Several of my mp3s that formerly were perfectly fine are now unplayable ever since I edited the Id3v1 and Id3v2 tags.

How can I make them work again?

All I did was change the artist, title and album info. I have done this hundreds, if not thousands of times before, using the identical renaming and audio player software, and it has never made an mp3 unplayable.

renaming program: Willow Boupy File Database, aka WB File Manager
audio player: Zoom Player, Media PLayer Classic, Windows Media Player, none can play the files

Windows XP

many thanks!

why don't you try erasing the tags completely. perhaps use mp3tag instread to delete tags. i have had perfect files get a glitch from tags. i then deleted tags and they were fine.

sometimes its the app you use as it may have some problem and make invalid headers or maybe use to much padding.

k, followed this suggestion but it didn't work Anyone have further ideas?

but THANK YOU for clueing me in to mp3tag.....it's terrific, much easier than what I used before to edit tags....(DUH...never occurred to me that there would be good user-friendly tag editors out there)

Additional info, possibly helpful:

I *think* I edited the tags on the half-dozen files that ended up corrupted all during the same session of having my file manager/renamer program open. I was exiting and restarting the program a number of times and perhaps it got a bug only during that one time.

And/or --

I remember some of the files had very long comments, longer than I've ever used (several paragraphs - an entire record review). I deleted that coz I didn't want it. Don't see how this could have anything to do with it but I'm putting this out there as an unusual thing that distinguishes the files in question -- if memory serves!

well as sort of a last resort (if you cannnot or its difficult to get those files again) you could decode those files to wav and then they should be free of any tags or tag effects. then re-encode them back. Use a simple app like lamedrop that will simply decode the files with no tags.

Thanks again! Lame Drop and its website are new to me; seems terrific -- *enormously* faster at converting mp3 to wav than anything else I have!


LameDrop did convert them into playable wav files, but strangely they now play too fast -- I would say 5% or so. I may try doing something about that, or else just obtain fresh files.

I'd try opening those mp3's in mp3DirectCut. If they'll open, ya should be able to restore them by resaving. (and it'll be a lossless process)

BULLSEYE! WOW! Thanks!

mp3DirectCut did the trick. Doesn't get any easier than that!

And yet another great free audio program. Odd, either this stuff didn't exist ~3 years ago when I looked for a cheap/free simple audio recorder/editor (nothing fancy, just record from LPs and cut-paste -- ended up with PolderBits which I'm happy with), or I missed it even though I thought I had a good look through the forums etc.