iPhone MP3 skipping, works in iTunes?
I just synced an mp3 album I had downloaded and copied into iTunes on my iPhone (1st gen, not a 3G), but every song was stuttering and skipping. The files themselves are fine–they all play fine in iTunes. The file I was trying to play had the following attributes:
Bitrate: 96 kbps
Encoder: FhG
Tags: ID3 v1/v2
Sample Rate: 44.100 khz
Trolling through online forums, the following advice was offered:
- Use the “Rock EQ” preset (didn’t work for me, and I tried turning EQ Off / Soundcheck On/Off too)
- Restore the iPhone (that sounds like a pain)
- Delete the playlist and remove all the songs from the phone, then create a new playlist and resync them
- Convert the music to AAC (right-click, convert to AAC)
Since the last option is the easiest, I tried it. And it worked–smooth playback. It’s possible that there really was something horrible with the files, as they stutter in VLC too!
Apple’s iPod Shuffle Sucks
Apple’s new iPod shuffle sports a nice 4Gb of space for just $79, but you’d be a fool to buy it. Why? It no longer has any controls or buttons on the iPod itself, relegating those critical controls like “play/pause” or “next/previous track” to a new set of proprietary earbuds:
Small gets smaller.
The new iPod shuffle is amazingly small and even easier to use. The controls are now conveniently located on the earbud cord. It’s so easy, you can use it with your eyes closed.
So any shuffle buyers will be stuck with Apple’s crappy $1 headphones that come with it. Or, they can choose to shell out $79 more for a pair of Apple iPhone In-Ear Stereo headphones that will work in the shuffle. Either way, a losing affair.
iTunes With Low Memory
This is kinda neat, I think my iTunes ran out of memory. It stopped being able to correctly render images, and everything just kindof showed a default placeholder “broken image” picture:
I have 4Gb of physical memory in my computer, and at the time, only iTunes (dead) and a web browser (alive) open. So strange that iTunes ran out of memory and started rendering garbage. Pretty picture, though!
