is reporting some audio problems with a couple of 40GB click wheel iPods it recently acquired. Specifically, the site reports that these iPods emit a whirring sound through the headphone port while the iPod accesses its hard drive and a bit of light static sounds during the first couple of seconds of a song. Before you dash off to cancel your iPod order, I might just say…
…that this appears to be anything but a universal problem. I have both a 20- and 40GB click wheel iPod and neither exhibits this behavior. As the article suggested, I ripped a CD using the Apple Lossless Codec in order to force the iPod to hit the hard drive more often (the larger the audio file, the more often the iPod has to spin up the hard drive) and played the entire album on each iPod without incident. Just to be sure, I ripped the same album in AIFF format to create even larger files and still no audio glitches occurred.
I took a spin through Apple’s discussion area and there are very few posts from people whose iPods are thusly affected.
I’m not suggesting the problem doesn’t exist in some units — iPodlounge knows its business — I’m simply saying that we need more information. To help gather that information, let iPodlounge know how your new iPod is performing by posting a comment below the article cited above.