You are welcome.
It definitely took a while to figure it out, and spent weeks testing and researching what could be the problem. It was truly driving me nuts! Suddenly after the last firmware update, most of the songs in my iPod Touch would skip, glitch and garble, for no apparent reason. On occasion, the iPod would even add several second of silence in the middle of random songs, for no apparent reason!!!
Among the things in my research to find out the culprit, I did the following:
Reinstalled the device software
Reformatted the device, then updated the software
Copied over my music library from scratch, several times (it was painful)
Reformatted albums in different bitrates, from 96kbps, all the way to 320kbps, both in constant and variable rates, and tested them one by one.
In the end, the one thing that was consistent was very clear: any songs encoded over 128kbps would skip and sound corrupted. Time after time. The only way I could enjoy my music collection in my iPod Touch was to downconvert my files to the now obsolete 128kbps. Only when I converted my music to 128kbps, the annoying skips and glitches stopped. For an audiophile like myself, this was absolutely painful, as I could tell the obvious loss in quality and nuance in my music files.
I'm disappointed Apple missed this bug. It affects the CORE functionality of the device, above anything else.
Yeah, I think I will write them a letter too. I wonder if there's a way to contact their engineering dept., so I could share my research.
Message was edited by: Juliator