Audacity is very helpful to edit MP3 files. But for one particular file, Audacity gets into a loop when reading the file. When the progress bar is at the end, CPU load stays at 100%, and Audacity does not respond. so I have to kill it (using Windows facilities). The file plays OK, its ID3 header appears OK, and it is part of a series of files (related to a single album) that do not give problems.
The file is not very large (about 3MB). If you needed to resolve the bug, I can send it.
I am using Audacity 2.0.5 on Windows XP. Xp may no longer be supported by Microsoft, but the problem does not seem to be in the operating system, since other (MP3) files are processed without problems by Audacity.
I just did a full scan of the file, which reveals that it consists of 5783 frames of 522 or 523 bytes (due to padding, as indicated by the the pad bit in the frame header, frame size may differ by one byte). In sum, the file does not seem to be damaged (apart from the fact that Audacity ought to tolerate invalid files, by rejecting them rather than failing).
For completeness: I do not have an installation problem. The install process went smoothly.
Thanks for the report. We can’t raise a bug report without an example file that demonstrates the problem, so yes please upload the file to dropbox, mailbigfile.com or your favourite service and give us the web address of the file.
As a workaround, you could try installing FFmpeg from http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#ffdown . Use File > Open… or File > Import > Audio… then choose “FFmpeg-compatible files” in the files of type drop-down before selecting the MP3.
Gale