problem with mp3s

U_Fig

Recently I've been having a weird problem with some of my music collection..I have 30GB plus of music most ripped from CDs. So I used a program called musicbrainz Picard to organise as a lot of it was missing album art or had info missing or wrong in the id3 tag.. I also use iTunes primarily as my music player.. The problem I noticed 6-8 months ago where one song seemed to start like 30 seconds in. I though this was down to iTunes resume playback box being ticked but when I changed that it was still the same. So I didn't pay much attention.. Now in the last few days I've noticed a few more songs like that starting between 5-30 seconds into the song but saying its at 0:00.
I then went to the actual file in windows explorer and opened it with both media player classic abs VLC player and on both of them it's the same..so this leases me to things that somehow the MP3 file somehow deleted part of itself. Anyone know what could cause this or a possible fix for this.

yoyo

U_Fig wrote: »

Recently I've been having a weird problem with some of my music collection..I have 30GB plus of music most ripped from CDs. So I used a program called musicbrainz Picard to organise as a lot of it was missing album art or had info missing or wrong in the id3 tag.. I also use iTunes primarily as my music player.. The problem I noticed 6-8 months ago where one song seemed to start like 30 seconds in. I though this was down to iTunes resume playback box being ticked but when I changed that it was still the same. So I didn't pay much attention.. Now in the last few days I've noticed a few more songs like that starting between 5-30 seconds into the song but saying its at 0:00.
I then went to the actual file in windows explorer and opened it with both media player classic abs VLC player and on both of them it's the same..so this leases me to things that somehow the MP3 file somehow deleted part of itself. Anyone know what could cause this or a possible fix for this.

Sounds to me like the MP3 file got corrupted somehow, possibly by the tool you used to attempt to fix the id tags/album art. Have you tried the MP3 on another machine? But tbh you've tried it on so many players including VLC I'd come to the conclusion the MP3 file is corrupted.
A quick Google suggests this tool to repair MP3 files which is free, maybe worth checking out?

Nick

J K

Did you fully rewind those mp3s since you last played them?

Verres

It might be to do with cross-fade settings. Without knowing exactly what settings you have I wouldn't know for sure, but it sounds like you're just not hearing the start of the song.

If a file deleted part of itself (and I cannot think how something like this could even be possible), it simply wouldn't play - its not like tearing the first few pages of sheet music out of a score - an .mp3 is an atomic thing. You can't just delete the start of it by accident.

In short, it sounds like an sound card setting / driver issue. My first port of call would be to copy all .mp3s to a new directory, and then delete the old copies. Then delete your iTunes library. Then update your sound card drivers. Then add the new versions of the .mp3s to your iTunes library and see how they play.

If this doesn't work, I think you might need to look at your sound card settings.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

Verres

Reading the above, I may well be wrong with my thesis.

Let us know

yoyo

Verres wrote: »

It might be to do with cross-fade settings. Without knowing exactly what settings you have I wouldn't know for sure, but it sounds like you're just not hearing the start of the song.

If a file deleted part of itself (and I cannot think how something like this could even be possible), it simply wouldn't play - its not like tearing the first few pages of sheet music out of a score - an .mp3 is an atomic thing. You can't just delete the start of it by accident.

In short, it sounds like an sound card setting / driver issue. My first port of call would be to copy all .mp3s to a new directory, and then delete the old copies. Then delete your iTunes library. Then update your sound card drivers. Then add the new versions of the .mp3s to your iTunes library and see how they play.

If this doesn't work, I think you might need to look at your sound card settings.

Sorry I can't be of more help.

MP3s can get corrupted alrite, what made me jump to this conclusion was the fact OP used a Mass Tagging program on the MP3s and it was after that the problems started occuring. Not sure drivers would cause this but definately worth checking for updates alrite, the fact VLC failed to play it (VLC uses its own codecs) makes me believe theres something else up, rather than a itunes/codec problem on the computer, so itunes cross fade settings shouldn't affect VLC

Nick

Voodu Child

Altering MP3 tags basically writes an entire new MP3 file to the HDD and deletes the old one. There is certainly potential for corruption to occur during this process if you use crap software.

Also you should rip with EAC or dBPoweramp and verify your rip. Don't rip with iTunes or the like, they are only for teenyboppers.

johnmacward

Yep, corrupted I'd say. I'd possibly stop using Picard as well, maybe it's applying metadata arseways and chopping the starts or ends off the files. It's a pity because I like the Musicbrainz project.

johnmacward

J K wrote: »

Did you fully rewind those mp3s since you last played them?

Hahahahah hoohooohooohooohoo!

Thems were the days, Maxell Chrome Dioxides and a bic pen through the winder.

Verres

Voodu Child wrote: »

Altering MP3 tags basically writes an entire new MP3 file to the HDD and deletes the old one. There is certainly potential for corruption to occur during this process if you use crap software.

Also you should rip with EAC or dBPoweramp and verify your rip. Don't rip with iTunes or the like, they are only for teenyboppers.

So basically the OP was converting ID3v1 to ID3v2 tags and the ID3v2 overwrote the start of the audio portion of the file? But wouldn't it also have to overwrite everything inbetween? i.e. the frame sync and channel mode header info too? Basically the file could be corrupted easily (I agree), but it would be a devastating type of corruption that would simply have ID3v2 tags, and then audio, with no other header info...

Would a file like that even play?

yoyo

Verres wrote: »

So basically the OP was converting ID3v1 to ID3v2 tags and the ID3v2 overwrote the start of the audio portion of the file? But wouldn't it also have to overwrite everything inbetween? i.e. the frame sync and channel mode header info too? Basically the file could be corrupted easily (I agree), but it would be a devastating type of corruption that would simply have ID3v2 tags, and then audio, with no other header info...

Would a file like that even play?

Yes the player will usually attempt to play it, regardless of corrupted meta data. Same goes with video formats.

Nick

U_Fig

the files play ok i just reinstalled a new system i changed from a HDD to SSD but the file is on the original HDD just connected in the optical drive bay.. it's not a driver issue as the files play ok and it's noting to to with itunes at all.. i think it might have been the Picard program alright.. it seems to only effect a few files.. i don't think i'll stop using it as the benifit out weighs the small problem i'm having

yoyo

U_Fig wrote: »

the files play ok i just reinstalled a new system i changed from a HDD to SSD but the file is on the original HDD just connected in the optical drive bay.. it's not a driver issue as the files play ok and it's noting to to with itunes at all.. i think it might have been the Picard program alright.. it seems to only effect a few files.. i don't think i'll stop using it as the benifit out weighs the small problem i'm having

Interesting, you may have installed a Copy Controlled Audio CD infected with This malware. Sony used it for a while until they got sued! This protection installed a Windows Driver (as a rootkit) which made ripping of MP3s with any other tools impossible, causing distortion and corruption.
If you have any copy controlled CDs (will have a logo on the package) do not insert it or if you do make sure Autorun is disabled

Nick

Verres

yoyo wrote: »

Yes the player will usually attempt to play it, regardless of corrupted meta data. Same goes with video formats.

Nick

Not being nit-picky here, but I know the player will attempt to play it (ditto with video files) but I can't imagine that it would play perfectly normally without any of the header info, and the only impact would be the missing few seconds of audio...

I guess if the ID3v2 tags are added after the header, but before the audio that could account for it. But I was under the impression that ID3v2 was prefixed to the file as is.

Anyway, I'm not sure it matters - I'm just wondering.

yoyo

Verres wrote: »

Not being nit-picky here, but I know the player will attempt to play it (ditto with video files) but I can't imagine that it would play perfectly normally without any of the header info, and the only impact would be the missing few seconds of audio...

I guess if the ID3v2 tags are added after the header, but before the audio that could account for it. But I was under the impression that ID3v2 was prefixed to the file as is.

Anyway, I'm not sure it matters - I'm just wondering.

I wasn't suggesting the headers but the actual ID Tag data attached to the song. If this uses invalid charecters or whatever it could cause problems, its possible aswell for a MP3 file to be encoded badly, so parts will play but others may make strange sounds, stop playing abnormally etc. I think OPs problem was related to a dodgy driver (I'm guessing sony Rootkit) which was designed to interfere with MP3 playback

Nick

Voodu Child

Verres wrote: »

So basically the OP was converting ID3v1 to ID3v2 tags and the ID3v2 overwrote the start of the audio portion of the file? But wouldn't it also have to overwrite everything inbetween? i.e. the frame sync and channel mode header info too? Basically the file could be corrupted easily (I agree), but it would be a devastating type of corruption that would simply have ID3v2 tags, and then audio, with no other header info...

Would a file like that even play?

No, what I was suggesting is that editing the tag of a MP3 file is a full remux if you look at it on a disk sector level. It gets read into memory, demuxed, the metadata is changed and the whole thing gets remuxed back to disk and the original deleted.

Anything that involves creating a new file has the potential for corruption if the software is badly written.