Hi,
Please excuse the wall of text, but it’s important to clarify the nightmare I’ve been going through for years. Because, yes, I’ve been having this problem since years ago.
It turns out that the playback of some songs on my iPod stops near the end (the timestamp is relative, sometimes it happens closer to the middle of the song, sometimes just 10 seconds before the end, etc.) It’s like the playback got stuck or frozen at certain timestamp, and after a few seconds where nothing happens, it jumps to the next track.
I used to have this problem on iTunes too. I think it was a bug that was introduced in certain version but now it’s solved. This bug would make that all new mp3 files added to the library would experience the problem mentioned before. The funny thing is that this only happened with mp3 files. If I added songs in mp4 (AAC), those would play normally. In fact, if I converted the mp3 songs that were getting cut at the end, to AAC in iTunes, then those would play normally too.
This problem was extended to my iPod Video (5.5G, with the 30 GB hard drive replaced for a 128 GB flash card)*, which was synced to the same library. Therefore the same songs that showed this problem in iTunes were behaving equally on my iPod.
What was actually happening behind iTunes remains a mystery (at least to me) until this day. Some threads showed up on Apple Support Communities, and from what I remember there were some people theorizing about something related to the metadata that iTunes collects, creating wrong attributes for the recently added mp3 files (something regarding gapless playback). It’s something that I think it kind of makes sense, specially considering that the same problem appeared on my iPod, to which iTunes transfers not only the actual songs, but also all the metadata from those and the iTunes library file.
Today the problem is solved, at least on iTunes. However, it still remains on my iPod, despite the fact that the same songs that get cut on my portable device play flawlessly on iTunes. It’s the same old story: songs freeze or stop playing near the end, they get stuck for a few seconds, then jump to the next track. But, then again, if I convert those songs in iTunes to AAC, they will be ok on my iPod.
The only thing I can do at this point as a workaround is, every time I add new albums or discographies in mp3 to iTunes, converting them to AAC, which means not only a loss of fidelity but also of time.
This is everything I’ve done until this moment:
Ideas?
*I know people sometimes is reluctant to give advice because you just opened up your device to have a look at it, saying the classic “oh sorry but you are no longer using the official hardware, we can’t guarantee anything, something something violating the warranty, we can’t help you”. Please keep your mind open. This is exactly the same as using the stock hard drive, even if you have a flash card instead, the iPod behaves exactly the same. In fact, I used my iPod flawlessly for YEARS before experiencing this problem when iTunes messed up everything.
Please excuse the wall of text, but it’s important to clarify the nightmare I’ve been going through for years. Because, yes, I’ve been having this problem since years ago.
It turns out that the playback of some songs on my iPod stops near the end (the timestamp is relative, sometimes it happens closer to the middle of the song, sometimes just 10 seconds before the end, etc.) It’s like the playback got stuck or frozen at certain timestamp, and after a few seconds where nothing happens, it jumps to the next track.
I used to have this problem on iTunes too. I think it was a bug that was introduced in certain version but now it’s solved. This bug would make that all new mp3 files added to the library would experience the problem mentioned before. The funny thing is that this only happened with mp3 files. If I added songs in mp4 (AAC), those would play normally. In fact, if I converted the mp3 songs that were getting cut at the end, to AAC in iTunes, then those would play normally too.
This problem was extended to my iPod Video (5.5G, with the 30 GB hard drive replaced for a 128 GB flash card)*, which was synced to the same library. Therefore the same songs that showed this problem in iTunes were behaving equally on my iPod.
What was actually happening behind iTunes remains a mystery (at least to me) until this day. Some threads showed up on Apple Support Communities, and from what I remember there were some people theorizing about something related to the metadata that iTunes collects, creating wrong attributes for the recently added mp3 files (something regarding gapless playback). It’s something that I think it kind of makes sense, specially considering that the same problem appeared on my iPod, to which iTunes transfers not only the actual songs, but also all the metadata from those and the iTunes library file.
Today the problem is solved, at least on iTunes. However, it still remains on my iPod, despite the fact that the same songs that get cut on my portable device play flawlessly on iTunes. It’s the same old story: songs freeze or stop playing near the end, they get stuck for a few seconds, then jump to the next track. But, then again, if I convert those songs in iTunes to AAC, they will be ok on my iPod.
The only thing I can do at this point as a workaround is, every time I add new albums or discographies in mp3 to iTunes, converting them to AAC, which means not only a loss of fidelity but also of time.
This is everything I’ve done until this moment:
- Update iTunes to the last version
- Update the iPod firmware to the latest version
- Restore the iPod firmware
- Extract the memory card from the iPod, insert it in a memory reader and format it with Disk Utility
- Rebuild the iTunes library (https://www.kirkville.com/how-to-rebuild-your-itunes-library/), which even meant losing some metadata like album covers and having to get them again
Ideas?
*I know people sometimes is reluctant to give advice because you just opened up your device to have a look at it, saying the classic “oh sorry but you are no longer using the official hardware, we can’t guarantee anything, something something violating the warranty, we can’t help you”. Please keep your mind open. This is exactly the same as using the stock hard drive, even if you have a flash card instead, the iPod behaves exactly the same. In fact, I used my iPod flawlessly for YEARS before experiencing this problem when iTunes messed up everything.