iPod Classic skipping songs!

Thanks for taking the time to reply, tt2 - I've eliminated the possibility of it being a hard disc failure or iPod problem since the same tracks skip on two different iPod Classics. I remembered I had an old Dell Hackintosh (running OS X 10.6.8) so I uploaded two CDs (FWIW, Fujiya & Miyagi,Transparent Things and Dylan, Bringing it all Back Home) at 256kbps which I knew had problems on my iTunes library. Both these albums previously caused no problems at all, to be fair none of my library did.

Anyway I restored my Classic 7th gen and synced with just these two albums - hmmm they both play through perfectly.

This points to some iTunes corruption I think - but why? I'm running Windows 8.1 64 bit on my PC.

I really really don't want to redo my entire iTunes library - life's too short LOL - but have you got a view on this? It's clearly a common problem.

I was hoping you would put on the same copies of the tracks that have caused a problem before rather than reripping.

Possibilities are some internal problem in the original rips which only trip up some firmware, or a corruption of the section of the device's database that stores start and finish times.

tt2

I swapped out the 30GB HDD of the iPod Classic 5.5 (the one with the Wolfson DAC) with a Kingspec 128GB SSD. I did a full sync with my iTunes (about 90GB) and all the tracks now play through perfectly.

I've seen many threads on this subject of skipping tracks on iPods which previously worked fine. My 3 year-old iPod Classic 160GB gave me no problems at all until recently and the onboard diagnostics show no errors.

Swapping to an SSD has cured the problem so perhaps it isn't an iTunes problem at all. Could it be that all the HDDs are becoming life-expired at the same time? One thing I did notice is that you can hear the HDD platters spinning up and/or down on a regular basis which I suppose could be normal but it doesn't sound healthy.

All HDDs are going to expire at some stage. Without access to low level diagnostics it would be hard to pinpoint the blame for any given failure. Anyway, good to hear you've had success with the SSD swap out.

tt2

I get exactly the same thing on a basic mp3 player and using windows media player. Could they both be linked by the same problem 👿

It's worked for me swapping out my HDD for an SSD but many people wouldn't be able to do that (and I'm reluctant to take apart my iPod Classic 7th gen due to the reports of how tricky it is compared to the 5.5gen). Both the 30GB and the 160GB HDDs showed no problems on the apple diagnostic - if there were disc errors they would surely show up.

I want to find out how and why this is happening. I noticed earlier when I swapped out machines that the same tracks were skipping in the same place on both machines and re-ripping them on the PC had no effect. And some tracks (eg podcasts) played through fine whatever. But the 'defective' tracks played fine when I ripped and reinstalled from a Mac. And the previous poster with MP3s having the same issue - could it be the ipod firmware is somehow not reading the HDD correctly if it's not 100% on spec?

I really don't know. Sadly iTunes is missing any diagnostic logging of the sync process.

tt2

Hi,

As mentioned above, on a basic mp3 player and windows media player, the error message I keep getting is that the codec used on computer is not the same as the one on the mp3 player.

computer is missing a codec, you are probably trying to play, burn, or sync a file that was compressed by using a codec that Windows or the Player doesn't include by default

I'm wondering whether this is the same issue with ipod.

Only bought ipod yesterday so new to all of this.😊

Given my success at swapping out the HDD in the iPod Classic 5.5 I decided I may as well do the same with my iPod 7th gen. It was MUCH harder to open up but eventually managed it - it's pretty much identical inside but the back clips are tougher.

I swapped the HDD without much trouble and re-synced with iTunes. All went well (although it did take about 3-4 tries to get it to connect with my PC) and I synced my whole iTunes just as I did before with the 5.5gen.

It all looked fine and it's much quicker navigating menus and finding tunes. It was also quicker to sync. I listened to a couple of tracks and they seemed to play through but then just before the end the skipped again. This is very dispiriting - to be fair I was suspicious that two hard drives could suddenly fail in the same way without showing any other problems - I thought I'd solved it but clearly there's something else going on.

Anybody?

Try this; go into itunes, right click on the song that you're having trouble with (if you're using a Windows computer) and have itunes create an AAC version, you can also either remove the old version from itunes or delete it from your computer as you shouldn't need it.

Then transfer the AAC version to your ipod to check if it works.

People who use the ipod classic should definitely try this as it worked for me this morning after I was having the skipping issue on a specific song last night.

As far as I can tell, my problem was that the song was I was trying to play wasn't licensed, i.e. I had to find a download version of a youtube video as it's by an amateur band who haven't put the song up for sale anywhere.

Hope this helps, and if it does, spread the word as I know how frustrating it can be to have these songs not play.

Thanks Donwel84, in fact the song I had was an AAC and I clicked "convert to mp3" and it works like is once did - no skipping! Thanks!

Somewhat late to pick up on this error. 😮

Switching from one lossy format to another...

tt2