A new program, Audio Tester, by James Chapman has been released. It is an all-in-one solution that replaces his former OggTester and FLACTester apps. This new utility works on Windows 2000, XP and Vista, and allows you to drag and drop folders of audio files to be tested for errors.
The program is multi-format aware, and automatically tests the integrity of FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis and WavPack files. An easy to use, graphical interface rounds out this handy utlity to test the accuracy of your audio files. Easily find errors and possible corruption in your audio collection files.
Download and get more info here:
http://www.vuplayer.com/other.php (http://www.vuplayer.com/other.php)
Thanks for posting this... The ability to scan entire directories for music files is a great feature that sped up the error-checking process considerably. I checked my entire music collection in just a few hours, with just a few mouse clicks, error checking before usually required selecting each folder separately. Unfortunately this program found a number of errors in some older mp3 files. I don't really understand the errors so perhaps someone can clarify:
(BAD ID3v2 TAG) - Most of the errors found were of this kind. Can I ignore this one? I don't think this will interfere with playback, is there anyway to fix these bad tags?
(BAD STARTING SYNC) - Files with this error played back fine for me... Can't figure this out.
(LOST SYNC @ END OF FILE) - Can't figure this one out either... I listened to these files and found nothing wrong.
The sync error detection worked perfectly. It found errors in some older mp3 files that were ripped carelessly at too high a speed (not using eac), I must have missed the ticks/pops/skips before when listening, so this helped rid my collection of the corrupted files.
What kind of error checking is done with this program? Does it just decode the audio file quickly and detect breaks in the stream? perhaps someone can explain. Also how does checking a flac fingerprint differ from the error checking used by this program? Thanks
What kind of error checking is done with this program? Does it just decode the audio file quickly and detect breaks in the stream? perhaps someone can explain. Also how does checking a flac fingerprint differ from the error checking used by this program? Thanks
I'd like to know too.
What about musepack support?
IIRW, there was some new integrity check tool developed by Musepack team?
I've tried to access the vuplayer forum, but I've received some SQL critical error :|
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This program is very cool. If you have a dual core processor it will test two files simultaneously. I didn't know until I tried it out on my new computer. Cuts file testing time in half. I too would like to see mpc support and monkey's audio too. Then it would be perfect.
is this program still recommented to use?
i scanned my whole library with it about one year ago and deleted all the TRUNCATED, CRC ERROR and rebuild audiostream (with foobar)
where i had sync errors or bad id3 header. afterwards those were gone.
now i checked my library again and there are again thousands of files with sync errors.
the foobar file integrity component does not find any problem with those files, nor can i hear any when listening to them
but i want my whole library to be perfect and without uncompliant/corrupt files.
should i continue using audiotester? should i care about those sync errors? should i use the "rebuild stream" functionality in foobar? (does it reencode the file and thus have generationloss?)
should i rather switch to mp3diag for scanning mp3 files and foobar for scanning my flacs? (since it just checks the embedded md5 sum, like flac -t)
I've been reinstalling my PC, hence the late reply.
should i use the "rebuild stream" functionality in foobar? (does it reencode the file and thus have generationloss?)
That's the only question I can answer, and it does not re-encode the audio, only rearranges the valid frames. It might discard anything unrecognised as valid MPEG audio or unknown tags, so if you're reliant on something non-standard embedded in a .mp3 file or even hoping to recover a bad frame somehow, make a backup of the file first.
As to having thousands of sync errors, unless you're getting MP3 files from dubious sources I'd be suprised if it wasn't a change to some tagging standard or lame header (silent MP3-compliant frame) that occurred since 2007 that's being misinterpreted by old software that I've never used myself.
I'd have expected foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/)'s console will probably report any genuine problems in any format for which it has a decoder, and I presume the file integrity component would do a test decode of every file (otherwise use the Decode Speed Test component (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_benchmark) and view the console). The console should report any errors worth knowing about, and despite the disclaimer for the File Integrity component, it says it decodes, so I'd have thought this would cause the same information to be logged in the console.
I've been reinstalling my PC, hence the late reply.
should i use the "rebuild stream" functionality in foobar? (does it reencode the file and thus have generationloss?)
That's the only question I can answer, and it does not re-encode the audio, only rearranges the valid frames. It might discard anything unrecognised as valid MPEG audio or unknown tags, so if you're reliant on something non-standard embedded in a .mp3 file or even hoping to recover a bad frame somehow, make a backup of the file first.
As to having thousands of sync errors, unless you're getting MP3 files from dubious sources I'd be suprised if it wasn't a change to some tagging standard or lame header (silent MP3-compliant frame) that occurred since 2007 that's being misinterpreted by old software that I've never used myself.
I'd have expected foobar2000 (http://www.foobar2000.org/)'s console will probably report any genuine problems in any format for which it has a decoder, and I presume the file integrity component would do a test decode of every file (otherwise use the Decode Speed Test component (http://www.foobar2000.org/components/view/foo_benchmark) and view the console). The console should report any errors worth knowing about, and despite the disclaimer for the File Integrity component, it says it decodes, so I'd have thought this would cause the same information to be logged in the console.
thanks for your help