I seemed to have found a bug which results from using MC9 to encode with VBR and playing the songs back on the iPod. The new 2.0.1 firmware did NOT fix this issue.
Using Media Center 9 to encode with VBR, the VERY end of the songs will be clipped when playing back on the iPod. This is not normally noticeable on songs that end with silence, but when the song goes right up to the end of the track (like on albums where one song leads directly into the next) you can notice it.
Track 1 (Drowned World) on Madonna's "Ray of Light" is a good example of this. When it changes to Track 2 (Swim) half of the word "religion" is cut off.
The issue is specifically related to Media Center 9's VBR mp3 encoding combined with the iPod's playback. If I use Nero instead of MC9 to encode VBR, I do not get this issue. If I play the mp3's directly off my hard drive through MC9 instead of from the iPod, I do not get this issue. If I use MC9 to encode CBR, I do not get this issue. The clipped end requires all three conditions to be met -- MC9 to encode, VBR instead of CBR, and iPod to play.
I'm using the default MC9 mp3 encoder (LAME.)
An interesting point is that when I tried re-ripping and encoding the files through MC9, the end of the song was still clipped, but not by as much -- i.e. it got closer to the end of the song before getting clipped. The amount that is cut off, in other words, is not consistant. What IS consistant is that at least "some" of the end is always clipped when using MC9 + VBR + iPod.
Larry