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Apple Music downloaded songs skipping like a scratched CD

I have a fairly large music library that I've been building for years, and it's all downloaded to my Mac Mini. It's a mix of music bought from the iTunes store and ripped from CDs, and I haven't been having any issues with it until I subscribed to Apple Music a little over a week ago.


Since I subscribed to Apple Music, a seemingly random collection of songs have started skipping/jumping during playback. Over the past day or so I started trying to pay more attention to which songs this happened to and most (maybe all, not sure) are songs that I had previously purchased from the iTunes store before subscribing to Apple Music.


The behavior is as follows: the song plays perfectly fine right up until about 5 seconds left, when it skips/jumps a few beats ahead and then the last half a second or so is completely silent. The length of the song doesn't change, it just cuts out a chunk of it towards the end, which in many of the songs is VERY noticeable.


As mentioned previously, all of my songs are downloaded to my Mac Mini so it's not an issue with internet connection, and I haven't noticed the issue happening on my iPhone where the songs are also downloaded to the device. Redownloading the effected songs also doesn't fix the issue.


TL;DR: Since subbing to Apple Music, downloaded songs are skipping at the end. pls help

Mac mini, macOS 11.4

Posted on Jun 24, 2021 2:35 PM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jun 25, 2021 4:03 PM

Hi Sterling R,


Thank you for the response!


I do not have lossless audio enabled. I tested it in safe mode and the skipping still happened while in safe mode as well as after restarting normally.


When I was looking for the lossless audio setting, I noticed that I had the Dolby Atmos setting set to Automatic. Since I don't have a setup that's compatible with Dolby Atmos (my main speakers are Logitech Z200s plugged into a SteelSeries Arctis 7 dongle), I disabled it (after testing in safe mode) and the skipping appears to have disappeared. I've been playing music for about half an hour and haven't heard any skipping, and I even rewound to a song that skipped before turning Atmos off and it didn't skip after disabling it.


I'll update again if I hear any more skipping, but it looks like the issue is with Dolby Atmos, or at least the "Automatic" Dolby Atmos playback setting.


Thank you very much!

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3 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jun 25, 2021 4:03 PM in response to sterling r

Hi Sterling R,


Thank you for the response!


I do not have lossless audio enabled. I tested it in safe mode and the skipping still happened while in safe mode as well as after restarting normally.


When I was looking for the lossless audio setting, I noticed that I had the Dolby Atmos setting set to Automatic. Since I don't have a setup that's compatible with Dolby Atmos (my main speakers are Logitech Z200s plugged into a SteelSeries Arctis 7 dongle), I disabled it (after testing in safe mode) and the skipping appears to have disappeared. I've been playing music for about half an hour and haven't heard any skipping, and I even rewound to a song that skipped before turning Atmos off and it didn't skip after disabling it.


I'll update again if I hear any more skipping, but it looks like the issue is with Dolby Atmos, or at least the "Automatic" Dolby Atmos playback setting.


Thank you very much!

Jun 25, 2021 3:10 PM in response to AppleUser-Matt

Hello AppleUser-Matt,


Thanks for posting in Apple Support Communities!


We see that most of your music purchased from iTunes is skipping at the end since subscribing to Apple Music on your Mac.

We’d be happy to help you!


Is this happening with lossless audio? You can refer to About lossless audio in Apple Music for more information on the audio types.


We’d recommend testing the issue in a safe mode since its only happening on your Mac after redownloading the songs. You can follow the steps in How to use safe mode on your Mac.


Take care.

Apple Music downloaded songs skipping like a scratched CD

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