Sounds Odd

Don't you just love train rides? This week I've been into London twice by train so the last thing to go in my bag as I leave home is an iPod. The iPod in question is the podserve.co.uk main test platform. I hope that sounds grand but its actually three years old and if it were a car it would have been round the clock at least twice.

Leaving in a bit of a rush its pot luck as to what's on the machine. This time it was pretty full (just as well as there were some long delays) with a wide mix of music. None of this is terribly remarkable until I got to Elvis Costello. I can't vlaim to be a big fan but he's done some good stuff. I noticed my favourite, Oliver's Army, wasn't there but none the less started to listen to Elvis.

Then it screeched. Short, sharp scream. Then Elvis performs for a few seconds, then hopped on to the next track. So I skipped back to check what was happening, same thing second time around. I made a note of the track and thought I'd look in more detail when I got back to The Hutch (which is what the office has now been named).

The first thing I did this morning was to listen to the track in iTunes. It plays fine, which was a load off my mind. I wouldn't like the thought that podServe's CD ripping clients were suffering jumpy tracks. Breathe a big sigh of relief and re-synch the iPod. Track still plays up.

So I erased the iPod, and reloaded it with the same playlist. On checking, Elvis is still deformed. My thinking by this time is that there's a fault on the iPod's hard drive and by chance I've found the track that rests on the bad sector. To force a removal to another and better location I created a new playlist, with EC and other artists, and synched the iPod to that. Nothing changed, he was still skipping to the next track after a few seconds. So I again erased the iPod and forced the new, shorter playlist onto it. Crossed fingers.

So on an almost empty iPod poor old Mr Costello finds the same flawed area again. As Sherlock Holmes might say, this is a two pipe problem. Not being a pipe smoker I made do with a cup of coffee.

I thought I'd try the same exercise but rather than use iTunes to load the iPod, I'd use Xplay 2 (from www.mediafour.com). This is a great piece of software that's got me off the hook time and time again. Magic. The track loaded with Xplay works fine. But why?

I can only think that the iPod's mini operating system has a method of placing files that results in the same track landing in the same place each time. Xplay must use a different algorithm. Moral of the story - if your iPod produces odd sounds check with iTunes first for file integrity. If normal resynchs don't solve the problem try a third party product such as Xplay 2.