iTunes Problem

Factual Questions
1

I’ve been downloading songs and burning CDs using Apple’s iTunes program. When I take my CDs into work and play them on my compact system (Panasonic) a FEW of the songs on SOME of the CDs are very scratchy or tend to “breakup”. Yet when I play the CD on my computer there is no problem. I’ve never had the problem on my compact system with any “store bought” CDs.

Has anyone one out there in Doperland had a similar problem with iTunes? Inquiring minds want to know. Thanks

LL

2

Check what kind of CD-Rs you’re using. I had home-burned CDs that would “flake out” after 30 minutes in my car, because the in-car player couldn’t handle the reflective material of the discs. Burning CDs with CD-Rs specifically for audio fixed the problem.

3

Some older players (our 1986 JVC) don’t “like” CD-Rs burned at high speeds, say 20x. So I burn discs at 4x and no problems.

4

This is misleading. So-called “audio CD-Rs” are different from comparable “data CD-Rs” in that they contain coding that allows standalone CD-R writers to recognize them. (cite=http://www.cdrfaq.org/faq07.html#S7-17). They are more expensive because the price includes a tariff paid to the recording industry. One should experiment with different brands of CD-R rather than waste money on “music” discs. The reason your discs seemed to work after using “music” blanks is almost certaintly because you switched brands or bought discs that used a different type of dye. The fact is that some writers or readers have trouble with certain dye types.

5
      • The couple questions that come to my mind are “does your computer have lousy speakers?” and “did you download the songs from iTunes?” …iTunes downloads are really very poor quality–only 96Kb/sec. A “standard” MP3 is encoded at 128Kb/sec, and you generally need to go up to 160Kb/sec or even 192 Kb/sec before the higher-frequencies sound good.
  • Slashdot had an article on this just a few days ago–of all the pay-per-download services, iTunes was the lowest–bit-rate (which basically equates to “lower audio quality”). The iTunes songs are heavily compressed to download fast and not take up much disk storage space, and they sound fine when played on the (low quality) iPod headphones–but sound very poor when played on other better systems, or even when heard through better headphones connected to an iPod.
    ~
6

That’s not true. iTunes Music Store songs are compressed at 128k/sec, and are in AAC format. Since AAC (also known as MPEG 4 Audio) is a different codec than MP3, a direct comparison is meaningless. MPEG 4 provides higher compression than MP3 at similar bitrates, with equal-to or better quality. The downside is MPEG 4 compression and decompression requires more processing power when compared to MP3.

7

Thanks for all the suggestions.

I just burned a couple of CDs at a much lower speed as Jeff suggested (since this is the easiest and quickest first remedy). I’ll take them to work on Monday and hope it works.

LL