[ARSCLIST] Soundcard/iTunes phollies

[Tom Fine <tflists@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This post may be of help to a Windows user having playback problems with iTunes. I swapped in a 
M-Audio Delta 2496 card to replace on-motherboard junko-sound in a computer and a strange problem 
resulted. Playback of MP3 or MPEG or whatever in Windows Media Player was just fine. Likewise for 
RealPlayer and other assorted playback software except for iTunes/Quicktime. Sound would be chopped 
and full of dropouts. Apple's website was marginally helpful, at least it gave me a clue where to 
look. After going through Apple's checklist of things to "fix" and coming up empty -- including 
updating to latest M-Audio driver and DirectX software -- I noticed their instructions for the older 
versions of Quicktime involved tweaking the hardware buffer. I checked out the M-Audio controls and 
noticed that by default they are set for small-size buffer and thus low latency (since the 
presumption is that they'd be used for recording or as part of a small Protools rig). I increased 
the buffer size to 1024 samples from 256 and the problem went away. Apparently, iTunes/Quicktime is 
such a resource hog that it needs more data-caching than any other media player on this computer.

This cure might not work in all cases or with all cards but I figured I'd share. I think most 
soundcards have a place either in their control panel or in their device driver panel to set latency 
and/or buffer. I must also add that the M-Audio card -- bought as B-stock from BSW for $70 -- sounds 
far better than the Intel on-motherboard sound chip.

-- Tom Fine