I recently upgraded the software in my music server and found that
rather than improve my system, it was degraded.
I upgraded to iTunes 7.6.2 and a newer quicktime so that I could
download 256 kbps AACs from the itunes store.
Every so often I would hear a glitch in the stream but dismissed it as
some sort of bug that I need to work on finding at some point.
The other day, though, I decided to run Densen Demagic CD to clear my
system of any residual magnetism in the audio path. I have the Demagic
CD ripped losslessy to my itunes library and played that. I hit the
play button and left the room as it sounds quite annoying. during its
playback I noticed some distortion that I never heard before. I
investigated further and found that the distortion was there even at
low volumes.
Did I damage the preamp section of my amplifier? To find out I took
the original Demagic CD and played it in my DVD player. It sounded
fine, just as it always had.
It turns out that the itunes upgrade degraded my music server. It is
not so much the fault of itunes, more of the ever same issue where
bigger software needs bigger, or faster, hardware.
My upgraded iTunes server is runnning on a lowly Macintosh G3 at 350
Mhz and I found that the system requirements of iTunes 7.6.1 specify a
G3 with 500 Mhz or greater.
The degradation is not very apparent with regular music but became
dramatically so when playing a test tone at near peak amplitude.
Time to upgrade the hardware.
Just a word to the wise.
CD
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