mp3 players

[Jesse James]

I was curious, but some current .mp3's I have uploaded to my computer, while playing, will get this staticy/garbled noise right in the middle of them.

Like everything's fine, then bam this noise occurs...  And if I click on the scrolling bar for the file as it plays, it kicks back into playing normal, but for some reason  it seems to do this rather often, and it seems to happen right at the same point in time in the file as it plays.

Any of you have any expertise with this and can explain what that weird distortion is perhaps?  

I use Winamp to play my .mp3's now (Though I don't like it, and miss whatever it was I had before, but don't know what that was), if that helps at all?

Any advice is appreciated for what is probably a stupid question.  

[jokabofe]

if i'm not mistaken, that is what the labels are doing to avoid people pirating music. this way you really can't listen to it, even if you legally own the "real" disc and make the mp3's yourself for personal use.

[Jesse James]

Thanks for the tip Dave.

Hmmmm, I wonder if there's anything to get around this or even how it's done really?  It's all very confusing.  I'd heard of something like this but hadn't experienced it till now so I found it quite suprising.

Blah, just when I got things straightened around on my system.

[CorranHorn]

LOL! I can't believe you just asked this question.  

Joka's explanation is dead on as to what the record industry is doing nowadays to thwart pirating. Many CD's have a form of encryption on parts of the discs that allow for them to be copied (either to another CD or into MP3 format) but some or all of the songs will have distortions come up that may make listening unbearable.

Also keep in mind where you are getting the mp3's from. In some cases you are getting sabotaged copies sent out by the record industry or you are getting trojan horses from idiots who like to send spyware, adware, virus, executables, etc hidden in a package that's supposed to be an mp3. Also there's always the possiblity whoever created the mp3 just made a bad copy, though that rarely happens nowadays, it was something I saw often during the early days of P2P music sharing.

Oh and one final thing JJ... GO DOWNLOAD MOZILLA ALREADY!!!  

[Jesse James]

Hey, I gotta ask this somehow ya know?  And I'm not worried about all that junk they might embed on these files.  I'm protected.  Ad-Aware snuffs that crap out like a mutha, as the youths may say.

And no, Mozilla will NOT be on my system so long as I have an oz. of fight left in me against IE.  I WILL make it work...  I HAVE made it work.  

Things are running dandy now.  Knock on circuit board.

[SilverZ]

Jesse, are these your own rips or downloaded ones? There's a couple things you could try to see if it helps at all, but it sounds like a funky problem you're having there. I haven't run into that before.

Try normalizing the tracks with mp3gain, which is a lossless adjustment, that scans the tracks and reduces gain so they don't clip, which sorta sounds like whats going on with your files, but again, to a funky extreme. It's a super-quick test though:

mp3gain

If you're making your own rips, use EAC, that does bit for bit file comparisions, and might work around some stupid encryption attempt publishers have added:

Exact Audio Copy

Worth a shot, I guess...

J

[Jesse James]

Thanks for the tips Zed...

These are just d/l's I'm getting, and don't really know even how to make a .mp3, haha.  

I'm being told by friends that I have to just d/l 3 or 4 times before I get a decent copy of a file sometimes.  Oh well.

[JoshEEE]

I've gotta say, when I've ripped my own CDs to take the music to the gym on my little player.....I have these once in awhile....and I know it's not a trojan or anything. I always thought it was either because I was taxing the processor while encoding or because of a bad CD drive or something.

I'll try Silver Zed's tips next time, but I was using WMA...so I'm not sure it they apply.

[obi_robz]

I use dBPowerAmp Music Converter (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/dmc.htm) to make my mp3’s. You can also get around piracy protection by taking an analogue recording first (onto Mini Disc etc.) and then using dMC to make an MP3 in real time as you play the recording back through your soundcard.

[SPIDERLEGS]

It has to do with how the file is ripped. It has nothing to do with piracy protection as far as I know. Also, sometimes there are "hiccups" while downloading. Sometimes, these are responsible for glitches. If you have SoundForge, there is a "glitch error" repairer...

I use dB Power Amp, too...

[Jesse James]

Soundforge?

Hmmm, all very confusing, haha...  I wish I had the old program that played my .mp3's too, but when I reformatted I lost it also.

It was a nice little simple program that looked very "Windows"-ish.  It was just grey with a blue titlebar and all.  I hate WinAmp, it loads slowly it seems and just isn't an attractive .mp3 player.  Plus, it didn't want to open more than one Winamp at a time but rather would close the playing .mp3 and open another (I liked opening multiple .mp3's instead of running a playlist).  Wish I even knew what it was I was using before, haha.

Well, I may have to just keep trying with my files...  I'll get clean versions sometime I'm sure.