Q: After upgrading to iTunes 7, my audio playback for everything in iTunes sounds garbled and is riddled with distortion and static, especially when I’m multitasking. It was never this way on previous versions of iTunes. How can I fix this?
– Kelly
A: First and foremost, don’t worry – your library’s contents have not been corrupted by the upgrade.
The problem, rather, is a bug in iTunes’ software. Many Windows users have reported a startling amount of major bugs since iTunes 7’s release, including the sound distortion you mentioned, CoverFlow rendering problems, a memory leak, album art issues, and more.
At this point, the best recommendation we have is to be patient, and realize that Apple is undoubtedly working on iTunes 7.0.1 as fast as they can, and that most of these major bugs are surely on the top of their to-do list.
For what it’s worth, several users are reporting that the following procedure helps with the audio distortion problem. Some report no change, but the procedure is worth a try:
Open your computer’s Control Panel, and find the QuickTime Control Panel. In the “Audio” tab, try the following changes:
Change audio settings to 44.1 kHz and 16 bit resolution, and, if necessary, check the “Safe Mode” box.