Horrid Sound In Between Songs

[Unix_Beard]

I have TivoHD streaming iTunes wirelessly from an iMac running Leopard. Whenever the track changes, it makes a horrendous sound - like a 1-2 second very loud tone (like a song sped up 10x). I should note that the TivoHD is wired into the network and the Mac is wireless. I should also note that this set up worked fine for a year or so.

Its pretty much unusable now. Coupled with the other issues with home media and Macs, I'd not recommend a Tivo for home media purposes any longer. Time for an Apple TV for me - I can hopefully listen to music again and get HD films on demand.

[jalex000]

The sound you're hearing is likely the Tivo attempting to play back embedded non-audio data in your song. If you identify a song that consistently screeches at your, I'll bet it has album art embedded in it. Try deleting the album art and see if the problem goes away. Not a very appealing solution, I know, but the only other solution is for Tivo to modify their mp3 playback library.

[steve614]

I'm trying this now.
TivoHD with Windows XP SP2 wired network.


I heard 'noises' before the 1st song played, thought something was awry, then the song started.

First song over, heard 'noises' again, next song played.

Music has no album art associated with it.

Edit: Now having problems accessing music. Some songs work and others bring up a screen stating something about possible network problems or the server being busy.
S2 having issues, too.
Going to try deleting, then republishing in TivoDesktop.

[steve614]

Deleting and republishing didn't do anything.

Something else I noticed.
Songs that worked showed info (album, song, duration, etc.).
Songs that don't work show 'unknown' in all categories.

Even though I don't use this feature often, I want to figure this out.

[jalex000]

I would say that still points to having the metadata embedded in the file in a way that the Tivo mp3 decoder does not understand, just not the album art in this case (I find that inserting album art makes the majority of my files screech or skip in the beginning).

In your case, I would use "Get Info" under the File menu on a track that does display as expected and a track that does not work. Look for the ID3 Tag field on the summary tab: this tells you the tag version number. If they are different, on the bad track, try using the "Convert ID3 Tags" item under the Advanced menu: change the ID3 tag version to match the good track.

[steve614]

Okay, I've looked through my playlist, and I'm seeing ID3 tags v2.2 and v2.3.
The songs that have no problem are v2.2.

I 'selected all' and initiated a 'convert ID3 tags' which seemed to do something (at least a 'working' status bar popped up), however after that was done, I went back to info and songs with v2.3 still showed as v2.3.

Do I have to do something different to get the v2.3 songs to convert to v2.2?

I'm afraid to go the other way around for fear that NONE of my songs will work.

Edit: I've also noticed that songs with ID3 tag v2.2 are 'encoded' with iTunes v6.0.4.2, while songs with ID3 tag v2.3 show they are encoded with iTunes v4.7.1.30.

You would think it'd be the other way around. :confused:

[jalex000]

I've never seen iTunes fail to convert tags - perhaps your files are corrupted? The only thing I can suggest short of re-ripping the songs in question is to try the "Convert Selection to MP3" entry in the Advanced menu. If it works, it should produce a copy with clean id3v2.2 tags which you can then test with the Tivo.

In any case, I wouldn't try any remedy on larges chunks of your iTunes library - just experiment with a track or two until you have a working solution.