I Fixed My iTunes “Choppy Audio” Problem

Intro

First of all, I want to say that I’m not exactly sure how I fixed this problem. What I do know is that I did fix it. With that being said, let us continue.

Previously, I was unable to use iTunes while browsing the Internet (or using other programs) without the audio output being extremely choppy. As soon as I would click on a link, the audio would immediately begin to get choppy. I was incensed by the fact that there is no reason for this to be happening. I have an AMD  Phenom 64 Quad-Core processor and 3 GB of RAM running Windows Vista Home Premium. iTunes should have no problems.

At this point I should probably clarify that I cannot say that I don’t have any idea, whatsoever, of how I fixed the problem. What I’ll do now is give a list of the things that I did in an attempt to solve it.

Something in this list fixed the problem, though I’m not sure exactly what.

The List

First, I went into Control Panel/Administrative Tools/Services and disabled the following services…

• Windows Firewall – I already have a firewall running (COMODO Pro), and I figured it was using unnecessary resources.
• Windows Defender – I already have anti-spyware and anti-virus protection running. Again, a redundancy.
• Visual Studio 2008 Remote Debugger – I don’t use this feature.

I also made the following modifications to the BIOS. Here’s the list…

Under the “Advanced Chipset Features” menu:

• Set “PCIe Spread Spectrum” to Disabled.
• Set “SATA Spread Spectrum” to Disabled.
• Set “HT Spread Spectrum” to Disabled.

Here’s a link explaining what exactly “Spread Spectrum” means.

I also set the “OS Select For DRAM > 64MB” to “OS/2,” as opposed to “Non-OS/2.”

Conclusion

So if anyone out there reading this has any more technical information as to what, specifically, in this list fixed the problem I was having, I (as well as a great many other people) would greatly appreciate some elaboration. I’d also found that people all over the net have been having this same problem – with no resolution to speak of.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got.

Read a book. It’s good for you.

Update As Of 3/28/2009

I spoke too soon. This worked for a few days, but my iTunes is back to being choppy. This is insanely frustrating. And there’s no help from Apple on this.

Update As Of 4/2/2009

Ok, so I fiddled with some more BIOS settings and the choppy audio is gone again. I set “HD Audio” to “Disabled,” along with a few other things. Turned all the Spread Spectrum settings back on. So apparently they didn’t have anything to do with this problem.

So far, so good. No choppy audio.

I don’t know what’s going on, but this is driving me up a wall. If the audio gets choppy again, I think I’m going to lose it. Maybe the only way to fix this problem is to continually fiddle with BIOS settings?

Another thing that helps is to restart the computer when the audio starts getting choppy. I don’t know if that says anything about what’s wrong?

Update As Of 6/6/2009

Simply restarting the computer when the audio becomes choppy seems to work. Maybe scratch all that other stuff??