[owenhan]

Music played in iTunes stutters and skips when there's any kind of mild computer activity like opening chrome or clicking a link. foobar seems to be fine. I thought it might be because I'm connected to my dac through usb but if foobar works alright then it should be ok :/

e4300, 2gb ram, running Win7 ultimate 32bit.

*edit* It may actually be happening in foobar as well, I heard a very subtle pop once which wasn't there when I double checked, but since then I've had my computer basically freeze on me while foobar continued to play seamlessly so I'm not so sure.

 

[Jaska]

In my experience with iTunes under Windows, the most likely cause for stuttering/skipping during playback is the constant monitoring of files by virus scanning software. If you use antivirus software with real-time scanning, I would suggest checking to see if you can set any exclusions by file type, and add the exclusion(s) as appropriate (e.g. .m4a, .mp3, etc.).

 

[TheWuss]

real time scanning is part of the problem, no doubt.
the other problem is that itunes is a memory HOG!!!!

 

[d3adeyes]

you need more RAM to really get things running right the talk that win7 uses less memory isn't exactly true, yes it does use somewhat less but not really enough to make a big difference, your processor doesn't have breakneck speeds so 1 way to overcome some of the lag is to have more memory and a larger page file to "help" it out. But to really see a difference you need to close as many programs running in the background and turn off services, there are so many running that even a "superfast" PC will have bogging, Win7 isn't quite as bloated as Vista but still has too much junk running. The best bet would be if you had an older computer that you could put Linux on and run it as a music server, but that is just an option most don't have