iTunes Ripping - Strange Digital Artifacts


I've tried a few variations on archive searches and wasn't able to find an answer to this: In ripping some of my CD's into iTunes (either Apple Lossless or WAV) I've been getting some very odd, brief digital artifacts at the end of each songs on a CD. This sounds like two or three seconds of an audio tape on fast forward. It only seems to happen on new releases (I cannot think of any older CD's it's occurred on). I just got a copy of Mary Gauthier's new album (great CD by the way) and it happened on that one. I tried ripping it multiple times in Apple Lossless, and WAV (always in iTunes) and each and every time it created files where this strange artifact existed at the end of every song. I play the CD I ripped the files from and the artifact is not there. Is this some kind of anti-piracy technology...or do I simply have some setting off in my itunes preferences (Error-Correction is on, WAV or Apple Lossless is always set to Automatic, have experimented with importing to startup disk and external disk-same results). The artifacts seem to always sound the same too...they never vary, except that they sound different from song-to-song, but the same if say, the first cut is played over again.

Anyone have any clues what this might be?

Marco
jax2
I use an Apple. Either a G5 tower (2.7ghz duo) or an ibook laptop. I mostly rip files on my laptop. I actually haven't given the tower a try on the CD's in question as I mostly use that for work. I'll give that a try just for curiosity.

Marco
Have you tried AIFF format? I've never ripped to WAV only Apple Lossless and AIFF and have never heard any digital artifacts that you've described.
No, I've never tried AIFF...only WAV and Lossless. I'll give that a try to see if the results are any different.

Marco
OK, I think I've isolated it to my laptop. I took the same Mary Gauthier CD and ripped it on my G5 tower. No artifacts. That was as a WAV file. So what's going on with my laptop (g4 1.42ghz iBook)? The settings are identical. Plenty of RAM. iTunes and system updates are all current. Hard drive has plenty of space to run. Perhaps a trip to the Genius Bar is in order! Order up another round of Mensa Ice Tea from the good folks at Apple. Any further input would be great - has anyone else experienced this?