marco, were you able to make it to the genius bar?
I had a not entirely satisfying visit just this evening. Though they did find a solution, they could not really explain it. It may help you and others so I'll post what was suggested as a solution. Perhaps you could try what worked and let us know if it solves your problem as well.
The girl I was speaking with suggested that the artifact was the software misinterpreting information between the cuts. It was only a theory. She had not heard of any other incidents to relay. First she suggested I rip as MP3's. I explained that wasn't an option for me. She listened to a few cuts on a CD I'd brought with, or rather the ends of the cuts and confirmed there was a problem with the rip. She went through my settings, and asked if I'd tried it with Error Correction turned off. I explained I hadn't and that I preferred to use it. She suggested attempting to rip one of the cuts with it turned off just to see how it did. We did that and no artifact was there. So her 'solution' was to either leave error-correction turned off always, or turn it off for those problem CD's that produce the artifact (I'd estimate about 5% do on my laptop). This did not explain why it was doing it, nor why my g5 tower, which is running a carbon-copied system with all the same iTunes settings, does not produce the artifact with Error-Correction turned on.
In my case I have been experiencing the problems ripping to the internal (startup drive) on the laptop, as well as to an external (USB) drive.
Marco
