Showtime? Not So Much
So, Steve did his thing today and released a bunch of fancy new products. Like usual, I followed as much of the presentation live on macrumors.com as I was awake for, eagerly awaiting a new wide screen iPod for me to waste my savings on. While that never came, we did get a bunch of cool new items. A new iPod there is, but my favourite item was iTunes 7, primarily the new iPod integration and album art. As soon as the presentation (note I’m not saying keynote…) was over I quickly jetted over to iTunes.com to download and install it… This is the tale of my journey…
It began with me downloading iTunes 7. At the time it was still labeled 6, but I downloaded it anyways, thinking that the new install file may be located on the server, but the pages had just not been updated yet. I was right. I promptly installed it once the download completed. I was greeted with, for the first time, a prompt to restart my computer to complete the installation (keep in mind this is my windows computer, where the only thing it does is play music, my iBook always wants to restart after a software update). So, I restart it, not wanting to screw up the install by going against the mighty blue apple. I wait, the computer slowly closes all my programs, shuts down, POSTs, asks me to load Vista or “Legacy Windows”. Windows XP starts to boot, I go make a cup of coffee (literally, but to be fair it had already percolated), and come back to a booted Windows XP.
I of course shove everything else aside and load iTunes.. oh wait, GAIM hasn’t loaded yet. Ok, that’s out of the way, now iTunes loads. I go through the license agreement (no, I didn’t actually read it), anxiously click next a few times, and bam, there’s iTunes 7. I had to sit back for a moment to take it in, everything looked so, different. My iPod was charging, so naturally iTunes 7 opened up the iPod section first, telling me it was up to date and full (6GB Mini, what do you expect). It instantly started analyzing my music for gap-less playback (a new feature of the new iPods, great for Trance addicts like me). For the first time I then signed into my Apple ID via iTunes so that iTunes could automatically grab all my album art for me. I got that running, and decided to listen to my favourite song of the week, Boston by Augustana. Well, what is this, it sounds distorted, loud and muffled. I figure maybe it’s because my old PC is using so much processing power to analyze all 6000 songs, so I leave it to finish and go get ready for work. Once it’s finished I come back, restart my PC, and try again, still sounds horrid. Well I can’t worry now, so I head off to work, where I can blab about the new products all day.
After work, wings and beer, I get home to the same gross sound, I decide to check over the iTunes settings. Nope, everything is A-OK. I check my computers audio settings, nothing has changed. I even play an MP3 using Media Player Classic, sounds great as normal. Next up, I reinstall iTunes. No change at all. At that point I had already installed iTunes 7 on my iBook, so while typing this I start it up and get it playing my shared library, the same MP3 files that are distorted on my desktop are sounding great on my iBook, go figure. I had already thought to turn to google, even though I know it doesn’t index that fast, and sure enough it turned up nothing. One last hope, I uninstalled iTunes and Quicktime and tried again from scratch, no avail. Getting frustrated and tired, I began to wonder if iTunes 7 just doesn’t like my Soundstorm audio. I think I’ve given up for the night now, time to watch Stargate, maybe even Steve’s presentation, if I can forgive him… wait, of course I can.
Please, if anyone else is having this issue, comment below, lets figure it out…