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I have a 2011 generation Macbook Pro, upgrade to 16gb RAM and a 128gb SSD drive - running Mountain Lion and iTunes 11.

During playback (approximately 20 times per song) it stutters, stops playing for a few seconds, and then resumes from where it left off. It seems to co-incide with my using the keyboard or performing any file operations - and at the same time the file operations freeze up. The following screenshot was taken about 3 seconds after a skip and doesn't show any signficant CPU activity:

enter image description here

However, if I close iTunes, I get no problems with file operations, or any other app on my machine - leading me to believe that iTunes is causing the problem. Has anyone else run into anything similar, or have any advice on stopping iTunes being such a resource hog?

Note: Other apps (for instance VLC) have no problem with playback under the same conditions.

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Can you run top -o cpu (in Terminal) or Activity Monitor during playback to see what else is consuming CPU time? – patrix♦ Jan 12 at 13:16
Screenshot of both: img.iamp.me/eI6m (That was three seconds after a skip) – George Pearce Jan 12 at 13:19
Side note- when it happens, the read speed on the drive drops to zero for several seconds, often the write speed is zero too. – George Pearce Jan 12 at 13:20
CPU looks ok, I would suspect the drive anyway now. The speed drop points in the same direction. – patrix♦ Jan 12 at 13:22
Does that imply a dud drive? I've been thinking about swapping back to the 'moving part' drive anyhow. – George Pearce Jan 12 at 13:29
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3 Answers

up vote 1 down vote

I have the same issue on Windows since upgrading to version 11. My guess is that the application does not buffer as well as it used to - so a load on the system causes playback stutter.

A workaround that seems to work is to run iTunes as a high priority process. This can be achieved on Windows 8 via the task manager ("Details" tab) or by changing the iTunes shortcut to be:

cmd.exe /c start ""/High "C:\Program Files (x86)\iTunes\iTunes.exe"

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Use an external audio player like Amarra to take control of the buffer and playback and see if this helps. Amarra has settings for how much of a track to buffer before playing

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up vote -1 down vote

You're sure these are not songs that are coming from the cloud?

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This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post - you can always comment on your own posts, and once you have sufficient reputation you will be able to comment on any post. – bassplayer7 Feb 1 at 14:33
It's terse, but delays to stream under iTunes Match are my #1 cause of unsmooth playback. Just about all machines have iTunes playback at such a high priority (and are fast enough to pause other workloads to prevent the audio play buffer from emptying) that it's almost always a media error and not a performance issue on the Mac IMO. – bmike♦ Feb 1 at 14:38
This does not provide an answer to the question. To critique or request clarification from an author, leave a comment below their post. – Mark Feb 1 at 20:44

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