I have found that many MP3's (in particular, the ones that I ripped from CD with Real Player) are opened by Cool Edit with a complaint - stating that
The file info box says:
"Unknown Headerless RAW data"
Then when I open the file, it asks me to select the Sample Rate, Resolution, Mone/Stereo. Then it asks whether the MP3 is 16-bit Intel, 16-bit Motorola, 8-but mu-Law, or 8-bit A-Law. Finally, the file opens, as maximized, pure noise. No matter what selections I make it always opens as noise.
Test1 - I thought that meant the RIFF header was missing, but when I tested my hypothesis by creating MP3's with LAME and unchecking the "prepend RIFF header" box - Cool Edit opened the MP3 flawlessly.
Test2 - Next I thought that maybe Cool Edit can't deal with Joint Stereo. So I converted a 44.1 16-bit wav to a 192 kbps Joint Stereo MP3 using WinLAME. It opened in Cool Edit flawlessly. Odd though - the file info says it is a Stereo MP3, while Winamp correctly identifies it as Joint Stereo. Also, Cool Edit showed all the file info, and did not complain about a "headerless" MP3, even though in WinLAME I unchecked the "prepend RIFF" box !!
I have also had this problem opening MP3's that I downloaded from the Web.
I am using Cool Edit Pro v1.2 with the MP3 flt.dll plugin (Fraunhofer).
Any tips on how to open these files in Cool Edit? I don't want to transcode them due to quality loss. Also any idea why Cool Edit will not open them?? Any idea why Cool Edit sees the file info with the WinLAME MP3's where I unchecked the RIFF header box??
I need to edit MP3's in Cool Edit because I like to fix poor quality ones (filter, add bass, treble, filter noise, etc).
I have heard there is a better MP3 plugin than the flt.dll - but when I went to Cool Edit's website it ported me to Adobe, who bought Syntrillium and have renamed the product and removed all support !!!! Nice move, Adobe.