Hello everybody. I recently bought an IPad for the main purpose of playing music while I'm driving, but I'm encountering a dilemma with the songs which I'm adding.. The scenario is when I play the song on my ITunes, it plays just fine throughout the entire track; but when I drag-n-drop it into my IPad, the song starts cutting up and playing in weird sequences... These same songs worked perfectly fine with my IPod.. I don't understand why the IPad can't just do the same thing. If anyone else shares the same problem please do empathize so I know I'm not the only one with this problem, and if there's anyone out there with a couple solutions, please feel free to share! Many thanks in advance! P.S. I am planning on downloading the updated Jailbreak when it releases, is that a possible solution?

I'm disappointed that you posted this months ago with no response! I've re ently realized that my playlists, as well as iTunes University lists, are doing the same thing. It is very annoying when the order matters!

This probably doesn't help but, just in case......


The easiest first way to try to solve ‘unexplained’ or ‘unusual’ problems with the iPad are:-

Force the offending app to close. If you have iOS 4.2 double-press the ‘Home’ button to bring up the multi-task bar at the bottom of the screen. Press *and hold* any icon until they start to ‘jiggle’. Then tap the top left-hand corner of the app that you want to close. It will ‘disappear’ from the list. Don’t panic - you’ve not deleted it, just closed it. Now tap the Home screen and the multi-task bar will disappear. Re-open the iPad’s app and see if the problem has resolved itself. If not, it’s on to possible solution number two!!
Restart the iPad. Press *and hold* the Power button. After a couple of seconds a slider control will appear asking you to confirm that you really want to switch the iPad off (this is all you’ll be doing). Slide the control to accept. A rotating white ‘bezel’ will appear in the iPad screen as the iPad powers down (it takes a few seconds, just like it would if you were shutting down your PC). When the screen of the iPad has gone completely blank, press *and hold* the Power button for a couple of seconds until the white Apple logo appears and the iPad starts to power up. This takes several seconds, so be patient. During the power up the automatic screen orientation function is disabled, so don’t panic. A few seconds before the power up is complete, the iPad plays a little ‘jingle’ and then you’re back to the Home screen. Restart the iPad’s app and see if the problem persists. Apple (and Forum members) recommend that you power down your iPad at least once a week, just as you might regularly completely switch off your PC. The normal procedure of just briefly pressing the Power button of the iPad merely puts it to ‘sleep’. Most Forum members have found that one of the two methods I’ve mentioned here cure a whole bunch of unexplained problems and are an easy first step to resolving most anything that happens on the iPad.

Tim
Scotland

Tim, I tried both methods you mentioned. With the first one, I actually removed about 6 apps from the circular quick re-use bar at the bottom (called multi-tasking on the iPad) ;-) No change in the problem. So I shut down and restarted the iPad and even did a re-sync, all to no avail. The problem appears to be getting worse, as when I manually double clicked the next selection in a playlist that was frequently getting skipped it still skipped it by not just one but by a random number of selections each time. It was not until I double clicked it the third time in a row that it finally played. Very strange. I've owned many iPods and have used iTunes over many versions for many years, and I never experienced this problem until the last update on the iPad. If it weren't happening with books and iTunes U, I might not have noticed it for some time, since most of my playlists are random. I would be happy to try any other suggestions...

It's interesting that, when you Google this problem, there's quite a lot of vaguely relevant information out there but, as I'm sure you've found too, none of it is really very helpful.

I don't listen to music much on my iPad so I set up some playlists and tried to reproduce the effect that you describe. I have iOS 4.2.1, my iPad is not jail broken and I have relatively few apps - mainly work related - no games at all (!) but, try as I might, I could not get my iPad to skip tracks or prematurely finish playing a track.

I hate it when I can't find a solution to a problem - it really keeps me awake at night. We both know there must *be* a solution, because it's clear that not all iPads are doing this and so it's frustrating not to be able to find the answer.

Anyway, I'm not giving up. I'm surprised that your post (indeed the original one too) did not generate any response from the Forum. I interpret this as meaning

(a) no one else is experiencing this problem
(b) no one has an idea of how to fix it - or even some speculative ideas as to how to track down the cause.

You seem to have tried most of the obvious things. Lateral thinking is called for......I need to put on my lateral thinking hat......

Tim
Scotland

Thanks, Tim. I too am using version 4.2.1 The very idea of jailbreaking an Apple product makes me recoil; why would anyone want to mess with something that's great to begin with? :-) I do have games and other high performance apps, and I love trying new apps, so I am frequently deleting less desirable apps to make room for new ones. I try to always leave 9 to 10 GB of space on my 60 GB iPad so it doesn't have space problems; currently it has 10.3 GB left.

Since you seem interested in the problem, I will present you with an example you may be able to duplicate. Since it seems to be worsening, perhaps not, though. The problem is a relatively recent phenomenon, so it is possible I suppose that one of the apps has caused it. I also wasn't using iTunes U downloads until recently, which is when I noticed it wasn't playing selections in sequence. It is very obvious in Jazz Insights, although in the beginning it didn't happen with every series; There are 4 parts to the Miles Davis series, for instance, and it began skipping at the end of parts 2 and 3 to an entirely different series (doesn't always skip to the same one) or back to part 1, but now it skips on every part of every series I've played recently.

The one thing I have not tried is to reset my iPad to its original. I have never had to do this on any of my devices, so I'm not sure how much of a pain it will be--I assume all of the apps will have to reload...

Thanks for your interest,
Linda/Zoozyq

Originally Posted by HeartFullofWonder

Hello everybody. I recently bought an IPad for the main purpose of playing music while I'm driving, but I'm encountering a dilemma with the songs which I'm adding.. The scenario is when I play the song on my ITunes, it plays just fine throughout the entire track; but when I drag-n-drop it into my IPad, the song starts cutting up and playing in weird sequences... These same songs worked perfectly fine with my IPod.. I don't understand why the IPad can't just do the same thing. If anyone else shares the same problem please do empathize so I know I'm not the only one with this problem, and if there's anyone out there with a couple solutions, please feel free to share! Many thanks in advance! P.S. I am planning on downloading the updated Jailbreak when it releases, is that a possible solution?

Hi HeartFullofWonder,

I was having the exact same problems with my iPad 2 and visited this forum about a month ago looking for a solution. Recently, my tracks (except for one) have been playing without any issues, so I think I've figured out a solution: Close all your firewalls (antivirus software, Internet protection, etc.) before you sync your iPad. I've tried this a couple of times and it seems to work. Hopefully, this is helpful to you, and there won't be any more problems with songs skipping.

Best,
Westléah

Update on this thread.
I've had no problem on my iPhones for almost 5 years, and never on my iPad 1. I just got an iPad 2 last week. I made a play list on it yesterday, and now all of a sudden, my songs are skipping and it has seeped into my iPhone as well. I uninstalled iTunes and reinstalled and same problem. It skips at the same exact spot on my iTunes desktop too. This is very annoying and as noted, internet search solutions remain vague and talk about like iTunes 8. Anyone have any idea? This has never ever been an issue before. I have one song that for some reason plays all the way through, but the others on my playlist don't, and the playlist is gone anyway, but each song on it when I play it independently on my devices or desktop skip.

Addition: Well, I continued perusing web searches and gleaned a mention of album artwork. I deleted the album artwork from my iTunes desktop and then re-synched my devices. The skipping went away.
I find it absurd that album artwork would interfere like that, but in my case, it definitely did. I'm using a Windows 7 desktop now for the last few months-don't know if Windows is the issue or not or if this has been experienced on Mac OS before too. I had been using my several year old Mini until it started to have failing ports, etc. Never had the skipping issue, and actually, it's weird it would show up now as I've been using Windows 7 about 3-4 months with no issue. The artwork is nice, but whatever, not if it's going to interfere with my music playing!