-------- Original Message --------
Subject: iPod song halting problem
Date: Sat, 17 Sep 2005 01:34:40 -0400
From: Steve 

After a fruitless search thru Apple's site (the bastards), I found 
nothing on this problem until I stumbled upon your website.  Thanks for 
posting this!  I haven't yet found anyplace else describing this exact 
problem.  Well I then did some experimenting, and have come to the 
conclusion that the problem lies in the iPod's song decoder.   Sorry for 
the long explanation, bear with me, but here's what I tried:

I have a 20GB ipod, 3.1 firmware, and I'm using a desktop G4 powermac 
with OS X 10.3.9.  I use the firewire connection.
The symptoms I get are identical to what you describe, so I also 
concluded it has nothing to do with the computer you're using, because 
all the references on your site seem to be using PCs, mine's a Mac.

Interestingly I not only have the problem with a song I ripped from a 
legit store-bought CD, but also with a song I bought/downloaded from the 
iTunes Music Store (the bastards).   I found that this downloaded song 
acually has at least 3 different time marks where the playback will 
stop/skip to the next song.   I found this by moving the song cursor 
during playback, past the point where it stopped, and found it kept 
playing, until it reached another consistent 'bad spot'.  So I found at 
least 3 consistent bad spots in this one song.

I have a different song that I initially bought/downloaded from the 
iTunes Music Store, which played just fine.  I liked the song, so I 
bought the CD, and ripped the whole thing into my iTunes music library 
(at the time I had iTunes 4.7.1).  I used the firewire connection to 
transfer all of them to my iPod.  So I accidentally ended up with 2 
copies in both the desktop lib and the iPod, of the song I originally 
downloaded.  The one I ripped stopped playback and skipped to the next 
song just as you've described.  They both had the same type of encoding 
(AAC 128), but they did have different file sizes (see below).  So I 
renamed the bad song on the iPod and in my music library, and tried 
re-ripping the song off the CD using iTunes with different encoding 
options, as follows:

Encoder            File Size          iTunes Version

AAC/128         4,662,611            4.7.1  (the bad one)
AAC/128         ~4,4MB               ----  (bought/downloaded)   *size 
is approx because I accidently deleted from my lib
AAC/128         4,072,970            4.9
MP3/192          6,058,404            4.9

(Note the big difference in size b/n the AAC/128 encoding with 4.7.1 
then 4.9 iTunes)

All of the newly encoded songs worked just fine.  I tried one other 
thing.  I took that downloaded song with the 3 bad spots, and renamed it 
on the iPod, then copied it again to the iPod from the desktop library.  
Sure  enough the problem's still there, in exactly the same spots in 
both files.  So I doubt it's a disk fragmentation problem.   After all 
this, and everything you and others have seen, I don't think it's a 
problem with the computer, or the encoders, or any of the firewire or 
USB interfaces, I'm convinced the issue is with the iPod's decoder.  The 
decoder/players on the computers all seem to work just fine, just the 
iPod seems to have the playback problem.

One other very odd thing.  For the song I did all those encoding 
experiments, remember I renamed the original bad song on the iPod, and 
also in the music lib.   I did that before doing any additional 
ripping/encoding/transfers.   Well after I transferred the other encoded 
versions to the iPod, even the original bad song played through.  I'm 
almost 100% sure I didn't screw up renaming the files, but I did mess up 
somewhere along the way and rip a song on top of the one I bought.   So 
I'm not ready to completely rule out the iPod decoder having a problem 
with the way a song gets written and fragmented on the iPod disk.

Thanks again.  There's a couple other things I may try, and I'll let you 
know if I learn anything new.
Steve Alves