I owned an iPod Video 5.5G 30GB from launch (2006), bought for its lossless and gapless capabilities which were unmatched at the time, and I've always had problems with the hard drive being late to spin up, causing a short (1-2 second) gap before the buffer is resupplied with fresh data from the drive. It happened maybe once per hour, but I can usually replicate it from a fresh restore within an hour or two of listening. There's no pattern for files, and I've tried almost everything possible to isolate this issue.
My original white iPod is long gone, but I always thought it was an excellent player apart from this issue, so I convinced myself that just my old one was defective considering how the iPod 5.5 is well-regarded by so many people. So I tracked down a hardly used (only a few hours of drive runtime) iPod Video 5.5G, this time in black. And it has the exact same problem! It skipped within an hour or so of listening, just like it did to my disappointment back in 2006.
Downsizing album art has no effect on the skipping.
Removing album art has no effect on the skipping.
Removing ID3 tag info has no effect on the skipping.
Restoring from scratch on a Mac will skip.
Restoring from scratch on a Windows computer will skip.
Restoring from scratch on a Windows computer with period iTunes 7 will skip.
Installing Rockbox eliminates the skip issue completely.
There is no skipping on my Mac or iPhone.
The iPod is just sitting there when it skips.
My audio files are all lossless (ALAC), most encoded by iTunes itself directly from the CD, some by XLD. It happens on ALAC and MP3 alike.
This iPod model is quite well regarded for its sonic quality, but I only see this complaint here and there online. Is this just how this iPod functions with the Apple firmware, or am I still missing something? I do listen to music in long spurts with classical albums, so the little gaps are very intrusive. My theory now is that no one really uses their iPod like this, so 95% of people just never run into this problem due to skipping around songs.
Since I've been tracking this issue for almost 20 years now, I think it's just an undocumented flaw of this iPod. Is it only the Video, or the Classic too? Nano too?
My original white iPod is long gone, but I always thought it was an excellent player apart from this issue, so I convinced myself that just my old one was defective considering how the iPod 5.5 is well-regarded by so many people. So I tracked down a hardly used (only a few hours of drive runtime) iPod Video 5.5G, this time in black. And it has the exact same problem! It skipped within an hour or so of listening, just like it did to my disappointment back in 2006.
Downsizing album art has no effect on the skipping.
Removing album art has no effect on the skipping.
Removing ID3 tag info has no effect on the skipping.
Restoring from scratch on a Mac will skip.
Restoring from scratch on a Windows computer will skip.
Restoring from scratch on a Windows computer with period iTunes 7 will skip.
Installing Rockbox eliminates the skip issue completely.
There is no skipping on my Mac or iPhone.
The iPod is just sitting there when it skips.
My audio files are all lossless (ALAC), most encoded by iTunes itself directly from the CD, some by XLD. It happens on ALAC and MP3 alike.
This iPod model is quite well regarded for its sonic quality, but I only see this complaint here and there online. Is this just how this iPod functions with the Apple firmware, or am I still missing something? I do listen to music in long spurts with classical albums, so the little gaps are very intrusive. My theory now is that no one really uses their iPod like this, so 95% of people just never run into this problem due to skipping around songs.
Since I've been tracking this issue for almost 20 years now, I think it's just an undocumented flaw of this iPod. Is it only the Video, or the Classic too? Nano too?