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Topic: Follow-up to MAC errors (Read 6958 times) previous topic - next topic
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Follow-up to MAC errors

After much discussion and trying what everyone was suggesting to try with MAC. I had no success.  My next step was to try anoughter lossless encoder so i downloaded Lpac.  Extracted the same two Cds with EAC then used the GUI on Lpac....perfect!!
Still can not figuire out what was wrong with Monkey 3.96 on my computer. Why one Lossless worked and the other didn't.  I've not read a bad thing about Monkey.  Any comments on what might have been the problem?  Is Lpac reputable and reliable?  Seemed to work OK so far.  I am looking for quality. 
Thanks everyone who commented on my original message
What if the Hokey Pokey....is What it's all about?

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #1
Quote
Originally posted by smg
Is Lpac reputable and reliable?  Seemed to work OK so far.


Yes, it's been around for quite a long time, and scored very well on Speek's test:
http://home.wanadoo.nl/~w.speek/comparison.htm

Another lossless encoder that scores well (with compression similar to LPAC) and has a fantastic hybrid feature is WavPack. Besides, it's quite fast. Get more info here:
http://www.wavpack.com

Regards;

Roberto.

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #2
Quote
Originally posted by smg
Still can not figuire out what was wrong with Monkey 3.96 on my computer. Why one Lossless worked and the other didn't.  I've not read a bad thing about Monkey.


People have been increasingly reporting problems with 3.9x that can not be explained away with 'bad hardware'.  e.g. post #17 here from the Monkey's Audio forum.

If you have extracted a WAV file and encode it twice and get errors in the same spot it is highly likely that you have found a bug in either the encoder or decoder.  Then try and chop the WAV file down to a small piece that can reproduce the problem and send it to Matt.  If there is a bug he would be glad to have a sample so he can fix it.

Josh

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #3
SMG, did you try archiving large .ace package and decompressing it with WinAce? I'm 99% sure the problem is in hardware for everyone who has problems with MAC. I have recently seen one brand new motherboard (with VIA chipset) to fail in the test and one older VIA board that was a broken and self repaired. Both of these systems work flawlessly with everything else, one can compress MP3s, MPCs, run games and see no problems. But when they are used to decompress large .ace archives they both produce CRC errors. Both systems can decompress flawlessly when they are underclocked.

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #4
Case
    Why I'm not computer illiterate, neither am I a computer Guru
I was not exactly sure what you were wanting me to try.  I can not mess with the clocking on my system.  the bios won't let me access anything other then normal things.  Weirdest bios I've ever seen.  I Have A Gateway Computer athlon 950MHz, 256meg ram,  Bios is American Megatrend v02.02
Hey I'm open to any suggestions ( My gravestone will read,  "could Not leave well enough alone" ).  Lpac seems to be working fine however everything I read tells me I want Monkey
It's an ego thing I am known for my quality music, Stereo, Speakers.  I want the best.
What if the Hokey Pokey....is What it's all about?

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #5
Quote
Originally posted by jcoalson


People have been increasingly reporting problems with 3.9x that can not be explained away with 'bad hardware'.  e.g. post #17 here from the Monkey's Audio forum.

If you have extracted a WAV file and encode it twice and get errors in the same spot it is highly likely that you have found a bug in either the encoder or decoder.  Then try and chop the WAV file down to a small piece that can reproduce the problem and send it to Matt.  If there is a bug he would be glad to have a sample so he can fix it.


Test with 50 GByte of LPACs worked very well.
I don't saw any problem.

On the other hand I estimate that 20% of the todays computers are rotten hardware. So problems
with MAC which is sensitive to hardware problems
are not as seldom issue.

MP3 encoder can generate MP3s on neraly usuable hardware, quality drop a littel bit, but find this in a lossy encoder.
--  Frank Klemm

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #6
You don't need to mess with anything, you can simply try WinAce to see if that works well on your computer. All you need to do is download the archiver and make archive of for example windows directory with largest dictionary size. If you can decompress it without problems I'm reasonably sure your system is fine. If you get errors there is problem with some component on your system. Btw, the reason I'm suggesting the use of WinAce is that it was only archiver that showed problems with the mentioned systems. I don't know why other programs didn't have problems.

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #7
So are these problems with MAC during the encoding or decoding process?

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #8
Encoding. Otherwise they would be playable by Winamp plugin that decodes slowly, thus not triggering any errors.

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #9
Case
I did as you suggested with WinAce zipped 154 meg file then decompressed ( very fast zipp and unzip ) and had no problems.

Must be something with Monkey
What if the Hokey Pokey....is What it's all about?

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #10
Quote
Originally posted by smg
I did as you suggested with WinAce zipped 154 meg file then decompressed ( very fast zipp and unzip ) and had no problems.

Must be something with Monkey

Sorry, did you use zip format? I have only seen the problem with ace format, zip has never caused problems, it's too simple. If you used ACE format then atleast your system is good enough for it.
Edit: Make sure you used Good compression with WinAce. Faster settings don't stress system enough.

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #11
Quote
Originally posted by Case

Sorry, did you use zip format? I have only seen the problem with ace format, zip has never caused problems, it's too simple. If you used ACE format then atleast your system is good enough for it.
Edit: Make sure you used Good compression with WinAce. Faster settings don't stress system enough.


From the exact error description and the exact hardware description I got I made a query to my error data base. 671684 enties matched. Should I send all on a 5 DVD set?
--  Frank Klemm

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #12
Frank
      So are you saying my problem is software or hardware?
What if the Hokey Pokey....is What it's all about?

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #13
Quote
Originally posted by smg
Frank
      So are you saying my problem is software or hardware?


He says your problem is that you didn't mention your hardware and software specs, nor explained the error, so that people can try to hunt down the bug.

Do something like this:

Code: [Select]
OS:

MotherBoard:

Chipset:

CPU:

Memory:

HDD size (maybe):

Error description: (Error messages, crashes what

and when, happens sometimes or always...)


That should be enough.

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #14
rjamorim
  Sorry, This was meant to be a follow-up to a previous post where all that info was givin.  Didn't mean to confuse anyone.  By the tone of your reply I guess I'm starting to annoy people Thanks everyone for the help.  Lpac seems to be working fine.  Monkey does not work on my system I'll leave it at that.
What if the Hokey Pokey....is What it's all about?

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #15
Quote
Originally posted by smg
rjamorim
By the tone of your reply I guess I'm starting to annoy people


Tone? What tone?
I'm sorry, if I sounded strange (?), but I just wanted to clarify that people want to know your system specs and error reports so that the issue can be dealt accordingly.

Hope I didn't offend you. I'm really sorry.

Roberto.

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #16
The hardware mentioned on MAC BB is known
to be suitable for destroying data.

May be you can web-browse a little bit with it,
but it is unusable to reliable process data.
--  Frank Klemm

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #17
Frank Klemm
    Thanks.  After all these problems I'm just going to go with Lpac.  I don't seem to have any problems with this lossless encoder.  It just struck me funny that I could use most others and not Monkey.  It still does not make sense to me, I think they both operate pretty much the same way don't they?  Oh Well!!!
Once again thanks everybody.  I used to think that i knew alot about digital music, but this forum has taught me alot.  I hope this forum does not change because I still have alot to learn and maybe someday I'll be able to contribute
Thanks
What if the Hokey Pokey....is What it's all about?

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #18
Quote
Originally posted by smg
Frank Klemm
     Thanks.  After all these problems I'm just going to go with Lpac.  I don't seem to have any problems with this lossless encoder.  It just struck me funny that I could use most others and not Monkey.  It still does not make sense to me, I think they both operate pretty much the same way don't they?  Oh Well!!!
Once again thanks everybody.  I used to think that i knew alot about digital music, but this forum has taught me alot.  I hope this forum does not change because I still have alot to learn and maybe someday I'll be able to contribute
Thanks


But I think MAC is still not the problem. May be LPAC do not hit
the weak points of your unreliable system so exactly as MAC.

Try to compress and decompress the same file on another computer. Do the compress and uncompress multiple times
and compare the results. If the results are different your computer
is well prepared to damage data. For instance copying data from
one drive to another can damage data.
--  Frank Klemm

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #19
Quote
Originally posted by smg

It's an ego thing I am known for my quality music, Stereo, Speakers.  I want the best.


Any lossless compression will give the same (perfect) quality. All that varies is compression ratio. So quality wise, having a lossless encoder, you already have the best. (Although you could have stuck with WAV and got the same quality. :-)

 

Follow-up to MAC errors

Reply #20
Quote
Originally posted by smg
Frank Klemm
     Thanks.  After all these problems I'm just going to go with Lpac.  I don't seem to have any problems with this lossless encoder.  It just struck me funny that I could use most others and not Monkey.  It still does not make sense to me, I think they both operate pretty much the same way don't they?  Oh Well!!!
Once again thanks everybody.  I used to think that i knew alot about digital music, but this forum has taught me alot.  I hope this forum does not change because I still have alot to learn and maybe someday I'll be able to contribute
Thanks


I've added a mechanism in 3.96b7 which tries to detect
hardware problems. These are RAM and CPU problems.
Harddisk problems are not detected.

Uploaded this evening at http://www.uni-jena.de/~pfk/mpp/
--  Frank Klemm