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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

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82 replies

May 6, 2010 12:25 PM in response to flipsix3

I should note that I had to resync all my music (to get rid of the ones with gaps) and it took several days of listening to be confident the gaps were all gone.

Re: contacts. Didn't see them affected on mine, but I didn't pay much attention at the time. The phone was new. What application are you syncing them with on the PC?

May 6, 2010 12:50 PM in response to larzbg

Solved the contacts thing - for some reason when I went to compatibility mode it suddenly decided to sync with the new Windows Contacts folder - which only had a few of my contacts in for some reason. Previously all of the other contacts had been retained on the phone, but the post-compatibility sync cleared them all off and ony reloaded the ones that were in my actual Contacts folder. Bizarre

Anyway, fortunately I still had a copy of my old XP windows address book stashed - imported that into Windows Contacts and bingo.

So, that's sorted, now I'll have to try the Compatibility thing again and see how that goes in terms of the audio

May 18, 2010 11:14 AM in response to flipsix3

Well, it's been a few days running compatibility mode (including a complete clear-out of the audio content and a re-sync or two) - and it's still happening. I've also noticed some corruption on photos I sync - where one or two showed the top half of one pic, and the botom/middle of another, when browsing on the phone.

Beginning to think it's definitely a hardware issue :-/

May 19, 2010 1:04 AM in response to flipsix3

UPDATE

Seems the issue is wider than I originally thought (not simply related to audio). Update on position as things stand:

- Now running iTunes in XP SP3 compatibility mode
- 2 full reset/restore cycles on the iPhone since initiating compatibility mode
- Manually removed all audio/video/photo content and then resynced on at least two occasions

Audio problem continues as before, symptoms manifesting being any/all of the undernoted on a selection of files (but by no means all):

- Track will go silent, whilst scrubber bar continues to advance, sound then cuts back in and carries on at a later point in the file
- Track will sound like someone using scan-search button on a CD player (garbled and skipping back and forth)
- Track will play a section from later in the file, then return to where it was. When it then reaches the point of the segment that was played out of sequence it will immediately jump past it

(In the case of third point, the best way I can think to illustrate is that the audio track gets played as follows in terms of time: 00.00-1.01 then 2.04-2.08 then 1.02-2.03 then 2.09-end)

In addition to the audio issues I'm also noticing:

- Some album artwork will be corrupted, displaying the correct image but with 'blocks' of it out of place (kind of like the old block-slide puzzles)
- Some artwork displaying half of the image as a part of the correct artwork, and and half as a part of another unrelated image
- Some photos displaying corrupted, as per either of the artwork examples.

It is important to note that:

- Until phone is synced any corruption is consistent (play the same track 3 times and get the same jumps/skips/out-of-sequence blocks)
- All files play/display correctly on my PC, and audio is fine on iPod Shuffle
- Audio issues are across a mix of my own ripped CD/MP3 collection and tracks/podcasts downloaded through iTunes
- Deleting and resyncing can result in the track/image being ok, but another one being corrupted.


All of the above leads me to believe that the problem lies either in the hardware/os of the phone - or in the syncing process. As far as I can see the problem would appear to be something related to the digital data and the 'ordering' of how that data is used to construct the file/image?

May 21, 2010 6:19 AM in response to Zoiros

My latest attempt at a fix is a factory restore and setup without using backups. No idea why, just trying to exhaust all possibilities.

Need to test audio, but certainly one image is still corrupted (although that's an improvement on before).

I'm beginning to wonder if this issue is entirely down to the phone though, listened to a podcast last night, on my PC, and got a couple of little glitchy spots (although the same podcast on the phone was much worse)

Really beginning to get fed up now - certainly seems that this has all been post-Windows 7, but running competibility mode will mean that I'm not able to leave contact syncing ticked (as compatibility will make iTunes look for Windows Address Book - which doesn't in Win 7)

May 21, 2010 9:25 AM in response to flipsix3

If compatibility mode didn't resolve it for you, then it likely is not needed.

Sounds like you may have a couple different issues going on here, though.

What firewall & antivirius software do you have running? You might attempt a sync with them temporarily disabled to see if they are interfering (don't forget to turn them back on!).
Also, not sure if I saw this in one of your earlier posts, but are you using a USB port on your mainboard or are you syncing through a hub or a port on the front of the PC? Try the most direct port available to see if that helps.

iPhone playback - skipping/blank spots

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