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Topic: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3? (Read 8990 times) previous topic - next topic
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do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

hi
may i ask you if you perform sometime a check for errors on your mp3 audio songs ?

and do you know some tools to fix them?

for example i have ripped with eac+lame 3.100 (all my mp3 are @320k )most of my flaming lips cds some months ago

yesterday i check with foobar verify integrety and for 4 songs  i get this error
Code: [Select]
Warning: Reported length is inaccurate : 4:13.140658 vs 4:13.114535 decoded
Error: MPEG stream error at 7679735 bytes
and for 3 songs i get this error
Code: [Select]
 Error: MPEG stream error at 5288453 bytes

i have used even audiotester , according to audiotester almost all my songs are (TRUNCATED)

my flaming lips cds have no scratch are perfect ,should i fix with foobar tools or re-rip ?
what does cause these errors ?
i have used mp3tag to add covers

thanks

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #1
I create par2 files for all my albums. When I have created the audio files, log files and places a cover.jpg/folder.jpg file in the album folder I then create par2 files using 10% recovery record. If errors occur needing less than 10% of the total size of all the files then I can repair them. I can't help you with what is/are the cause(s) to your errors and what you should do, unfortunately.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #2
I create par2 files for all my albums. When I have created the audio files, log files and places a cover.jpg/folder.jpg file in the album folder I then create par2 files using 10% recovery record. If errors occur needing less than 10% of the total size of all the files then I can repair them. I can't help you with what is/are the cause(s) to your errors and what you should do, unfortunately.
hi
may i know what software do you use to create par2  QuickPar?
and do you think foobar component file integrety verifier is a valid trusty tool to check my audio file?
thank you so much!

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #3
In Linux I use PyPar2 which is a simple GUI and in Windows I use MultiPar. MultiPar I think now supports subdirectories which older/other versions or programs did not. I haven't tried any verify component in Foobar2000 so I can unfortunately not give you any advice on that. I actually use par2 a lot of things now a days. All my DVD's with material I do not want to lose has been saved several times because of the par2 files.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #4
For DVD and BR backups I am using dvdisaster, which augments image with parity information - I usually leave 15% of space for that. Saved a few DVDs with that. Software works best in Linux as it supports multicore parity making.
Error 404; signature server not available.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #5
This is one of the reasons to rip to FLAC, which is checksummed. (And: foobar2000 cannot detect all errors, while audiotester yells "Bad ID3" very often.)

But anyway: "repairing" will typically only hide the error, building a compliant stream with the erroneous audio, so I use that very rarely. Backup is my friend.

Par2-protection does not help against "intentional" overwrites - well, maybe it does if the recovery record is larger than the metadata section? Or does the file have to stay the same size? If there is an issue during overwrite of audio, I would take it that it is because the new metadata section is too big - will then par2 protect against a hole in the middle of the file?
Better would be to avoid overwriting audio. In foobar2000, one can use foo_tags to keep metadata writing in separate files.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #6
For DVD and BR backups I am using dvdisaster, which augments image with parity information - I usually leave 15% of space for that. Saved a few DVDs with that. Software works best in Linux as it supports multicore parity making.
hi , i'm on windows , and sometime under macos sierra , sadly i don't have any linux distro installed
does it work dvdisaster well under windows?
thanks

Quote
This is one of the reasons to rip to FLAC, which is checksummed. (And: foobar2000 cannot detect all errors, while audiotester yells "Bad ID3" very often.)
@Porcus
hi i'm rip to flac too , but i have ripped many cd in mp3 ,just because my car stereo reads mp3 and wma(windows media audio) , it doesn't read flac or opus sadly

thanks to everyone

 

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #7
Back ups and a pair of hashes.  I use mostly FLAC (CD rips, anything recorded at home), but do have MP3s (from people that do their own remixes) & ACC L/C (iTunes store).

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #8
It's interesting to read about people's use of parity software and generating hashes but wouldn't it be better to just use a modern filesystem?  Particularly if using Linux.

Store your media on a filesystem like BTRFS and you'll have no need to generate hashes, use parity software or use particular tools to check for data errors for particular file formats.

BTRFS, for example, provides built-in data checksumming so you'd set-up each drive to be mirrored for redundancy - your data would exist on two (or more) different devices.  When you run a scrub command on the filesystem (which you'd set up to automatically run monthly), it'll check the integrity of ALL data stored on the filesystem, regardless of file format.  So that's your .mp3, your .flac, your obscure .rma, your ancient .mpg p0rn; everything.

If a scrub reveals any errors, it'll check the data integrity of other drive(s) holding the same data and automatically replace the corrupted data with the good version.  Entirely self-healing.   Other modern filesystems, such as ZFS, act in much the same way (although Apple's proprietary modern filesystem cannot do this because bafflingly they decided not to implement data checksumming).

And it doesn't stop at self-healing, either.   With snapshotting, you can make copies of your entire system that can be preserved 'frozen-in-time'.  So, returning to the BTRFS example, if a scrub detects data corruption that somehow BTRFS can't heal itself, you simply go back to your snapshot from last week/month/year and copy the clean, uncorrupted version of the file(s) over.

I haven't used Windows in a while so I don't know much about its modern filesystem support (last I heard, their proprietary ReFS was causing headaches) but if you're using Linux, the best solution to data integrity problems is to use a self-healing, modern filesystem ALONGSIDE a robust back-up policy.  Kiss goodbye to having to manually hunt-down and address data corruption.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #9
hi , i'm on windows , and sometime under macos sierra , sadly i don't have any linux distro installed
does it work dvdisaster well under windows?
thanks

It works, but it's not under active development, so only old version is available, which doesn't have multicore support. Generating augmented image can take quite some time (up to half an hour). Other than that, no problems, I've been using it for years, and it works on Windows 10, too.
Error 404; signature server not available.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #10
I do not check mine.     Several years ago I used to have "timing problems" where the player would show the wrong playing time.    I used VBRfix or MP3diags to repair them, and I haven't had any problems for a long time and I don't worry about it.

Although I've had drives completely fail, I've only had a drive that corrupted files once.  And, that was one of those old set-ups where I was using a special driver for a hard drive that was bigger than the BIOS supported.     (My MP3s were not on that drive.) 
 
I do have multiple copies of my music library on multiple computers/drives (and I have the CDs for 90% of my music), but it's not a proper back methodology and there is always the chance of "backing-up the garbage" and overwriting the good "back-up" data. 



Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #11
I have had such errors too. I found that they are mostly due the incorrect insertion method of image data (usually album artwork) into the ID3 tag.

A side-effect of using [unsolicited software] is that it fixes many of these issues.

Stacker
In the beginning there was ONLY noise, then came the signal.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #12
btrfs is not stable yet.
anyway, a better FS is nice for sure, but it doesn't make backups unnecessary.
a fan of AutoEq + Meier Crossfeed

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #13
This is one of the reasons to rip to FLAC, which is checksummed. (And: foobar2000 cannot detect all errors, while audiotester yells "Bad ID3" very often.)

But anyway: "repairing" will typically only hide the error, building a compliant stream with the erroneous audio, so I use that very rarely. Backup is my friend.

Par2-protection does not help against "intentional" overwrites - well, maybe it does if the recovery record is larger than the metadata section? Or does the file have to stay the same size? If there is an issue during overwrite of audio, I would take it that it is because the new metadata section is too big - will then par2 protect against a hole in the middle of the file?
Better would be to avoid overwriting audio. In foobar2000, one can use foo_tags to keep metadata writing in separate files.

This thing is driving me crazy with Foobar. It’s starting to appear on my mp3 files and I’m at a loss as to what to do now. The annoying thing is that even though “rebuild mp3 stream” masks the error from appearing on the console log, it just doesn’t do anything to the audio itself. You’d still hear the skip/dropout/click.
I’ve noticed that it doesn’t happen on Media Monkey. I checked the output settings on that and found it was using Direct Sound by default. I don’t like using that unfortunately, so that wasn’t really a solution and I didn’t want to start over with a new media player after all the work that went into collecting the plugins and components I have in F2K.
On the same files you’d still hear the skips on iTunes, VLC, MPC HC and all the other players I tried.
From my Internet searches, it appears that only Winamp and Media Monkey didn’t skip in the files I tested. So that means it’s in Foobar’s mpeg decoder

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #14
The files also play fine (without skips) on Android Poweramp and Neutron player

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #15
It's not uncommon for a non-compliant MP3 to work with one decoder and not with another.

Try MP3diags.  It's not an easy-intuitive tool but it's powerful,

Another thing that often works with "imperfect" MP3s is to use a conversion program to decompress (to FLAC or WAV) and then re-compress to MP3 (assuming you really want MP3).    But of course that's an additional generation of lossy compression.   Still, it might be worth if to fix skipping and to be confident that you have a valid MP3.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #16
Might it be so that some of these "work with one and not with another" are rather "gets the glitch muted by one and not by another", or are there not "smart enough" decoders?

Is it possible to use mp3directcut to isolate a broken frame and crossfade across it?

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #17
The files also play fine (without skips) on Android Poweramp and Neutron player

Following up from my two posts, I saw that on my Android and iPhone, the files were playing without a hitch. I decided to try something else.
For so long, I’ve been storing and playing my music from a high-capacity flash drive. I transferred some of the files to an SD-card and played it on the computer, lo and behold, no pops or clicks.
So I transferred my entire collection to the SD card and this particular problem seems to be in the past for me now. I’m incredibly overjoyed. The flash was a SanDisk and that will be the last time I will be buying any disk drives from that company. The only SD card I have that got faulty and was deleting files was a SanDisk and now even their flash drives have issues.
It’s great to hear my music without any issues again as I’ve been having this issue for years now
To the OP, I’d recommend looking into the storage media for your files.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #18
A few progs have been mentioned already. There is also mp3val that might be useful.

And don't forget about MP3packer that is also another option to fix borked mp3s.

Re: do you check for errors and do you fix your mp3?

Reply #19
I wonder how it is possible that inserting, for example, an album cover destroys the mp3 stream. Is it about lesser-known programs that are not fully developed? I've tagged my files with Winamp, Foobar, and MP3Tag and never experienced any MP3 integrity issues, I scanned my music folder a few months ago. The only errors I got were from downloaded mp3s from the Internet, which already had such an error and usually there was a skip or framing in this file. Fortunately, I re-downloaded most of these songs in good undamaged versions from another source, but I couldn't find some.
Sometimes with some files I get the result that the reported length is inaccurrate and this usually happens when the file is encoded with some codec other than LAME.