iPod Struggling with Airtunes Cut Outs

[eskimo515]

I know many people have commented on this over the years but since I have seen nothing that has actually fixed my problem I am writing in absolute desparation.

Here's my story - I have four airport expresses and stream both through airfoil and directly through airtunes and the cut outs happen constantly. I don't have a microwave and I have disconnected my cordless phone. There is no logic as to why it happens - I could have 10 pages in safari open or nothing open and there are still inconsistent cut outs.

I am a new mac user so I am inclined to think I just dont know what I am doing - but given the stories on this forum I know I am not alone.

PLEASE HELP - I have a big party this weekend and either I figure this out or have to go out and buy a Sonos.

How can such a great company as Apple with such amazing stuff not be able to figure out such a simple thing

 

[JediMeister]

Any chance you live in a neighborhood/apartment complex with a lot of wireless devices? Have you considered interference as a possibility? iStumbler or the AirPort section of the System Profiler will show nearby wireless access points and their respective channels. Depending on what channels the other devices are broadcasting you likely will need to adjust yours accordingly.

 

[tkermit]

You may want to check whether you suffer from the same problem that I have. My network is set up as 802.11g and as soon as anything big is being downloaded in the background (e.g. iTunes podcasts or other updates etc.) at the full speed that my internet connection provides, which is 6mbit/s, airTunes cuts out for me. It seems like airTunes fails to reserve its needed part of the network bandwidth and readily gives it up for any other data transfer operations over the network. The cut-outs sometimes also happen even with nothing downloading in the background if the wireless connection is bad due to being on a heavily crowded channel (my Airport menu item currently lists about 15 other networks in the area). Every single time I get interruptions it can be reliably traced back to one of these two reasons.


Is your network set up as 802.11g - if so, are you able to switch it to 802.11n ?

 

[eskimo515]

Any chance you live in a neighborhood/apartment complex with a lot of wireless devices? Have you considered interference as a possibility? iStumbler or the AirPort section of the System Profiler will show nearby wireless access points and their respective channels. Depending on what channels the other devices are broadcasting you likely will need to adjust yours accordingly.

I live in a house but its a new development and certainly could have lots of interference but I'm not sure. I assume I would just download iStumbler and see what I see? Where can I find this info under system preferences?

I also have issues where iTunes just freezes, where the music is no longer broadcasting at all. Weird

 

[eskimo515]

You may want to check whether you suffer from the same problem that I have. My network is set up as 802.11g and as soon as anything big is being downloaded in the background (e.g. iTunes podcasts or other updates etc.) at the full speed that my internet connection provides, which is 6mbit/s, airTunes cuts out for me. It seems like airTunes fails to reserve its needed part of the network bandwidth and readily gives it up for any other data transfer operations over the network. The cut-outs sometimes also happen even with nothing downloading in the background if the wireless connection is bad due to being on a heavily crowded channel (my Airport menu item currently lists about 15 other networks in the area). Every single time I get interruptions it can be reliably traced back to one of these two reasons.


Is your network set up as 802.11g - if so, are you able to switch it to 802.11n ?

I believe my network is set to automatic, which I understand to mean it bounces back and forth, no? Even when I have nothing else running on my computer and am not accessing the internet I get the same issue.

how can i check what other networks are in the area?

 

[androiphone]

also the channel of the router could be to blame from interference or cutouts the default couldbe anything but say if it's 11 change it to someting like 1, or something else far away from what it's set as now, if it doesn't work you can always change it back

 

[JediMeister]

To get the listing of nearby networks and their respective channels in 10.6, first make sure your Mac's AirPort card is on and joined to a network. Then go to the Apple menu, About This Mac, then click on the More Info button. On the left side under Network, select AirPort. In the larger area on the right it will show "Current Network Information" and immediately below that "Other Local Wireless Networks." On prior versions of the OS you will need iStumbler, and yes, installing it and launching it will list nearby open (broadcasting/announcing SSID) networks.

 

[eskimo515]

I did download iStumbler, and I have very few networks in my hood, so there's no reason why that should be the issue. I have also been testing with internet radio, which seems to be working fine. Which means that the problem seems to be isolated to iTunes. iTuness freezes all the time and for no reason. Perhaps it has something to do wtih the fact that my library is on my time capsule instead of on the harddrive (which I dont have the space to do).

Thoughts.

 

[eskimo515]

Quick update

So after many weeks of frustration and hundreds of attempts to fix my nightmare of cutouts I wanted to confirm my simple fix which seemed to do the trick. Because of the harddrive limits (I have a MBA) I had placed my library on my time capsule. So I bit the bullet and placed my library on a EHD attached to my MBA and almost no cutouts. I'm gonna test if I can connect it via USB to the time capsule and still get the same results. I also downgraded to iTunes 8 which also helped. I might upgrade to 9 now and see what happens

thanks to all