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iPhone playback - skipping/blank spots

Hi folks, I have a horrible feeling that my iPhone (the iPod element, at least) may be suffering some form of 'terminal' issue but I'm hoping someone may be able to prove me wrong.

I've had the phone for 14 months, running fine and using the iPod on a regular basis - but in the last 2 weeks I've encountered what I can best describe as 'glitches' in the audio playback.

These glitches involve either:

(1) The sound suddenly cutting out, but the time bar continues to progress and the sound will then come back in later in the track.

or

(2) The sound 'skips' and jumps forward several times in quick succession - like someone using the FF button on a CD - this will happen a few times, then playback will be fine.


In both cases the following should be noted:

- If I skip back to the start of the track the same result happens at the same point each time
- The corresponding tracks play without a problem in iTunes on my PC, and if loaded onto my Shuffle or old Classic
- This happens both on tracks burned from my own CD collection, and on podcasts/tracks downloaded from iTunes
- If I clear my phone's audio content, then resync it with a bunch of stuff including the same track, then that track will be ok, but otehrs may experience issues.

All of this leads me to believe that there's some sort of hardware issue (best comparison I can think of is damaged blocks/sectors on a hard drive?)

Other interesting/relevant(?) notes:

- On one occasion album artwork for the track in question was also corrupted (artwork appeared to be made up of two different artwork files, 'tiled' in quarters)
- The issue began not long after I upgraded (clean install) from Win XP to Win 7 on my PC, but I suspect this is coincidence. The music library is stored on a separate drive, and was not touched during the process.
- I have carried out a full factory reset and backup restore on the phone since encountering the issue


So, does anyone have any rays of hope for me in resolving this, or am I looking at mothballing the iPod function on my phone until/unless I can replace it?

Message was edited by: flipsix3

PC, Windows 7, iPhone 3G - firmware 3.1.3 (7E18)

Posted on Apr 20, 2010 1:25 AM

Reply
82 replies

Jan 9, 2011 1:00 PM in response to flipsix3

Hi!
like people have said before, I too have this problem and am glad that it's not just me. I was going crazy!!
I have the exact same symptoms you all have, the noise, blank spots, skipping songs, corrupted album art...

I solved the problem by simply syncing through my old computer, which is running xp. it has zonealarm, and I never turned it off or changed the settings, so I doubt that this is the problem... (maybe only in some machines?)

However, I really want to sync with my laptop, since going to my old computer is troublesome...
I read in some place that adding extra usb ports via expresscard and syncing through them might work. has anyone tried that?

btw - I'm running vista 32bit

Mar 6, 2011 9:11 PM in response to flipsix3

I just got an iPhone 4. Same problem with the blank gaps. Know how to use iTunes and have had it before when I had my 2nd gen iPod nano. I never had the problem before. At that time my pc os was vista. It has been about 8 months running win7.

Since switching my os I had not installed iTunes until I got an iPhone 4 at the end of January. After I convert some music to iTunes and syncing it to my iPhone4 there was never a time there wasn't muted sections of certain songs. I even added some tracks to my iTunes library from cd not hard drive. I use the iPod app occasionally in my car. With so many tracks I didn't notice the problem till a few weeks ago.

I am running avg anti virus, spybot s&d and zone alarm firewall on win7 os. I have tried the solutions given by other users. The problem still exists.

Going to wait a few days or so and try it again. If any solution actually works this time I will let you all know. I don't think that trying it all over again will work but with updates who knows what will happen.

Jun 29, 2011 7:23 AM in response to flipsix3

I too started getting the skip problem. Found a couple of other threads on the same subject. Got to this one eventually, and Lousk001's remedy has worked for me. For ages I didn't bother with installing Vista SP1. It meant I couldn't install a major update of Zone Alarm. I finally did the SP1 update, and installed the ZA update also. I realise now that the problem started at about that time. So, switching off ZA, syncing with "no music", then syncing to put music back on has solved it. At least I only had a couple of weeks of it.

iPhone playback - skipping/blank spots

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