Program to check MP3's?

[FamStars&Straps]

I didn't know where else to put this topic...

I have around 3 GB of music on my computer, probably like most of you. Some I ripped from CD's I own, some I downloaded.

As for the ones I downloaded, sometimes when plays in Winamp, and it skips, screetches, and/or just freaks out. I also know that some that I have ripped skip because the cd was in bad shape. I have an Ipod and have been putting music on there, and every once in a while I get a song that freak's the Ipod out and it skips around and, well, freaks out. I know it isn't the Ipod because it is always those songs. I wait until the song skips on the Ipod 3 times before I take it off. But more keep popping up as I download more bad songs and rip them off of damaged CD's.

Does anyone know of a program out there that can scan Mp3's for...impurities I guess you could say?

As much as I would like to listen to all 3 gig's of music, life doesn't allow me to do that so freely.

Thanks

[Tim_axe]

The problem is that the MP3s don't acturally have any errors, so scanning for errors in the MP3 will give you nothing. The reason an MP3 will skip is because of an error that occured when the audio was being read off of your CD. If you play that CD in your home CD player, it will skip. When you put it into your computer as an MP3, the MP3 will skip because the CD would skip.

But there isn't an error in the MP3 because the encoder's job is to convert sound into MP3 compressed sound. If some of the sound was the jumble of a skip, then the MP3 is just a compressed form of that skip. There is nothing to fix in the MP3...

Hopefully I haven't confused you. If your CD is bad, you might need to get a CD repair kit or something, and then try to make that CD an MP3 again. General rule of thumb should be that if your CD plays good on a CD player, it should make a good MP3.

-Tim_axe

[manicchester]

I'm not sure if there is software that exists that checks mp3's for any impurities in the file...have you tried to clean the disks before ripping them to mp3? That might help the file quality somewhat. You could also check out http://www.gamingforce.com/forums/sh...=&threadid=489 which is a thread with some info about tweaking your pc to get better sound out of it. My best advice is to try to get the disks as clean as you can and try the rip again and see what happens.

[NetSec]

You could try 'Ashampoo Check & Convert' or 'MP3 Doctor', and they should fix any corrupted MP3s, (if it's a problem with the file itself)... They're both shareware...

Just go to download.com or somewhere and search for 'mp3 repair'...

If it's a ripping/encoding problem though, I'm not sure if they'll help at all...

[manicchester]

Has Ashampoo Check and Convert worked well for you? Just curious as to if you have gotten some good results from it.

[RoadClosed]

I have noticed a lot of the MP3 problems over the years and I can fit them in 2 categories: Bad files from the hard drive or internet and bad rips to a CD.

There is nothing you can do about bad files, since the error occurred during the original ripping process so if you play the file on your HD before ripping it and it's bad quality, trash it and get/rip another one. If it's a rare MP3, you can try editing the file and smoothing over the bad spots, but the original data wasn't captured so it's a cover up at best.

Now for ripping a CD locally there are some things you can do to reduce the amount of problems you could encounter. The first thing is to understand what is going on. I am typing this from memory so I hope my numbers are correct. A disc is recorded in a certain ISO format (ISO 9660) that is compatible with all CD players mass produced. This is a 150 kps data stream sampled at 44.1 khz. The upper threshold for human audio is 20 khz, and according the Nyquist Theorum, to effectively digitize an audio sample, it must be sampled at twice the rate of a desired frequency. 20khz times 2 is 40khz and an additional 4.1khz is added for filtering etc. It's important to realize this standard exists because that stream MUST be steady when burning to a CD. If not, the song or entire CD becomes corrupt.

So why is this important? I mean a 150 kps data stream is slow (by today’s standards) and my computer is fairly new so I should have no trouble burning a CD? Sure at 1x speed. Now take that up to 12x or 20x or 40x - wow you now need a SUSTAINED 6000 kbs at the upper end! So you’re burning a nice CD mix and you move the mouse to close a window or you type an e-mail and for just a few seconds your data rate drops a few kps while the system processes that email and you have just trashed the current track. When the CD player reads that track, that data rate drops significantly enough to cause the system to drop large chunks of data as it attempts to average in the missing pieces. This causes severe distortion in a song or the ability of the laser to track the data on the disk, ultimately causing the CD to stop spinning.

SO back your software off to 1 or 2x, and buy good quality blank CDs. Not all are the same and what works on your PC at a specific speed may not work in an ISO CD player.

Hope that helps, I get carried away over coffee sometimes.

[manicchester]

Good tip, RoadClosed. In general, to avoid problems with burning a CD just to be safe, I usually just let the computer burn a disk without anything else running at all...it ensures a safer burn. I just totally leave the computer alone when burning something I really want to work well. That's just my personal preference.

[FamStars&Straps]

Thanks for all the suggestions...well..I was messing with some partitions with SuSE on it, and, well ****ed my computer up. So, I had to factory restore. So no more Mp3's to worry about.

Thanks again.