Lossless sound files causing sound dropouts on iPods?

We've received a few reports of audio dropouts when attempting to play back files encoded in the new "lossless" format offered in iTunes 4.5:

MacFixIt reader Rich writes "I've re-ripped a few albums using the new Apple LossLess encoding, transferred to a 40G iPod with the latest updates (iTunes 4.5, iPod Update, Quicktime 6.5.1, etc).

"While the sound played from the iPod is generally fabulous, I've had 2 instances during 2 hours of listening, of a half-second dropout of music in the middle of a song. In both cases, upon restarting the song, the glitch was absent.

"Without really knowing anything about the disk-buffer issues, it sounds to me like perhaps the buffer is not refreshed in time with these lossless files now that the amount of information for a given length of music has changed."

If you're having a similar problem, please drop us a line at late-breakers@macfixit.com.

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