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Posted By: andycap Importing music into iTunes - 05/19/13 09:35 AM
It's a while since I've imported a CD into iTunes but I did just now and I cannot get iTunes 11 to play the CD while it's being imported. There used to be a tick box to do so in the Preferences Advanced tab but I can't find one in iTunes 11. Does anyone know how to do it?
Posted By: jchuzi Re: Importing music into iTunes - 05/19/13 11:33 AM
I haven't actually done this, but I looked through iTunes preferences and found something that might do it for you. Select the General tab and look at the options under When You Insert A CD.
Posted By: dkmarsh Re: Importing music into iTunes - 05/19/13 02:51 PM

It appears to have become a "hidden preference" in later versions of iTunes. Using the Terminal command

defaults write com.apple.iTunes play-songs-while-importing -bool TRUE

worked to restore this pref at some point, although cursory googling indicates that that may no longer be the case. (I'm unable to test the command myself because my current setup doesn't include an optical drive.)

If you're disinclined to try the Terminal approach, Doug Adams has an AppleScript script available—Change Hidden iTunes Preferences—which numbers among its invocable prefs "Play songs while importing or converting." This script carries the following note: This script has not been updated for iTunes 11. Several settings* are no longer applicable in iTunes 11, but the preference in question is not marked as one of them.

My guess is that the script is just a front-end to the Terminal command anyway, so it might be more straightforward to use Terminal directly. In that case, you'd run the command with iTunes not running; it probably wouldn't be a bad idea to restart, as well, since some pref changes don't seem to "take" if you're only relaunching the app.
Posted By: andycap Re: Importing music into iTunes - 05/20/13 07:06 AM
Di, I tried both your Terminal command and Doug's Change Hidden iTunes Preferences script but neither did the trick. It must a preference that Apple tossed because they think no one uses CDs any more.

Jon, there's nothing in the General tab options when inserting a CD that enables it either.

It takes only minutes to import a CD anyway but I do like to listen while it's happening so that I know that it is! Thank you both for your suggestions.

Andy
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