mp3's won't play correctly

Greetings - I have downloaded quite a few songs (mp3 format), but when I try to listen to them, they play back very slow or they break up so all I hear is a note hear and there, and can't even tell what song is trying to play. I've tried Windows Media Player and Winamp.
(I got much better results with Napster's built-in media player, but of course I don't have it anymore).

Is there an mp3 player that might work better, or something else that might help this problem?

Thanks for any input.

BTW: I'm running Win98se, 80 MB RAM, 133Mhz processor.

 

Try the free version of Music Match. If your mp3's are good to begin with it should work fine. To sound right audio files have to be played back at the sample rate they were recorded at.

 

seabell,

I don't know how many bad ones you may be getting, but if you are getting a whole bunch of them, I would say that some people are not ripping the songs at the proper sample rate. On your download client, can you see the handle (name) of the person you are getting them from. If so, make note of which ones you downloaded from whom. If the bad ones are all coming from the same source, then someone doesn't know how to rip them properly.

Of course whatever media player you're trying to play them on could be messing up too, especially if another software install replaced some of it's files.

Music Match is a real good combination Jukebox & ripper combined. It plays several kinds of audio files, as well as Music CD's. It will also batch convert mp3's to wav & wav to mp3. It does a few other things I don't use too.

http://www.musicmatch.com/home/

I haven't gotten that many bad ones myself, but I did finally burn some to a CD today & one of them was bad. I guess when I was listening to them to see if they were good, I somehow missed that one.

Good Luck.

Deloris

 

I'm pretty sure that the files are okay because they sounded fine when I converted them to .wav format. The only problem now is that I can't open any files or applications while the song (wav) is playing, or it will start to skip kind of like a CD that's scratched. Could this more likely be a hardware issue rather than a software problem? (maybe more RAM or a faster processor would help?)

btw~ I tried MusicMatch too - thanks for the link.

 

seabell,

When an MP3 is converted to a wav, it gets uncompressed, & the format is completely changed, so it is feasible that a file sounding bad as an MP3 could sound fine as a wav. Never thought of that possibility before.

I can't imagine for sure what could be causing this problem of not playing good while opening other programs. Have you had problems like this playing audio files before on this computer, or is it just a recent happening? Maybe a bad, or corrupted file somewhere. I tried it with one & it worked fine, as an MP3 & a wav both. I opened up Paint Shop Pro while it was playing & messed around in it & it didn't affect it at all.

There might be problems with your sound card. Have you noticed any other sounds not sounding right anymore on your computer? Sound cards can get slightly unseated in their socket, if you've moved the computer around anywhere & cause problems too. They can get bad dirty & that could possibly cause problems. And like most other stuff it can pull funny shenanigans before it finally dies.

Now if you were playing them from off of a CD that you'd burned them to, then I'd think there might be a problem with the CD that you burned them to, or the CD ROM, or sound card. Anyone of the three. Of course, I am no expert on any of this, but CD ROM's, over time, can go goofy & their spin rate get goofed up, without them actually dying. That can cause funny sound effects.

I do know that some burn engines & burners don't like certain kinds of CD media. I've had a taste of that myself. Nero for instance don't seem to like the el-cheapo CD's. It likes the good stuff like Memorex, whereas NTI don't seem to give a hoot. Go figure!

A lot of dust inside the computer can cause wierd things to happen too, because dust insulates things & causes them to run hotter, especially your CPU processor, & a couple of other things I can't remember the names of right now. Guess I'm getting senile. Blow out the inside of your computer with some canned air occasionally.

Just trying to hazard some guesses, as to what the problem MIGHT be, since I have no definite ideas.

Not a lot of help am I?

Maybe someone else can come up with a solution.

Deloris.

 

I would guess that you're running on the edge with a 133MHz processor. Most likely that's what causes it to skip when you open a program while it's playing. Not sure if it would cause the other playback problems or not. I know that MusicMatch claims that it requires a minimum processor speed of 300 MHz, although I've run it without any problems at all on a 233 MHz system. If you just want to listen to them without all the bells and whistles you can check out STP MP3 player . It's a simple tray based player that I've used in the past and wouldn't be near as taxing on your system as some of the others are. Worked great and ran steady as a rock on the system I used it on. It's freeware, contains no spyware, and only 209 kb's. If you don't like it or if it doesn't do the trick you're not out anything.

 

Try using CD Mate for your burning needs...

hXXp://www.copystar.com.tw/Php/Main.php3?P_ID=CDMATE

CD Mate has worked with everything I have thrown at it...
I use this for everything, even ripping my music cd's.

and for a simple easy to use cd/mp3 player... I use Quintessential Player located at

hXXp://quinnware.com/news.html

this one is free...