iPod iPod nano 7th gen skips some songs in the middle - help fix it!

Got a new 7th gen nano not long ago. Before that I had a years old 3rd gen nano that skipped some songs, but I'd just re-download the song and it always fixed it (on the 3rd gen, anytime a song skipped the problem was obviously the song itself).

I also decided to re-do and clean my itunes now and so deleted everything off it and am slowly re-adding it all back in. Out of thousands of songs, I've only put back on maybe 200 so far. But as I'm putting them back on, I'm making sure they're all going to the same format (mp3 - many of them already are anyway), the same sample rate (44.100 kHz but almost all of them already are) and around the same bit rate. For bit rate, I picked VBR with the lowest being 128 kbps. I'm using the converter in itunes itself and itunes makes 128 the lowest possible bit rate if you pick VBR, so most songs are actually around 180 or 190 kbps after converting, but it's still smaller than say 320 kbps and for a huge library saves a lot of room. Anyway, except for a few that already were exactly like that upon adding, I'm converting them as I add them back in so they'll all match.

So, with a new itunes library and a brand new nano, I was so excited to finally sync and start listening. But some songs skip on the nano!

It's really strange too. It's usually the same songs, but sometimes ones that played fine before skip the next time played and sometimes the ones that usually skip don't. And they never skip at the exact same moment.

One song in particular first alerted me, since it's one I really like and listened to first. So yeah, the very first song I listened to on my new nano skipped.

So I tried it again and again to see what's up, and oddly it would skip at different points different times, and sometimes actually played the whole song.

So I tried erasing it from the nano and re-downloading, first the same file, then erasing the file from my itunes, re-adding it, and putting it on the nano. I tried the original version not converted, a new converted version the same as before, and a version converted differently just to see. For that particular song, they were all more prone to skipping and nothing solved the problem.

But it's not just that one song, as I said it's random songs and not always the same songs. BUT, it does seem like certain songs/albums are more likely to be the skipped ones, but not always.

To be clear, this does NOT happen on my itunes on my computer. EVERYTHING plays perfectly on itunes.

This is driving me crazy! Especially since this is a brand new nano and I'm spending so much time to fix my itunes up and all these problems are happening.

One thing I noticed with the new nano is that when it skips, it makes a sound effect. Like the song will be playing, then suddenly I hear the very obvious computerized sound effect, then the song is skipped. That same sound effect does not sound when I manually skip a song, and that sound never played when a song accidentally skipped on my 3rd gen nano. Does everyone hear this sound effect when a song skips when it shouldn't on the new nano?

Also, it messes up playlists completely, and I usually always use a shuffled playlist. Basically, unlike my 3rd gen nano, on the 7th gen nano, if a song skips when it shouldn't while I'm shuffling a playlist, instead of going to another song in the playlist, it goes out of the playlist completely and just goes to another song in my entire library on the nano and then continues shuffling the entire library until I manually change it. What the heck?

I've read around and just now tried for resetting the nano and then restoring the nano. Neither worked and the very first song I tried both times (one of the songs usually more likely to skip) skipped.

Also, I've heard AAC is supposed to play better on nano but whatever, I don't want to have a library of AAC. I want mp3 so that the songs will work on some other things that won't play AAC, and I don't want a file of each type for every song because that'd make my library size twice as big and it already takes up too much room.

All help will be very appreciated! Thanks.

Well heck, that just may be it!

The shake to shuffle was on, apparently it starts on since I never set it there. My 3rd gen obviously didn't have that option, so I had no idea about it. I mean, I saw it there in the settings of the 7th gen but didn't think that could be it... I guess because my nano wasn't moving while playing. I have a stereo dock where it sits (with a connector for the new nano connector), so it just stand there completely still while it plays. But I guess it does maybe vibrate from the stereo speakers.

Anyway, I just tried turning it off, and so far so good! I played the worst skipper, and sure enough it didn't skip! I tried some others that seemed to skip and none of them did, so whew.

I can't be completely sure it's fixed yet since the problem seemed to come and go sort of so I need a day or two of playing to make sure nothing skips anywhere, but I'm thinking this is the answer.

Also, that explains the skip sound heard that I was so curious about. I turned the shake to skip back on. LOL, when I try to shake and skip it I have to shake hard (so it's funny it'll skip so easily when just sitting still in a dock). But when I did shake it hard enough to skip, sure enough it makes that skip sound! So that's even more evidence that that was the problem.

This is such a relief, and such an easy answer. I'm so happy. I'd googled a lot before asking here and never saw a thing from the stuff I looked at about it possibly being the shake to shuffle feature. Usually the advice was that the song was corrupted, or something wrong with mp3s that make them more likely to skip on ipods so AAC is better, or that it was a software or hardware problem on the nano. So I was expecting the answer to be something harder like that or something about the new way I was converting all my songs.

Thank you and I hope this thread might help others looking here or googling with a similar problem! (while I googled I noticed there were a bunch with similar skipping problems...it was making me think something was wrong with the software on the 7th gen nano, glad to know that's not the case).

Thanks!


PS - I'm listening to the nano with earphones now, and I'm noticing playing with it now as I write this that once the screen goes black, the shake to shuffle doesn't work no matter how hard I shake. It only works when the screen is awake or dimmed but still on. But see, when it's sitting in my dock, the screen always stays on and always bright while songs are playing (I guess because it's connected to a power source). So I'm wondering if the screen always being on and bright is making it more sensitive to minor vibrations from the speakers or something making it skip so often when it shouldn't. Anyway, doesn't matter now that the problem is probably solved for me.

Just wanted to update and say that it was definitely the shake to shuffle feature causing the unwanted skipping. Since I've turned it off over a week ago it hasn't accidentally skipped a song even once. Success!