SonicStage 4.0 doesn't play mp3, and doesn't convert correctly

[pusrob]

Hi everybody!

I have a little problem here. SS 4.0 doesn't play some mp3-s. If I convert it to ATRAC, SS starts playing, but no sound comes. If I use the scroll-bar, then sound comes too. If I transfer the music to my Net-MD player, it will be completly unplayable on my MD player. I mean my player plays it, but no sound comes, even if I "scroll" in, like in SS. The same thing occured with SS 1.5. Whats the problem again? I installed SS 4.0 yestersay! I hoped that in the new SS the problem is already fixed. I guess not. Any suggestion?

[curls]

Try converting the mp3's to wave before importing and transferring to MD. I had the same problem with SS v4.0. I am actually using v3.4 now which converts and plays OK - so far.

[pusrob]

Hello curls!

I see. What if I try wma or ogg? Wave uses too much space. I didn't have SS 3.4, I switched directly to 4.0 after 1.5, so I don't even know how 3.4 looks like. Do you think, that 3.4 is better then 4.0? Should I change? Thanks.

[raintheory]

WMA should work. OGG won't be recognized by SonicStage, regardless of version. Also SonicStage CP (4.0) is basically the same as 3.4, in other words there aren't any features in 3.4 that aren't in 4.0.

I wouldn't try downgrading to 3.4 now that you have 4.0 installed, theres really no reason to.

Check your ID3 tags on the mp3s to see if anything looks funny. SonicStage has been known to have problems with certain ID3 tags.

Edited November 10, 2006 by raintheory

[curls]

In theory there should be no reason for going back to v3.4, but if v4.0 isn't working correctly, then there's a good case for it, especially since v3.4 converts OK where v4.0 doesn't. Of course, converting to wave first works, but also gets rid of the tags, entailing a lot of typing if you want artist and track names to be shown.

Robert, you can convert to wave, transfer to your MD and then delete the waves, making sure not to delete your original mp3's of course. I also delete the oma files after transfer as I only play the original mp3's from the computer.

edit: I wonder if SS has a problem with the headers from certain versions of LAME, since re-encoding seems to work OK. Not something many people would want to do, but as I have bad tinnitus, it's not a big problem for me.

Edited November 11, 2006 by curls

[rocklegend]

I had a similar Problem and I had to reinstall my Windows XP from my disc which reinstalls the OS onto your PC without overwriting any files on the Hard Drive,After that SS played all MP3´s

[panzerschreck]

So has any of those suggestions worked? I am having the exact same problem but it's only with some of the songs. I REALLY don't feel like downgrading or really upgrading for that matter, since in the past (previous forum topics i've made about this) upgrading and downgrading have given me huge headaches and now that I finally have a version working, I would like ot keep it that way. Also, anyone suggest a good FREE mp3 to wma converter? I have downloaded a few, one was a free trial version and it only converts 60% of the song, the other one I tried makes it a PCM file or something, the files ended up being about 45 mb a piece, which I cannot have on a minidisc, or I would have 3 songs per minidisc.

[A440]

As raintheory pointed out, ID tags on mp3 files sometimes cause trouble. In your problem files, edit the ID tags down to the bare minimum, using just alphanumeric characters, nothing fancy. Some mp3 files I have downloaded have the entire artist biography in the Comment field, which is ridiculous.

Converting mp3 to wma will degrade the sound further. The files on your minidisc are going to be either ATRAC (.oma) files or (on RH units only) mp3, or they won't play. Converting the .mp3 to .wav will preserve whatever sound quality is left in the mp3. The files will be converted back down to .oma on the disc, so don't worry about the size.

The freeware version of dbPoweramp music converter should still be in Downloads, and you may be able to get an .mp3 to .wma plugin for it from www.dbpoweramp.com if you need it for some reason. But I don't see any reason to use .wma unless you are desperate for hard drive space.

Edited November 12, 2006 by A440

[panzerschreck]

Anyone try this with ver 4.2? I am so confused with this whole thing. I am not very..savy with these kind of things. I did however check the ID tags and everything was normal. Can anyone break this down on how you're supposed to get around this issue without using advanced words?

[A440]

Convert your problem mp3 files to .wav (which is also called PCM) and then import them into SonicStage again, and you should be able to transfer them to the MD. (You'll have to re-title them because .wav doesn't have the ID3 tags of mp3.) When you send the files to the disc, they won't be huge because SonicStage will compress them into ATRAC.

Here's the longer explanation.

A PCM file is a .wav file. It's the high-quality (and large) kind of file that is used on a CD. It is called uncompressed because it holds all the information of the original recording.

.mp3 compresses .wav files to about 1/10th their size. That means it has to throw out sonic information. In converting to mp3, your computer makes choices about what to keep and what to throw out. The better the converter, the better the mp3 sounds, but something is lost.

.wma and ATRAC (or .oma) files are also compressed. So when you convert .mp3 to .wma or ATRAC you are losing information a second time. That's why you are better off converting to .wav than to .wma.

If you take your mp3 and convert it to .wav, you don't lose any more musical information--but it gets a lot bigger, because it is using 1411 kilobytes per second of music to save all the information. (Typical mp3 files are only 128 kbps, so they're a lot smaller.)

But the important thing is that if SonicStage was having a problem reading the .mp3 for some reason, it may be able to read the .wav file because it's an entirely different kind of file. And when SonicStage sends the .wav file to your minidisc, it will turn it into an ATRAC file, which is about the same size as the mp3 file. Yes, you're compressing it again, but there's no way around that. At least you're not compressing it twice, which is what would happen if you went .mp3-->.wma-->ATRAC (minidisc).

Look in the Properties of your problem .mp3 files. If the ID3 tag isn't the problem, they must have something else in common that is causing trouble in SonicStage. Are they all from one person's computer that might have been working badly? Do they say VBR (variable bitrate) rather than CBR (constant bitrate)? Are they at a very low bitrate, like 48 kbps or under? Once you can figure out what they have in common, you're on the way to solving the problem.

Edited November 13, 2006 by A440

[curls]

Anyone try this with ver 4.2? I am so confused with this whole thing. I am not very..savy with these kind of things. I did however check the ID tags and everything was normal. Can anyone break this down on how you're supposed to get around this issue without using advanced words?

I installed 4.2 yesterday and still got the same problem. Unfortunately, when I went back to 3.4, I found another mp3 that converted to silence on the MD, but would play back in SS if the scroll bar was moved, as pointed out by Robert. So my suggestion to use 3.4 was a bad one, for which I apologise. It looks like converting to wave first, or re-encoding, (not advisable), is the only way to go. If you really must convert to wma, there's a freeware converter at http://softwaredepo.com/audio_converter.html It'll convert to wave and wma, as welll as a few other formats.

Edited November 13, 2006 by curls

[curls]

I've spent most of the day so far trying to figure out the cause of this problem. Removing the v2 tags makes no difference, but removing the first 40 frames of the mp3 makes it convert OK. I suppose it's possible it could be something put in by the program used to tag, but unless it was iTunes, I have no way of knowing what was used. Another thought was that it might be the headers from Lame v3.97b, but I've encoded some more with the same settings and they are OK.

I could do with some more mp3's to work with, and I never made a note of which of mine weren't converting properly, except for 2, so if anyone would be willing to send me a couple of the offending mp3's - small ones preferably - you can email them to me at haydut1200 (at) gmail (dot) com and I'll see if I can get to the bottom of this.

[panzerschreck]

All the songs that we're causing mine are probably around 8 mb a piece.

For the song's that we're causing me a problem, when I go to properties and click summary, for the description of the one it says Lbl:DSBP C:#1080. Meaning the label is DSBP, and the item number for the cd is #1080. That's maybe the only unusual looking thing for that song.

Everything seems normal in the other 2 songs. The ID3 tag for one of my 3 songs says : LAME 3.90.3 Mod VBR. The other 2 have nothing out of the ordinary.

Edited November 13, 2006 by panzerschreck

[A440]

For the song's that we're causing me a problem, when I go to properties and click summary, for the description of the one it says Lbl:DSBP C:#1080.

The ID3 tag for one of my 3 songs says : LAME 3.90.3 Mod VBR. The other 2 have nothing out of the ordinary.

VBR means variable bit rate. Instead of using exactly 128 kbps or 192 kbps or whatever all the way through the song, Lame varies the bitrate, using more kilobytes per second for more complicated sections of the music. Sometimes VBR confuses SonicStage, so that may be the problem with that file. Try converting it to .wav and importing it into SonicStage again. You can also convert the .wav to .mp3 again--with iTunes or Windows Media Player--and make sure CBR (constant bit rate, look in Advanced tabs) is used, and test to see if that plays correctly.

As for the others, is that # sign in the ID3 information? Try removing it.

I'm just guessing here on both, but it's worth a try.

[curls]

Panzerschreck, 8 meg is no problem. It's all relative, my mp3's are much bigger.

[panzerschreck]

Do you still need to get a few mp3's or did you want me to send one of mine that's causing trouble?

[curls]

If you wouldn't mind sending one or two, it'll give me more to go on. I've transferred quite a lot over the last few days and all have been OK, but no doubt it will happen again eventually.

[panzerschreck]

Sent you a song the other night, let me know if you have problems as well.

[curls]

I replied by email so I guess you didn't get it. Anyway, the one you sent converted OK on my computer. Very strange.

I found a couple more that won't transfer successfully, but after 3 days of trying things, I am still no wiser as to why it happens. I have a rip of Tubular Bells as 2 big mp3's, neither of which will convert. Yet all the others are single tracks taken from CD's which were all encoded with the same version of Lame and with the same settings. All my tags are done by the same program and in the same format. I've given up on it for the time being. If I get anymore I will just convert the offending track to wave and transfer again.

[panzerschreck]

I probably did get it, I don't use that email that much but I find it sends larger files quicker. Weird that this happens, I still haven't found the time to transfer the files to .wav so I will try perhaps tommorow to see if it works.

[curls]

I tried the other two mp3's you sent and they also convert OK here.

I may have another try at tracking the problem down when I have some spare time, but since it doesn't happen with every track, I've given up on it for the time being.

[panzerschreck]

Ok that's fine, not a problem. When I converted to .wave it worked fine so I guess I will just have to do this for now.

[Hasimir]

I have the same problem.

I use SS 3.4 and have a MZ-M505 ... some mp3 are just transfered as silence.

I converted them to WAV and WMA but without any positive results.

I used different programs too, but it didn't make a difference

Any news?

[panzerschreck]

"www.dbpoweramp.com" that one worked perfectly for me. Try it and see, other than that I have no idea. I plan on buying a Video IPod for Christmas so I am not too worried anymore.

[curls]

I normally use Mad Frontend for converting to wave.

[gknighting]

I'm glad to have found this discussion. I'm having the same problems with converting mp3s to MD-playable format. I've followed all the suggestions here, but the same thing keeps happening -- no sound on some of the tracks. I know they're playing because the timer advances, but there's no sound. Then the next track plays fine. Urgh!

For the record, I'm using SS4.1 on an XP SP2 machine, downloading 320 CBR mp3s to a Sony MZ-S1. The transfer mode is set to LP4. The maddening part is that the tracks that don't convert properly are from the same CD and tagged exactly the same way as the ones that do. There are no special character in the titles, nothing at all in the comment fields -- in short, nothing to differentiate the bad 'uns from the good 'uns.

If anyone has come up with a solution, or even an explanation, since the last posting I'd be grateful to hear it.

The only thing I can think of that I haven't tried is to use SS to re-rip the CDs direct to ATRAC and see if that works, but I hate to go all the way through that process again if there's an easier solution.

Thanks for all the help so far.

[cochra1]

In theory there should be no reason for going back to v3.4, but if v4.0 isn't working correctly, then there's a good case for it, especially since v3.4 converts OK where v4.0 doesn't. Of course, converting to wave first works, but also gets rid of the tags, entailing a lot of typing if you want artist and track names to be shown.

Robert, you can convert to wave, transfer to your MD and then delete the waves, making sure not to delete your original mp3's of course. I also delete the oma files after transfer as I only play the original mp3's from the computer.

I have the same problem.

I use SS 3.4 and have a MZ-M505 ... some mp3 are just transfered as silence.

I converted them to WAV and WMA but without any positive results.

I used different programs too, but it didn't make a difference

Any news?

Everytime a file is converted from one format to another, some loss occurs (in sound quality), so it is never recommended to convert any more than is strictly necessary.

[The Low Volta]

- converting to lossy formats does induce loss in SQ (but this can often be very hard to hear when high bitrates are involved)

- converting to lossless formats (i.e. the uncompressed stuff like wav, PCM and the compressed things like FLAC, wavepack, WMA-lossless, ...) doesn't affect SQ. It doesn't lower SQ, nor raise SQ, it simply keeps what was there in the first place without adding/substracting anything...

so please KanakoEtc., check the facts before posting and besides, the reconverting/SQ-issue isn't really relevant to the original question as this thread is about MP3-playback failure