again when the load is reduced again to save power. This might be complete crap but I have done pretty much everything I can think of to fix it: formatted the hdd and clean installed windows, installed another gig of ram to take it from 1gb to 2gb, plugged in a soundblaster audigy 2 nx external soundcard and messed with any and all audio settings and drivers/codecs etc. I turned the powersave off in bios but it is still on. It is the only thing that makes sense, it skips when you scroll a webpage or load something up or if a background service like an antivirus tries to do something. It is a built in fault and ive just come to learn to live with it unfortunately. If im wrong then please let me know! Id love to be able to fix it!