iTunes on Windows

[iP5]

I'm really, really trying to give iTunes a chance. Been using it for the last two months to co-ordinate all my music as well as manage our two iOS devices. Generally I don't use the home desktop much and iTunes is now about 50% of the time spent.

My system is a powerful 8-core i7 with 16GB RAM running Win7-64bit and yet iTunes just lags and stalls. Even if I leave it running it feels like it enters a sleep state if unattended and I constantly have to wait on it to ramp up. What gives with that?

The next major peeve is that it's started to mark some of my music as having 0:00 time and so is not playable. I open the file directly and WMP has zero issues with playing the MP3's. This a known bug in iTunes?

 

[psylichon]

Regarding the first issue, I've noticed it myself only since updating my phone to iOS5 and using wifi sync. I'm pretty sure the wait state happens during handshaking with the phone over wifi. It's pretty terrible and something I hope they address soon.

The second issue sounds like a problem with the tags or perhaps a corrupt MP3. I've had many that play fine in WMP but don't work or skip in iTunes. There are a number of freeware tools out there for correcting tags and finding errors in MP3 files.

 

[iP5]

Regarding the first issue, I've noticed it myself only since updating my phone to iOS5 and using wifi sync. I'm pretty sure the wait state happens during handshaking with the phone over wifi. It's pretty terrible and something I hope they address soon.

The second issue sounds like a problem with the tags or perhaps a corrupt MP3. I've had many that play fine in WMP but don't work or skip in iTunes. There are a number of freeware tools out there for correcting tags and finding errors in MP3 files.

Thanks very much. Yeah, I've got both devices using the wifi sync. Not a rant, but the main reason I avoided iTunes till now was because of having to cable it. OK, will wait and hope for a fix too

Thanks for the pointer on the second. Will Google/inspect if that's at the root. I have been correcting the tags and that's when things started getting messed up.

 

[psylichon]

FWIW, now with iCloud backups and app management, I barely use iTunes at all. It used to be the center of my music media, homesharing to the rest of my house. But it is too picky with tags, too sensitive to file errors, and the inability to browse by folders has always been a drag for me. So now I use XBMC for all my media playback. I don't even bother keeping my iTunes library updated and organized any more. I just drag and drop directly to my device from an explorer window.