Audacity Forum

I have hundreds of GBs of MP3s which I have bought, and downloaded from CDs over the years. In many cases I have thrown out the CDs now in favour of the digital version. The MP3s were converted from wma and cda files. When I try and put the mp3s on my ipod they come out distorted. The mp3s play fine in real player and windows media player on the pc but once itunes or quicktime tried to play them they are distorted. I have read many forums and tried many solutions but nothing has worked. If I rip a CD to the PC and create wma files they play fine on the ipod. I have also found that opening mp3s in audacity plays them distorted too.

How can I fix this so my value mp3s can play on my ipod?

Thanks
Frustrated

Distorted? Harsh and screechy? Bubbling and muffled?

Can you post one of these--or a portion somewhere so we can hear it and beat it up?

If you right-click a clip in Windows XP and select properties, Windows should tell you all about the file. Is there anything magic about these as compared to the music that works?

Koz

Its like you can hear the foreground of the track in the background, it plays at double time and high peaks crackle

<<<it plays at double time>>>

Chances are really good those aren't MP3 files. That's what Audacity does when It can't figure out what's going on.

Pull the files into "Super" or "Switch" (Google) and convert them to WAVs. Audacity will edit those just fine. If they don't need editing, you can go right into your final format.

Avoid doing production in MP3. MPEG1, Layer III (MP3, I bet you didn't know that was a video format) is a compressed sound format that gets small file sizes by damaging the sound. The more times you edit, export, and convert, the more the damage. I know you don't have room for uncompressed WAV files of all your work, but from those, you can create anything else. If your master files are MP3, you're stuck with whatever distortion is burned into the file and it will never get better.

Koz

THanks but I have tried switch and others and none will convert the mp3 uccessfully. They are all distorted the same way. I reloaded my Operating System and the previously distorted mp3s could now play but not in itunes or be converted. However if I rip CDs to realplayer in cda format these will go onto my ipod perfectly and be OK. I was hoping audacity could solve my problem but any editing of the mp3s distorts.

One suggestion I read in another forum was that it wasn't the file but the driver that played the sound file. However I tried various versions of itunes and none make any difference. The mp3s won't play in itunes on vista either. I used xp hm for the other computers at home. The customer seems to have tried what I did.

Could it be itunes / quicktime's drivers?

Thanks again

What did it say when you Right-Click > Properties like I said a bit up the thread?

Koz

DURATION 3.22
bit rate 128 kbps
audio sample size 16 bit
channels 2 (stereo)
audio sample rate 44 khz
protected no

It looks as though you're just needing a file conversion method that works for ipod and my experience with that and itunes is that the latest version (8) is not recognizing some old MP3 codecs. Also condsider mp4 or m4a as your new file format - it's superior to mp3 and ipod/itunes like them much better. This is your best user friendly option - http://www.dbpoweramp.com/