"Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128 kbps AAC" causes infinite reboot loop

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"Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128 kbps AAC" causes infinite reboot loop

Using the "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128 kbps AAC" function seems to cause my new 160 GB classic to randomly go into an infinite reboot loop. Here's the situation:

I have accumulated more that 1,000 classical CDs over the past 25 years and got a bunch of 320 kbps MP3 files from my brother, from hundreds more CDs. I had ripped all of my files as 192 kbps AAC files back in the smaller hard drive days and recently ripped the rest at 256 now that multi-TB hard drives are affordable.

I elected to convert this mix to 128 kbps AAC while syncing to get as much as possible onto the iPod. Amazingly, it took >72 hours to fill up the iPod. After ejecting the iPod, I got it to play for a while and then synced it again to get play counts synced between the iPOd and the computer. The next time I tried to play the iPod, clicking on "Playlists" instantly started the iPod into an infinite reboot loop that could only be ended by switching to disk mode and restoring it. I then took another 72+ hours to sync it up again. Same infinite loop.

When I fill the iPod up without enabling "Convert Higher Bit Rate Songs to 128 kbps AAC" it works fine. A lot less music, unfortunately. Thus, I blame that conversion. I can't find anything on the web about this problem.

Has anyone here experienced this? Any theories?

Home Built, Windows 7

Posted on Oct 5, 2010 8:10 PM

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Answer 1

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Larryad

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Oct 11, 2010 1:05 PM in response to sallenmd

I was wondering this same thing. It took me over two days to convert all my songs to 128 bit and all that it would do was reboot anytime I tried to do anything. I reset my library twice and restored the iPod an additional two times. I tried adding fewer songs at a time. Nothing seemed to work, finally after a couple of weeks of converting and restoring, I gave up and returned it. This is the first iPod that I have owned that was this much trouble. I think it's the software that's buggy because it works OK with fewer songs but once you top 30,000 the problems seem to begin. I had 41000 songs and it said I had 9 gigs to spare.

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Answer 2

sallenmd Author

Level 4

1,142 points

Oct 11, 2010 8:27 PM in response to Larryad

Interesting. I had not considered the possibility that it might be simply the number of songs rather than something to do with the conversion. Now I guess I need to create more than 30,000 short aac files at 128 kbps to put on there and test this theory. 🙂 I've had this problem on two different 160 GB Classics--an older thick one from 2007 and a newer thin one that I bought a couple of weeks ago.

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Answer 3

Larryad

Level 1

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Oct 12, 2010 4:53 AM in response to sallenmd

I have the older Classic as well and I have'nt had too many issues with it. I have pretty close to 35,000 songs on it. The content is a mix of 128 & 256 bit rate content. I play that iPod at work everyday eignt hours a day and it hasn't given me any problems. I bought the new one because I wanted to add the genius feature and to fit more songs on. It unfortunately just turned into one big headache for me. I don't know if the problem is with the 128 bit down conversion or if its genius.

All I can say is that with the newer iPod, it seemed to run OK with fewer songs (although, I only tried this very briefly just to see if it would work), rather than filling it up where it barely functioned at all. I really don't know why it wouldn't work. I don't know if genius needs more space to calculate it's playlists (I supposedly had over 9 gigs of free space left, so there shouldn't have been a space issue), or if there were encoding issues that were tripping it up.

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Answer 4

sallenmd Author

Level 4

1,142 points

Oct 16, 2010 1:21 PM in response to Larryad

I don't use Genius, so that's not the cause of my problem. Are you using older firmware on your older Classic? I always keep mine updated, but there have been none in a long time.

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