Q: Shuffle cuts off ending to certain podcasts, not others

I also have this problem ... have had it for months.  the podcast downloads in full, and I can hear it completely in iTunes, but from the 4th gen iPod many get the front and/or back trimmed by a few seconds.  The change from iTunes 10 to 11 didn't make any difference.

I'm having this problem too.  It's happening for all podcasts and audiobooks.  Reloading the clips doesn't make any difference.  And, like the others, the end of the clip is just fine when I listen to it with some other audio app.

Just adding in my 2 cents - this happens to me as well & is very disappointing. It's especially so with mp3 audiobooks since it generally skips something you'd really want to know before another chapter starts. Some of the books on my library's service are also available as DRM WMA files & while that's annoying for other reasons, these can be imported onto my shuffle and don't skip.

I too have this problem and have been checking periodically for some sort of answer (or just an explanation).  Today I found this, which has a good discussion but no followup to indicate whether there was an actual fix (or workaround).  Perhaps someone here who understands the technical side of this can comment??  Thanks.

http://superuser.com/questions/914505/disable-gapless-playback-of-mp3-audiobooks -on-ipod-shuffle