iTunes music track playback speed is wrong

Question

Level 1

8 points

iTunes music track playback speed is wrong

I recently noticed that tracks on my iPod have started ending early and moving to the next track in the album being played. Very noticeable and very annoying

When I check these same tracks in iTunes, the track is ending early after playing all the content and then with time left on the track, ending early. Not noticeable unless you have a really well developed sense of track timing.

For example:

A track 8:26 in length plays to the end in iTunes with 1:05 remaining and then closes the track and starts to play the next track.

That same track on my iPod simply stops playing the content of the track at 1:05 remaining without finishing the content and starts playing the next track on the album in the remaining time for the first track. When it reaches the end of the remaining time in the first track, the display shows that it has moved to the next track and now it shows that the track is already partly played

I have tried playing the track in Quick Time Player and it plays correctly to the end at 8:26

Can anyone point the way to a fix for this?

MacBook Pro Retina

Posted on Apr 27, 2019 5:46 AM

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Answer 1

turingtest2

Level 10

273,195 points

May 1, 2019 3:45 AM in response to philthoburn

Ah, not a hard drive issue then.

You could try the following all-purpose steps for dealing with erratic device or sync behaviour (including the troublesome greyed out tracks and/or dotted circles of stalled transfers). They assume that all of the content you want on the device is in your library ready for restoring. If it isn't see Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device first. I would also recommend you copy everything out of the camera roll if you haven't already.

Backup device.
Restore as a new device.
Restore the backup you made earlier.

Use an encrypted backup (*) if you want to preserve passwords, Wi-Fi settings, web history and health data where appropriate. I also suggest syncing with a selection of playlists (unless you're using iCloud Music Library) rather than manually adding content as, if nothing else, the process above is easier to do if you ever have to go through it again.

(*) The downside with backup encryption is that if you forget the password when you need it again, which could be years later, you may need to invoke a workaround to turn off encryption as shown in Disable iOS backup encryption, which can only help if your device is in a state that can backup to iCloud, or runs iOS 11 or better.

For added security you might also want to make an independent backup to iCloud and/or archive your current backup before you start.

FWIW I successfully used this method some time ago when Siri became unable to call contacts or play my music.

tt2

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Answer 2

philthoburn Author

Level 1

8 points

May 1, 2019 5:53 AM in response to philthoburn

Ok have just gone back to the original files for one set of albums

File format was m4a but lossless. I have reconverted with the original app to 96k to reduce file size. The files now import and play without error

So it was a conversion error

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Answer 3

philthoburn Author

Level 1

8 points

May 1, 2019 5:18 AM in response to turingtest2

Thanks. This got me thinking afresh

Last year I had an issue whereby my library had been partly lost (dont know how). Its a library I have been building for many years and I am reluctant to lose it. So I went back to an old source of the original lossless format ripped files from CD's and various downloads and copies that I have on a media server and first rebuilt the library album by album from there. Most of this was in m4a and some files were in mp3. Some had to be reformatted from FLAC or WMA files to put them into m4a to create this new library. The new master library is all in either m4a or mp3. I then prepared a copy of the library in m4a at 96Kbps to keep the library size down and imported this to iTunes after having deleted all the music from iTunes

Many of the files play without a glitch. Some exhibit the issue I described above with tracks finishing early part way through the track on the iPod but finishing early having completed the track on my computer.

I have gone back to the hi res library files and tried to directly import these with various import settings in iTunes to see if this would be a fix. The same symptoms show up in any import format I use. The files all play without a hitch on other media players either at hi res or at 96kbps

The thought now is that there was a problem with my conversion or copying of my older album files to create the hi res library. I used an app for this. This seem most likely to be the issue. I have just done some more tests and am finding that this issue is with my older albums (CD rips) and that the length of file shortening is to some degree related to file length. Not all CD rips have this problem so fingers crossed this is the issue

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