Music sync to ipod using Itunes 7.3.1 sounds like skipping cd

Question

Hello,
I have an older 12" PowerBook G4. Since installing the latest Quicktime (7.2) and iTunes(7.3.1) any music that I sync with my iPod sounds like a skipping cd. The music on the iPod sound like a skipping cd for a short time and then just skips to the next song. The next song of course does the same thing. The music sounds fine when played back using iTunes. The music is encoded as a MP3 using VBR. All of the music I have previously encoded (before iTunes 7.3) and put on the iPod continues to play just fine (using the same MP3 and VBR settings). I have tried resetting my iPod, but that did not help. Only having USB 1.1 ports and am not too excited by ideas that involve syncing 40GB of music back onto my iPod.
Any ideas what has changed in the latest software version or what can be done? It would grand to carry some new music to work.

Answer 1

So, the music sounds like a skipping cd and then shortly just skips onto the next song. In Itunes I selected the skipping songs (which happen to play fine in Itunes) and used "Convert Selection to MP3" under the "Advanced" menu, deleted the skipping songs from my iPod and then added the freshly converted versions of the songs back to the iPod. This worked. No skipping and the songs played all of the way though. Why do I have to convert an mp3 created by iTunes to an mp3 using "Convert Selection to MP3" in order to make things work?
I do not think that is the problem.
I use a laptop with limited hard drive space. After iTunes rips my cd's into mp3's I copy the mp3 files to an external hard drive, deleted the songs from iTunes and re-add them from the external hard drive using the "Add to Library" option under "Files". I did this fora couple of cd's. Then I deleted the corresponding songs off of my iPod and re-added them. The songs on the iPod again sound like a skipping cd before just skipping on to the next song.
One more time, I used "Convert Selection to MP3" under the "Advanced" menu to convert the skipping songs. This time I just left them in the iTunes Music folder on the internal hard drive instead moving them to the external hard drive. After deleting and re-adding the songs to my iPod the songs played fine.
I do not use an "iTunes Music folder" on my external hard drive and like to organize my mp3's to my likings.
The question now is, why can't mp3's be moved from the "iTunes Music" folder on the internal disk to an external disk? I do not have enough room on my internal disk to carry around my music and still accomplish work.
I had been using the method described above for years without problems.