Hi all,

I recently received some MP3s from my friend. They played just fine on my computer, but when I use MP3Gain to do a radio analysis on them, it said "Error analyzing..." those files. So I checked them with mp3Trim. mp3Trim showed that the files has errors with "Channel Mode" in "Advanced Info". Then I checked them with EncSpot and it said the files were encoded with "Lame" (no version number). It seems the files are somewhat corrupted. How can I fix the problem? Thanks for reply.

William

It's possible that those mp3's were encoded with an earlier LAME version that didn't write the header info that mp3gain needs...I think LAME started that with v 3.90

Are there any solutions then, besides re-encoding everything?

I'm really not sure...I haven't tried MP3Gain yet...Tangent, any ideas?

No idea. Snelg?
I think you may need a utility to fix corrupted mp3s or something like that.

I've seen EncSpot tell me lame versions as far back as 3.87...

Probably these files were encoded with GoGo which is based on LAME.
EncSpot shows these files as they were encoded with LAME(no version is detected)

Just found one that says Lame 3.83

Yeah, sounds like they're corrupted a bit.
Do you have the very latest version of mp3gain? (GUI 0.6.3, back end 2001-12-28)
I recently tweaked a few things that help the mpg123 library handle corrupt mp3 files a little better (before anyone asks, the tweaks I had would probably not be good to put back in LAME, for various reasons).

If that doesn't work, upload one of the bad mp3 files somewhere and I'll have a look at it.

-Glen

I finally told my friend to use LAME 3.91 and alt-preset standard to re-rip everything. Thanks guys.

@Snelg
Sorry I cannot upload the files due to copyright issues. Thanks for your help. MP3 Gain is great.

I just built gogo from sources (3.01) enspot can tell gogo versions after 3.0 i guess

Well, you can get 3.08 at my page.

About LAme versions... I've seen as far back as 3.70 on EncSpot.

well thats the only source i had for gogo.

Yes, i think this was the first version which embedded it's version number into the MP3 files.

I understand your concern, but if I were looking for free music I could use much more efficient methods

I'm still kind of curious about what sort of corruption mp3gain is not handling, even though the files play. If you'd be so kind as to at least run the command-line version of mp3gain and let me know what the output says, I'd appreciate it.

-Glen

@Snelg
The command-line version says:

01.mp3
Free format not currently supported
ERROR: Not enough samples in 01.mp3 to do analysis

The file is encoded in 128kbps CBR.

At last, I still uploaded the file here (about 3MB). Simply rename .jpg to .zip and the file can be extracted.

I am afraid that you don't understand what the guy is singing, because he is singing in Chinese. But I think you can still investigate it.

I am not sure if it is really encoded by Lame, as I just noticed in MAD that the file is encoded with intensity stereo.

Please be quick if you want to get the file. I will soon remove it.

what about mp3 "uncook"?
what does it do?
does it help "improved" mp3 sound?


thx

Ah. Free format is, indeed, unsupported. So the question is whether or not it's actually free format, or if it's just corrupt enough to confuse mp3gain.

Got the file. Thanks.

-Glen

You're welcome

Ah-hah. This file (and presumably the others) isn't corrupted, but it's slightly mislabeled. It's an MPEG 1.0 layer 2 file, not layer 3. Mp3gain doesn't currently support layer 2 files.

In fact, mp3gain will never be able to do layer 2 files the way it does layer 3 files, because layer 2 files don't have that handy gain field in each frame.

The full Replay Gain proposed standard could be implemented in layer 2 files (i.e. store the Radio gain and Album gain values inside the file, and whatever program is playing the file will have to know where to look for these values). That's a little ways off, though.

So there ya have it.

-Glen

Thanks a lot!
I think I will have something to do with my friend then.