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Topic: Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes. (Read 25375 times) previous topic - next topic
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Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #25 –
I think I have discovered the problem.

I ripped a track using LAME 3.97 to test to see if iTunes played that file back without stopping.  iTunes showed the file as 23:08, however, played the file through to the end at 23:25.

I used MP3Gain on the file and tried playing it with iTunes and iTunes stopped playing the file at 23:08.

Seems the problem is caused by adding APEv2 tags to the files using MP3Gain, or whatever MP3Gain does to the file to increase the volume.  This is causing iTunes to end the file early.

Edit: I was thinking about my results and they may be flawed.  The MP3s I created I did not add any ID3v2 tags too during creation.  I'll rip that song while adding ID3v2 + ID3v1 tags with EAC and see if the problem still occurs without using MP3Gain.

Edit 2: MP3s I ripped with EAC using LAME and did not tag with any tags played fine in iTunes.  However, when I added ID3v2 and ID3v1 tags with EAC during ripping the problem occurred again in iTunes.  I also tried adding the tags to the MP3s with LAME and the problem still occurred in iTunes.  I even tried just adding an ID3v1 tag to the MP3 with EAC and iTunes still stopped play early.  Finally I tried adding an ID3v2.4 tag to the MP3 with EAC and iTunes stopped playback of that file as well.  Seems like iTunes is having a problem with tags of some sort.

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #26 –
Ok, I'm back with more information.

Quesiton: Can you encode your music to MP3 using the LAME encoder and still have it work in iTunes?
Answer: NO.

At least on the Mac OS X platform, there are no encoders which will work.

CD Stack, iTunesLame, LameBrain, Max, and NMP3 Ripper do not work.
Lame versions 3.95, 3.96, and 3.97b2 have been tested.  None work.
Your songs will always be truncated no matter what encoder you use, no matter what LAME version you use, and no matter what bit rate or setting you specify (as long as it is VBR).  Every song will be truncated.

Conclusion: If you use iTunes and/or an iPod, you cannot use any version of LAME or any encoder utilising LAME to encode VBR mp3s properly.  CBR will work fine, but ALL VBR MP3s will have truncation problem.  This is a problem with iTunes (specifically header information).

Until there is a fix (either from Apple or 3rd party), that seems to be it!

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #27 –
As a test I made an 80 min test file with a wave editor. First I repeated an arbitrary music sample so that the track duration was exactly 78 minutes. For the last two minutes I looped a selected 5.000 second sample 24 times and got an exact duration of 80 min 0.000 s. This 5 s sample has clearly distinguishable start and end passages so it is easy the count the amount during listening.

Then I converted this wave file to MP3 using LAME 3.97b2 -V5 --vbr-new. The resulting MP3 file did not have any ID3 or APE tags.

Foobar could play the MP3 file without problems. It stopped playback correctly after the 24th five second loop.

Windows iTunes 6.0.4.2 was different story. According to its display it started playing these 5 s loops at 1:18:51 instead of 1:18:00. It stopped playback at about one second before the 14th loop ended (the display showed 1:20 at that moment). So iTunes truncated about 51 seconds from the end of the track. (= a bit over ten 5 s loops).

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #28 –
I tested the behavior a bit more.

I encoded three additional VBR MP3 files from the same source file with Helix, FhG and iTunes.

Here's how the files played with iTunes:

Helix (makes a standard Xing header)
iTunes displayed the file length as 1:20:00. According to the display iTunes started to play the 5 s loops at 1:18:51 (similarly with LAME), but this time iTunes continued to play them all. At the end the display showed 1:20:51.

FhG (I used Wavelab 5 for encoding, probably the file has Fraunhofer's VBRI header)
The file length was displayed only as 1:11:20. The 5 s loops started at 1:09:53. iTunes played all 24 loops. At the end the display showed 1:11:53.

iTunes (a hex editor shows the word "Xing" in the header area, but I have no idea if this differs from a regular Xing header)
The file length was displayed as 1:20:00. The 5 s loops started at 1:17:57. iTunes played all 24 loops. At the end the display showed 1:19:57.


Edit: fixed a mistake (the iTunes "start" time was incorrectly 1:17:53, and VRI > VBRI )

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #29 –
So, nothing got it right on ay 80 minutes, 0 seconds...   

I ripped more CDs using iTunes built-in encoder w/VBR.  Flawless.
However, it isn't really LAME.  iTunes 6.0.4(3) seems to have a much better encoder than the previous ones, and I will not inject bias for no reason: I would really like to see if there are ABX tests for LAME 3.97b2 vs iTunes 6.0.4(3) anywhere. 

Anyone know of any?

I guess I'll just have to CBR them all!

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #30 –
Unfortunately when searching I did not come across this, so I started another topic here.

What I've been seeing is CD to LAME VBR via EAC seems to scrub fine (meaning you can fast forward) and tracks play through OK to the end in iTunes.

However if I convert something like FLAC to WAV to LAME VBR, I get the problem with the track cutting out towards the end if I've skipped around and forwarded through the track.  This problem only occurs in iTunes on both Mac and Windows.  Other players on Windows (foobar 2000 and Winamp) seem fine and the Finder in Mac OS X plays through completely to the end even while forwarding through tracks.

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #31 –
The solution is really simple: ditch iTunes.

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #32 –
So what are the steps to replicate this problem?

My library is almost entirely LAME VBR mp3s and I've never experienced this problem.

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #33 –
Everyone should contact apple and complain about it saying to either fix the problem (itunes 6.0.5.xx is still doing the same thing) or to use lame as there standard mp3 encoder.

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #35 –
Quote from: kiyoshi on
So, nothing got it right on ay 80 minutes, 0 seconds...   

On iTunes display, no, but the important difference is that all other MP3 files played up to the very end of the audio content. Only the LAME encoded VBR file was truncated. The playback stopped about 51 seconds before the real end of the audio content.


Quote from: Fuchal on
So what are the steps to replicate this problem?

My library is almost entirely LAME VBR mp3s and I've never experienced this problem.

I explained how you can reproduce the problem. Wasn't that clear?

For example: Open any long audio track in a wave editor and paste some speech like "one-two-three-four" 20 times after the original content. Then just encode the file and test how many "one-two-three-four"s iTunes can play.

It seems that the error is smaller with short files and increases when the file duration is longer.


Edit: Make sure that the test file doesn't contain silence at the end of the track.

Edit 2: In case this wasn't obvious, I didn't try to play the complete 80 min tracks without skipping towards to the end of the tracks.

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #36 –
OK, I sat down and tried to replicte the problem.  I was able to do it with relative ease.  I tested six different songs:
Korn - My Gift To You
Korn - Dirty
Korn - Daddy
Korn - Kill You
Korn - When Will This End
And I threw in a 4:37 track, Korn - Clown

All of them had problems in iTunes if I skipped ahead in the tracks.  There is a song at the end of My Gift To You called Earache My Eye, iTunes cut into this song by 5 seconds.  There is static at the end of Dirty and iTunes cut this off by 15 seconds, there is some dialogue at the end of Daddy and iTunes cut this off by 20 seconds, there is a acapela version of Twist at the end of Kill You and iTunes cut this off by 3 seconds, and there is a live version of One at the end of When Will This End and iTunes cut this one off by 1 second.

So, I thought that iTunes did this because all these tracks were 8 minutes and longer.  So I tried Clown which is a 4 minute and 37 second track.  I played the track from the beginning and counted how many times "Your just a f**ken' little" is said at the end of the song.  He says it 7 times then the song ends 2 seconds later.  iTunes played it fine without me skipping ahead.  I then played it again but I skipped ahead by 2 seconds.  Well, at the end of the song, he only said it 6 times which means that iTunes cut off a total of 9 seconds on a 4:37 track.

I am really dissapointed now.  I don't want to use any other mp3 encoder other than Lame.  My 5G 60GB iPod plays everything fine, even when I skip ahead or rewind.  I only have problems with iTunes.  iTunes is fine if I transcode those Lame VBR mp3's to iTunes VBR mp3's.  iTunes is also fine with VBR mp3's encoded with Helix (RealOne player) and VBR mp3's with Nero's PowerPack Lame plug-in.

I am going to bug Apple about this now and send them a e-mail about once a week.  I wish Apple would just use the Lame mp3 encoder in iTunes instead of the Fhg one.  I don't remember where I heard this but, I heard that Apple might be fixing this problem at their conferance in August.

P.S.  The solution is not to ditch iTunes.  Sure, it may be a resource hog in Windows but it is the only software that can easily integrate with the iPod and the iTunes Music store, it has a clean UI, and I have been using it since 2003 and really don't want to learn any other jukebox that looks like it was made in the basment of a Linux fanatic (not that there's anything wrong with Linux or Unix).

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #37 –
At first I doubted that this issue existed, but recently I transcoded an audio book from eight casette tapes to a single VBR MP3 for my mom, and the resulting file, when played in iTunes lops off about forty seconds of the end. The amount of time removed from the end of each LAME MP3 is relative to the length of the file and is also tied to the bit rate of the file. A long, low bit rate file, suffers the most.

I've noticed that some of my favorite podcasts, when encoded with LAME also exhibit this issue. Some of my longer Japanese lessons are missing large chunks at the end.

This is an iTunes issue and not an issue with LAME, but unfortunately, that's a little like having an Internet Explorer-incompatible website. I wonder if Apple will address this issue, or just enjoy the fact that it forces some LAME die-hards to AAC.

Anyway, my appologies to those I expressed my doubt to earlier in this thread.

iTunes is not the slickest, or most capable player (that would be Foobar, which I also love) but we come  back to iTunes, quirks and all, because it is insanely comfortable, and the organizational aspects of it are second to none.

I hope Apple cares to resolve this issue.

Horrible: LAME VBR MP3 in iTunes.

Reply #38 –
I'd just like to add my 2 cents worth, which might not even be worth that much, as I'm just echo-ing the complaints previously expressed.
I produce 4 podcasts each week. On average, they each run between 15 - 25 minutes.
The 44.1kHz 16 bit stereo wav's are encoded to --vbr-new -V5 using 3.97b2.
iTunes (I've so far tried v5.0, and v6.02) ALWAYS cuts off the last 10 seconds (or thereabouts). Yes, I am jumping to the end of the files to check them... I've never actually let it play all the way through to see if that would work properly.
Interestingly though, I've never had a listener e-mail to complain about this phenomenon.
Bizarre.
Cheers,
Bruce.
www.audio2u.com
The home of quality podcasts
(including Sine Language, a weekly discussion on all things audio)