I recently purchased a Creative Zen Touch 40gb player. I have been in the proccess of converting much of my cd collection to mp3 and storing on my player. It works fine for what I need it for BUT...WHY do some songs and some complete cd's that have been converted have a static or crackling sound in places? It does not affect every cd or song just certain ones! I have tried cheap koss earbuds, $200.00 plus ultimate ears earbuds and the ones that came with the player. It's the same on all of them. I'm using the creative labs software for conversion to mp3, and I have tried Media player 10..same problem with both. Encoding at 320kbps. Could it be the cd's are mastered badly or maybe the bitrate I'm using? Any ideas would certainly be appreciated!!

Thanks!!!! Davo55

Does it go away when you use replaygain?

Also, you should probably read the FAQ in th MP3 forum here and use the recommended software instead of whatever shitware creative ships these days.

Use EAC + LAME for your rips/encodes. 320kbps is overkill--try V3 or V4 VBR new.
'Nuff said.

Sounds like your mp3's may be clipping. Try mp3gain.

Like odius_m said: use EAC/Lame und you'll be fine. Tutorial: http://users.pandora.be/satcp/eac00.htm
(warning: it's outdated but I couldn't find any newer)

I have investigated certain ripping softwares and CD drives. Both of them can produce crackling noise in the ripped audio clips. Try using a better CD drive.