VBR vs. iPod

I completely forgot to write about one of the biggest problems I was having with the iPod. It seems that the iPod has a problem with certain variable bitrate (VBR) MP3s. If you find that either iTunes or the iPod mis-reports the total track length for a VBR MP3, or that it cuts off a VBR MP3 in the middle of playback, you'll either need to repair its VBR headers with a Windows-only program called VBRFIX or you'll have to re-encode your MP3s. Rather than trying to get a Windows box to do a bunch of crunching on shoddy MP3s, I just decided to re-encode a good portion of my MP3s. I noticed that the MP3s that iPod choked on were ones encoded by N2MP3. So, I went through my entire collection and re-encoded those files. I don't know how many I re-encoded, but it took me the better part of three days. I'm glad I'm done. Eeesh. I'll be glad not to have to do that again.