Exported mp3 does not play in Google Chrome

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hi,

For a long time I am using Audacity 1.2.4 on Windows XP.
Every week I record mp3 with vlc and import it in Audacity. After some changes I exported it to another mp3 file and published it on my website. It worked fine with IE, Firefox and Chrome.

Now I am changing to a new computer : Windows 7 64 bits; Audacity 2.0, Newest Lame encoder
Exporting to mp3 works fine. It plays in IE9 but it does not play in Google Chrome.
The player comes up and the play/pause buttons disappeare and there is no sound .

Before I installed Audacity 2.0 I did try it with 1.3.x. and it did not work, so I decided to keep my old computer running to do this weekly job. Now the beta time is over and 2.0 is released, I thought this is the time to try again.

A mp3 file exported with 2.0 you can find here: http://www.hbcg-owp.nl/Diensten/TestMP3.mp3
Please try it in Chrome and IE.

Look forwards to answers.

2

Post the location of an MP3 that works perfectly. Koz

3

This is one exported by 1.2.4 : http://www.hbcg-owp.nl/Diensten/Nieuwolda2012-03-25GM.mp3 and is ok.

4

This will be one for the Windows people. I don’t see any difference at all between the two files other than show length and they both play on multiple different Mac players. Koz

5

Both files play fine here (on Linux).

6

There must be some differance between 1.2.4 and 2.0.
I’m talking about Windows (XP and 7) and Google Chrome (17.0.963.83) without any Mac add-on.
Please try that and you will see that it does not play the 2.0 export mp3 file.

I tried it on 3 differant computers, all the same results.
Hope you can solve this problem.

7

After all I decided to install QuickTime add on in Google Chrome. Now it is playing both files.
But I hate using QuickTime, because it takes over the default player in IE and than playing starts after the file is completely downloaded. After changing the default media player back to WM every thing is back working ok. I will have to make a work around for the visiters of the website where I let them playback to mp3 files.
It woud be beter that the problem will solved by the developers of Audacity or Google Chrome.
My time is more than spend on this mather.
Thanks anyway.

8

Testing with Google Chrome (17.0.963.83) on Windows XP.
Both of the “files” open as expected (if you download the MP3 files and then open them in Chrome).
When opening the web URLs, this one (as you reported) does not play: http://www.hbcg-owp.nl/Diensten/TestMP3.mp3
but this one does: http://www.hbcg-owp.nl/Diensten/Nieuwolda2012-03-25GM.mp3

Both MP3s are valid files as far as I can tell - no problem with either of them.

A quick search of Google indicated that Chrome has one or more bugs relating to playing MP3s: http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=110309
There are a number of factors that have been suggested may be related, including the presence of metadata artwork (does not apply to these files), web server configuration, and file size but the real problem is that Chrome is not doing what it should.

Both files download correctly when using Firefox, VLC, Epiphany Web Browser, MPlayer and cURL, but not Chrome (17.0.963.83), which strongly supports the suggestion that the problem lies with Chrome.

The problem certainly has something to do with the web server because that first file is played correctly by Google Chrome (17.0.963.83) on Windows XP from my server:
http://audacity.easyspacepro.com/examples/TestMP3.mp3

IE8 on Windows XP offers to download the files, which is the expected behaviour for “vanilla” IE8.

The primary purpose of a web browser is to get information for the user via HTTP(S). The first “T” stands for “Text”.
The first Internet browsers had support for text only. Later came browsers with support for colours, fonts and text styles, and the support for pictures was added. Support for sounds, animations and videos is handled in different ways by different browsers. Some elements can be handled inline, and some require extra helper programs (plug-ins). HTTP was never intended to directly handle file transfer, for that there is FTP (File Transfer Protocol), so simply adding a HTTP link to a file is not really the “right” way to handle MP3s and is open to web browsers handling the transfer (or not) as they see fit.

A better way to handle delivering MP3 files over HTTP is to embed the link within a valid html file, for example:

<audio controls="controls">
  <source src="http://www.hbcg-owp.nl/Diensten/TestMP3.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" />
  <embed height="50px" width="100px" src="http://www.hbcg-owp.nl/Diensten/TestMP3.mp3" />
</audio>

but even this does not work correctly which points the finger at the web server.
Using the same code with the files on my server works as expected: http://audacity.easyspacepro.com/examples/embed.html
The code in this file is:

<!DOCTYPE HTML>
  <html>
  <body>

  <audio controls="controls">
    <source src="http://audacity.easyspacepro.com/examples/TestMP3.mp3" type="audio/mpeg" />
    <embed height="50px" width="100px" src="http://audacity.easyspacepro.com/examples/TestMP3.mp3" />
  </audio>

  </body>
</html>

The above example uses the tag within an 

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
  <body>

    <embed src="http://www.hbcg-owp.nl/Diensten/TestMP3.mp3" />

  </body>
</html>

Note that this code is delivering the file from your server, and it works in Chrome. :smiley:
http://audacity.easyspacepro.com/examples/embed.html
Unfortunately this HTML5 tag is not supported by IE8, so you’ll need to use some sort of hack if you want to support that browser.