iPod classic 160GB skipping songs

As I stated earlier, my problem was the 160 starting and playing part of a song, then skipping ahead. I think I have a remedy. So far anyway. It appeared that the song in the "Library" and in any "Playlists" was affected.

Go to the main "Music Library" and click on the faulty file. Right click it and "convert to mp3." When this is completed, delete the old file. This will delete it from the "Playlist," so you will have to reinsert it later.

Next, while still in the "Music Library," click on the new file and again right click it and "convert ID3 tags." Check "reverse unicode" and click OK. While the file is still selected, go to "Edit" and "copy" the file.

Go to the "Playlist" if it is on one or more and "paste" it. You can then move it to whatever position you want.

Hook up your iPod and "sync" the files. This has been working for me for 2 days. I didn't want to say anything until it appeared to actually work. Hope this helps the rest of you. A shame we pay good money for something and get no professional assistance.

Not sure if this will help you because my problem is constant. When I try to replay the song, it skips at the exact same spot all the time:

As I stated earlier, my problem was the 160 starting and playing part of a song, then skipping ahead. I think I have a remedy. So far anyway. It appeared that the song in the "Library" and in any "Playlists" was affected.

Go to the main "Music Library" and click on the faulty file. Right click it and "convert to mp3." When this is completed, delete the old file. This will delete it from the "Playlist," so you will have to reinsert it later.

Next, while still in the "Music Library," click on the new file and again right click it and "convert ID3 tags." Check "reverse unicode" and click OK. While the file is still selected, go to "Edit" and "copy" the file.

Go to the "Playlist" if it is on one or more and "paste" it. You can then move it to whatever position you want.

Hook up your iPod and "sync" the files. This has been working for me for 2 days. I didn't want to say anything until it appeared to actually work. Hope this helps the rest of you. A shame we pay good money for something and get no professional assistance.

Your solution helped, but didn't remedy my problem. I had to add an extra step:

As I stated earlier, my problem was the 160 starting and playing part of a song, then skipping ahead. I think I have a remedy. So far anyway. It appeared that the song in the "Library" and in any "Playlists" was affected.

Go to the main "Music Library" and click on the faulty file. Right click it and "convert to mp3." When this is completed, delete the old file. This will delete it from the "Playlist," so you will have to reinsert it later.

Next, while still in the "Music Library," click on the new file and again right click it and "convert ID3 tags." Check "reverse unicode" and click OK. While the file is still selected, go to "Edit" and "copy" the file.

Go to the "Playlist" if it is on one or more and "paste" it. You can then move it to whatever position you want.

Hook up your iPod and "sync" the files. This has been working for me for 2 days. I didn't want to say anything until it appeared to actually work. Hope this helps the rest of you. A shame we pay good money for something and get no professional assistance.

I only have this problem one one track.

Its a BBC radio show downloaded and then encoded as MP3 using Audacity. This program used the LAME mp3 encoder.

Could this be the cause of the skipping files problem. If I play the file in OS10 using the finder the whole track plays, but itunes will skip to the end 3/4 the way through.

I'll throw my hat into the ring here too...I've run into this problem with 6 or 7 songs so far on my new 80gb Classic - I'll get about 15-30 seconds into the song and then it will inexplicably move on to the next one. EXTREMELY annoying. Hopefully this gets addressed in a firmware update...soon.

The following has worked for me. I pull up the song in question in iTunes, right click and "convert selection to mp3." When it finishes, I delete the original song, then right click on the new version and "convert ID3 tags." I check "reverse unicode" and the "OK." The problem is that you only know what songs are bad when you run across them. I hope they get this fixed soon.

Yeah, your solution may work, but it's unfortunately not quite the sort of solution that one would like with this many songs...thanks for the tip, though.

having them all and a few extra

I agree with you. To me the real problem is paying as much as we do for a product that has no manufacturers tech support to fix it.

I don't know. I still maintain my hypothesis that it is a hardware (most likely hard disk) failure. It does fit with the solution of recoding the song (since that will cause it to use a different place on the disk). I think repair or exchange is needed to fix the problem, not a firmware update.

Listening to harry potter audio books - it frequently jumps/skips chapters - despite the fact that they are set up with tracknumbers and even in a playlist in the correct order - add the same playlist and tracks to a previous generation ipod and it does not happen - one assumes that this is an issue specific to the Classic

I am about to try your solution to this annoying problem. I just exchanged my 80g and it is doing the same skipping. How do you make a duplicate folder for your itunes? and also explain how to add that library back to itunes like you explained towards the end? Thanks for having patience with me.

From my experience, disk failure doesn't seem likely. For example, I've had a song skip, consistently in the same spot. I've done a variety of things with the file, including renaming, deleting from the library, deleting from pc, restoring to pc, restoring to itunes, etc. I've reloaded the file on to the ipod in a different "orders" as well. If unchaged, the file/song still skips in the exact same spot in the song. I think it's unlikely that the song, through all of these methods, is being assigned to the exact same spot on the ipod.

This seems like an issue with the original rip of the song...and the iPods handling of minor errors in mp3 files. My old sony HD3 played everything fine, so the iPod/software seems to be more sensitive.

With the ipod, all of my issues have been with songs ripped using real player. I have not had any issues with songs ripped with itunes. Has anyone experienced the skipping issue with songs created in itunes?

Since this is a file/original rip issue, it seems the file needs to be re-ripped, or the "convert to mp3" option noted above has worked for me as well. I haven't had to covert the ID3 tags though.

Finding the bad songs is another issue...does anyone know of a file checker that would be able to identify issues in the file library?

You don't make a copy of your Library. What I was saying is that after saving as mp3 and changing the ID tags, if the song is also in a playlist, you have to copy the song in question and go to the playlist, delete the version that is there and then paste the new version in the playlist.

Let’s get the record perfectly straight here.

I have two iPods,
• The iPod Classic Model A1238 - MB150LL, Firmware V1.0.2 PC and
• The older iPod 80G Model A1136 - MA450LL, Firmware V1.2.1, (the one with the shiny glossy face).

Both use Windows File Format.

The new iPod Classic skips when playing WAV and other lossless file formats, but its predecessor does not.

I installed iTunes on a clean PC and loaded about 20G of the exact same lossless music on both iPods.

The older 80G iPod does not skip. In fact, it has never skipped in the 6 months I’ve had it.

The new iPod Classic 160G skips on a lot of songs. In fact, it skips in exactly the same place every time I play the song.

I took the iPod classic back to Apple and they replaced it. The new iPod Classic 160G does exactly the same thing. The songs skip in exactly the same place.

So, it is definitely firmware related.

One final note.

Question, if I recommended to you a set of what I called “high quality” stereo speakers that had as one of its characteristics an 8 to 10% distortion factor, would you buy them? Of course not! You’d look at me as if I were nuts. 10%? That’s one tenth of the music.
Yet, so many people adopt the MP3 format which has as one of its characteristics an 8 to 10% distortion factor…at the highest possible bit rate.

That’s why we have 160 gig on an iPod. And, that’s why audiophile music lovers use Apple lossless.