itunes chopping off end of songs now that i signed up for match

I too am experiencing the same problem where the song will cut off approximately 30 seconds before it ends and start the next selection at that point. I noticed that this problem cropped up after the last update to IOS7.03 on my iPhone 4S. I did not have any problems before that update, ever.

I tried erasing all the music on my iphone and re-sync'ng but problem persist. I tried to factory restore the phone and a clean restore from backup to no avail. I tried turning off iCloud sync, auto-download but nothing worked. I tried reinstalling IOS7.03 and again clean install everything but the problem is still there.

I noticed though that it only effects purchased songs. I hope Apple can fix this problem soon because I do use my iphone as a music source as I travel everyday.

A little correction: for me, and for many others, the cut off effect exits for any track, not only for the purchased songs.

So shame... No answers, AppleTV doing the same.

See the past from paulronco above. This is most likely related to a corrupt playlist. He has suggested a fix. I experienced this issue more than a year ago. At the time I deleted my playlist and rebuilt them. I have iPhones, iPads, pc's" and Apple TV and have not had cut offs since. I also use match.

As the recent post pointed out, this is NOT relegated to Match or purchased music. 95% of my music is ripped from my collection in Lossless format. and I still have not chased out all the premature cutoffs but I have diminished themgreatly. I have a theory. I wonder if when the songs were ripped, either professionally by Apple or by us, the speed of the drive doing the ripping exceeds the buffer and it is at that point the cutoff artifact is created. I re-ripped the songs I find have the problem using much slower rip speeds and the problem disappears for that song once and for all. Also use "Error Correction" when ripping. I realized every song that had the problem had been ripped on my Blue Ray SATA drive at lightening fast speed. Never once using my slower drive with error correction could I repeat the problem. In addition there must be something in the playback on the device itself that triggers premature termination when it reads the buffer boundry crossing. I realize I may not know what I'm talking about to tech saavy members of this thread, but that's my theory and I'm stickin to it. -Plasmodium Vivax

PlasmodiumVivax88,

Yes, "this is NOT relegated to Match or purchased music". I have about 800 classical CD records ripped and matched, and a lot of them has a serious problem. Before Match, everything was OK. If I swirch off match I can listen everything.

We have seen a lot of "solutions" in this forum. Many of us find same particular solutions, but these methods did not solved the problems. I think there is a serious, and general problem. Some user posted, that Apple do not want to reply to this problem.

So the problem is in the iTunes code or in the Match code or in the streaming code.

Apple wake up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No, absolutelly, NO. I do not have any playlists. I'am listening classical music, so I did not prepared any playlists. Composers made the "playlists". So I listen albums. So I cannot (I do not want to) delete/upgrade/etc playlists.

MechENGrng:

One thing that is certain is that, in my case, my playlists were corrupted, and not the song files themselves. This might be happening to other people for other reasons, but I know that in my case, it was being caused by a bad playlist entry. Prior to removing the cut-off songs in Itunes and re-importing them, I did CRC checks on the song file in Itunes as well as on my backup, and both files were identical.

It sounds like it might not have anything to do with IOS7.03 on your Iphone. If you are importing from a corrupted Itunes playlist on your computer, it would make sense that anything you did to your phone would not resolve the problem. Do the songs cut off in Itunes?

A general repair would be to backup your music, uninstall Itunes, delete the Itunes folder, reinstall Itunes, then re-import your music. If you do not have a backup of your songs (shame on you), then copy the Itunes "Music" folder to an external drive, then uninstall Itunes. Then, delete the Itunes folder from your My Documents folder, ***as this folder contains the old playlists and will not be removed upon uninstallation***. Then reinstall Itunes, re-import the music folder, and see if the issue is resolved. I think that the reason so many people continue to experience this issue after they've uninstalled and reinstalled Itunes is because they are unaware that the Itunes folder is not deleted by the uninstaller, and since this is a playlist issue, the corrupted playlist simply remains on the computer and so the problem is still there after they've reinstalled.

Plasmodium Vivax:

"I wonder if when the songs were ripped, either professionally by Apple or by us, the speed of the drive doing the ripping exceeds the buffer and it is at that point the cutoff artifact is created."

I can't believe that Apple's rips are bad, because it would be affecting everybody who downloaded the song. I experienced my issue with both ripped music and music that I purchased, and all were imported on the same date. This strongly suggests that the playlist corruption occurred upon import.

Again, like I said, in my case it was definitely caused by a corrupted playlist entry, and not a bad rip. So if your songs are being caused by a bad rip, then you're experiencing a different issue from what I experienced, just with the same symptoms. Are you sure it's not possible that upon re-ripping and re-importing, you simply replaced a bad playlist entry, thus making it APPEAR that it was a ripping error?

Also, if it were a ripping error, I would think the cutoffs would be random, and not occur after a set period of playback time, as happened to me. Have you determined that your songs are cutting off after a set period of time, and not randomly? Keep in mind that if you have multiple import date corruptions, then some of your songs may cut off earlier than others, thus making the cutoffs appear random; but, if you examine enough songs, and, say, you have forty songs and they all cut off after x, y, or z time durations, and you go back and look at the import dates and all the songs that cut off after x amount of time were imported on one date, and all the songs that cut off after y amount of time were imported on another date, and so on, then you'll know you're experiencing the playlist corruption issue that occurs upon import into Itunes.

hael, your observation that if you turn off Match then the problem goes away is interesting. Unfortunately, I do not use Match and currently know nothing about it. I wonder if it could be corrupting the playlist entries in Itunes as well, but only on a temporary basis, such as when it is turned on.

-Paul Ronco, Computer Technician

I've read every post on this at least once. I'm far from tech savvy, but I think I can describe a problem here that may be enlightening to some of the theorists trying to solve this problem, especially since so many of the proposed solutions on this thread seem wrongly (at least in my case) to tackle it as a Match problem.

I have the problem with truncated playback on an iPod Classic 160 with random songs of multiple types--Ones that iTunes show as AAC Audio File, Protected AAC Audio File, MPEG Audio file and Purchased AAC Audio File. I do not use Match at all. These same songs consistently play through without interruptiion when I'm using iTunes v11.1 on my iMac.

Doesn't this seem to point to something different going on either with a) the tracks being corrupted upon transfer to the iPod or b) with some difference between how the iPod player handles those tracks versus how they're handled by the iTunes "player" (or whatever player my iMac is using when I play the track from the iTunes tracklist)?

In my case I have already proven that it was caused by playlist corruption, and not damaged song files. I once suffered from this problem; now I don't. I'm not saying that this problem isn't being caused by other reasons for other people, but in at least one instance, the problem that everyone on this forum is describing has been solved. I think it's a good idea to work backward from that solution and try to rule out whether corrupted playlist entries might be tied in to other peoples' experiences as well. To do that, a good place to start would be to see if peoples' songs are cutting off after a SET AMOUNT OF TIME from the start of the song. As I said in my original post, ALL of my songs that were corrupted were imported on the same date, and they ALL cut off after 4:10 seconds from start of play.

Please take a look at your corrupted songs, note how many seconds are left when they cut off, and then subtract that number of seconds from the total play time of the song. This goes for everybody. If your cutoff times are consistent, then that esentially rules out file corruption, and suggests that your issue might in some way be related to mine (corrupted playlist). If the cutoff times are not consistent, then that would be valuable information as well.

It would also be helpful to know if the affected songs were all imported on the same date, or if the affected songs which were imported on one date cut off at the same point, compared to songs imported on a different date.

-Paul

Paul I do have same issue without using match and the songs seem random. They cut off at 4:10. I deleted all my playlists (which took hours to create) but nothing changed. Do I need to reboot after the playlist deletion?

Folks,

I have told you before and I will tell you again. I spoke to Apple people and got one at a high tech level to admit to me that "they are very much aware of this problem" ; however, "they don't have a solution nor do they know how to fix this." If they could fix it they would but for some reason it is not fixable. Sorry!

Just because you're not experiencing it through Match doesn't mean that Match isn't somehow involved. A recent poster said that when he turns off Match, his songs play fine. Assuming he isn't wildly misinterpreting the data, that statement is difficult to brush off. Match is probably all caught up in this issue in some way, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's Match's fault, either. In fact, it probably isn't. Again, I think we should be focused on playlists, and how Itunes creates, imports, and exports them to other devices, as well as interfaces them with other features of itself, such as Match. Another poster previously said that he thinks this sounds like a general problem, and I think he may be right. The situation I've just described would be exactly that: a general problem with a basic feature of Itunes, that is affecting many devices thus making everyone think their problem is unique and special to their configuration, when it isn't.

For those experiencing it through Match, well, that's a huge clue. The files on the Itunes Match Cloud are being shared by thousands if not millions of people, and they probably weren't originally uploaded by you. So it's very safe to say they're not corrupted, and that the problem is with your software.

-Paul

Your songs cut off after 4:10 minutes of play as well? So did mine.

Huge clue.

It is not enough to delete the playlist. You have to delete the playlist and then re-import the song file.

-Paul

"Folks,

I have told you before and I will tell you again. I spoke to Apple people and got one at a high tech level to admit to me that "they are very much aware of this problem" ; however, "they don't have a solution nor do they know how to fix this." If they could fix it they would but for some reason it is not fixable. Sorry!"

I fixed it.

-Paul

"Do I need to reboot after the playlist deletion?"

I did not have to reboot Itunes or my computer. What I did have to do after I deleted the song was re-import it from its original location. I did not have to delete any of my playlists; in fact, I don't think it's a problem to do with the "playlists" per se, but with how Itunes believes the songs should be played after they've been imported. So, I may have been using the wrong word all along.

My solution was to delete the songs from Itunes, choose to "keep file," then re-import it from its original location back into the Itunes library.

-Paul