Armed Polite Society
Main Forums => The Roundtable => Topic started by: Brad Johnson on January 16, 2013, 03:53:06 PM
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I ripped a couple of my NickelBack CDs to MP3s yesterday and I notice that one song (Rockstar, one of my favorites, of course) has static in it!? Pops and crackles just like an old record. What's up with that? I've verified it's the file. It does it on everything I've played it with.
Brad
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CD drive not able to keep up with the data feed requirements or the system was overly busy during the rip? I had this problem back in the late 90s when trying to rip MP3s. The solution was to use my SCSI-based CD-R instead of my laptop's IDE CD drive.
I wouldn't expect this to be a problem these days.
Chris
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CD drive not able to keep up with the data feed requirements or the system was overly busy during the rip?
Really? I would have thought that the data stream would be buffered, and the data error-checked, before the file was finalized. That's a new wrinkle.
Brad
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Depends on how it was ripped. Some rips are a digital copy that is encoded in the desired format. They should be pretty clean. You can also take a recording with the sound card from the analog stereo output from the drive. That would be subject to the usual analog problems.
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I ripped them right from the CD using Win Media Player.
Brad
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Really? I would have thought that the data stream would be buffered, and the data error-checked, before the file was finalized. That's a new wrinkle.
Brad
Back then, the buffer could be emptied faster than the CD could keep up. Keep in mind this was 1998-99. I haven't had problems since CDRW became commonplace. The level of performance you need to rip a CD is the same as burning a CD without creating a coaster (more common years ago, almost never happens now).
Chris
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Could be just because it's, well, Nickelback...
(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fmauser98.com%2Ffunny-nickelback-song-backwards.jpg&hash=025dd2a03c284dd9974c071e754e26db884e5b33)
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I don't think I could identify a Nickelback song by ear.
Chris
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I don't remember the details, but I believe that due to the details of the Red Book standard that audio CDs use that error detection/correction is troublesome. That's why several CD ripping programs will actually run a checksum of sorts on the ripped MP3 and compare it to an online database of known-good rips (http://www.accuraterip.com/) to tell you whether the rip was good. I'm guessing the file in question would fail that check.
dbPowerAmp (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) is a good program that will perform that quality check, and is what I use on the rare occasion I bought a CD instead of just buying the MP3 on Amazon.
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Rip it again and kwitcher whingin'.
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Rip it again and kwitcher whingin'.
I didn't know Media Player had a "whingin'" feature. Where is it and how do I set it to 'kwitcher'?
Brad
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I didn't know Media Player had a "whingin'" feature. Where is it and how do I set it to 'kwitcher'?
Brad
Lemee see, it was around here someplace. :laugh:
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God is punishing you for listening to Nickelback.
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Friends don let friends listen to nickelback
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dbPowerAmp (http://www.dbpoweramp.com/) is a good program that will perform that quality check, and is what I use on the rare occasion I bought a CD instead of just buying the MP3 on Amazon.
+1 on the dbpoweramp. Been using it for years. I prefer buying the CD and ripping it myself. Typically I rip to FLAC, then using that as a source I maintain 3 libraries. One at a high bitrate using lame, one at a moderate bitrate using lame, and a third low bitrate wma. Gives me choices according to storage space and fidelity tradeoffs when loading up a phone, laptop, whatever.
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EAC [tinfoil] (http://www.exactaudiocopy.de/)
there might be better, but it's what i'm used to. :angel:
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I've always used Audiograbber (http://www.audiograbber.org/) and never had any problems.
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I used to use EAC, these days I just use iTunes.
Try a different program. If that doesn't work, try a different PC.
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Well dang. I bought and downloaded the song (that I already own on the darn CD) from Amazon MP3 downloads. The purchased download file is doing the same #&*@& thing. Different bit rate and all that jazz, too, compared to my ripped file. I guess the system in the truck has better taste than I do. I'll try the new file on my MP3 player and the computer tomorrow but I don't have high hopes at this point.
Oh, and it's also doing it on one of the songs I ripped from one of my My Darkest Days album, too. Hmph! :mad:
Brad
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That sounds kinda like digital clipping distortion.
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I ripped a couple of my NickelBack CDs to MP3s yesterday and I notice that one song (Rockstar, one of my favorites, of course) has static in it!? Pops and crackles just like an old record. What's up with that? I've verified it's the file. It does it on everything I've played it with.
Brad
Your audio system is having an allergic reaction to Nickelback
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That sounds kinda like digital clipping distortion.
I had a thought along the same lines so I dialed the head unit gain down 2 dB to see if it helped. Nope.
Brad
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if it's doing it on everything you're playing it on, then it's probably just a shitty song ;-)
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Okay, I just tried the file on the computer here at work. Same thing. I switched Media Player to the o-scope display and you can see it going spastic. The signal goes from nice and smooth to strange jaggies that almost look like someone chopped the peaks and replaced them with a straight line. No idea what that means (I'm presuming it might be the aformentioned digital clipping) but the end result is the song sounds like crap.
*Edit to add* I hopped on Amazon to check and you can even hear it in the demo track. ??? Wierd thing is, I'm listening to it this very second on Pandora and it's clear as a bell.
Brad
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Do you have a sound editor? Especially one with VU meters?
If not, you could load it into this -> http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/soundforge
And play it, see what it does. If the song itself has the clipping, it'll show on the VU meters (at the top, it'll display the word CLIP in red boxes, if the song is actually clipping.)
If it's in the song itself, maybe some players automatically compensate for clipping whereas others don't.
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Do you have a sound editor? Especially one with VU meters?
If not, you could load it into this -> http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/download/trials/soundforge
And play it, see what it does. If the song itself has the clipping, it'll show on the VU meters (at the top, it'll display the word CLIP in red boxes, if the song is actually clipping.)
If it's in the song itself, maybe some players automatically compensate for clipping whereas others don't.
Pegged the meters on both channels pretty much the entire song. Not "bouncing off the top" pegged, either. More like "smacked hard against the stops and barely moving" pegged. No wonder it sounds like heck. I used the Amazon-sourced file, not my ripped one. You'd think the conversion software at Amazon's mp3 sourcing company would have alerted on something like this (presuming the file didn't come directly from the studio).
Oh, to clear up any confusion this is for the My Darkest Days song 'Porn Star Dancing' (album version, not the remix). I was able to get a clean rip of RockStar last night.
Brad
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You'd think the people trying to sell the music would actually try to post a good copy of it. If it sounds like crap, who would want to buy it?
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Pegged the meters on both channels pretty much the entire song. Not "bouncing off the top" pegged, either. More like "smacked hard against the stops and barely moving" pegged. No wonder it sounds like heck. I used the Amazon-sourced file, not my ripped one. You'd think the conversion software at Amazon's mp3 sourcing company would have alerted on something like this (presuming the file didn't come directly from the studio).
Oh, to clear up any confusion this is for the My Darkest Days song 'Porn Star Dancing' (album version, not the remix). I was able to get a clean rip of RockStar last night.
Brad
You have absolutely atrocious taste in music.
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You have absolutely atrocious taste in music.
Don't make me go all Lawrence Welk on you...
Brad
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That's what you get for downloading porn music.
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I don't think I could identify a Nickelback song by ear.
Chris
Same here. I thought people hated them because they are ubiquitous, right? So how did Chris and I manage to escape?
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My excuse is that I listen to stuff that makes Baby Jeebus cry and Bluegrass, but I repeat myself. ;)
Chris
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You'd think the conversion software at Amazon's mp3 sourcing company would have alerted on something like this (presuming the file didn't come directly from the studio).
Their MP3 feed comes right from the record label. They aren't stuffing CDs into a machine and ripping them. The label supplies them. Trust me, I did this for a living.
If your own CD rip and the Amazon MP3 show the same distortion I suspect you've found a bug in the psycho-acoustic algorithms used to turn sound into a compressed MP3. Although I'll admit that sounds pretty far-fetched.
What the psycho-acoustic algorithms do is compress the sound signal down to what our ears can actually hear. If you've got a -21db sound value at 11kHz and a -20db sound vlaue at 11.5kHz they just present the louder one in compressed music. It's a horrible example, but that's basically what happens. They only present what you're most likely to hear, or want to hear.
But, given that this is Nickleback, the "what you want to hear" probably bumped up pretty hard against the psycho-acoustic model because nobody in their right mind would want to hear that *expletive deleted*it.
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Same here. I thought people hated them because they are ubiquitous, right? So how did Chris and I manage to escape?
You listen to much fm modern alt/rock radio? And folks hate Nickelback because they're talentless hacks.
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I don't hate them because they're talentless. In fact, they're not completely talentless, and are pretty skilled at what they do.
I hate them because they're self-rightous pricks who have forgotten their duty to their fans.
Two walk offs (and cancelled shows) that I'm aware of. One because an empty plastic water bottle got thrown on stage and hit one of them, and another because a crowd wasn't cheering loud enough. Both shows ended after only a few songs.
DIckheads.
I'm not even famous, and I wouldn't do that *expletive deleted*it.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1PFvlaFffI
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so, still better then creed? [popcorn]
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so, still better then creed? [popcorn]
Hate nickelback
But yes. They're better than creed
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Update...
I was renting a couple movies tonight and they had the CD on clearance way cheap.
The static is in the CD version, too!!??
You'd think the studio engineer would have picked up on it, but apparently not. Weird.
Brad
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(https://armedpolitesociety.com/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fphotos.imageevent.com%2Fwiley%2Fjetsam%2Flarge%2FFarSide.jpg&hash=bb2ea36da6c7c3321d423fc6e458273f4898f449)
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Update...
I was renting a couple movies tonight and they had the CD on clearance way cheap.
The static is in the CD version, too!!??
Huh. When I wrote my original post I assumed that the original CD played correctly and your rip contained the same static as the Amazon MP3 via some weird psycho-acoustic compression that didn't make any sense.
Guess they borked it right up at the master level and pushed it all down. That makes total sense.
Had a weird one (jukebox days) once where a Tom Petty song started out with a good 8 seconds of him and them flipped to some black guy singing the blues. Strangest thing. I believe it was just a single, so we pulled the entire album, but I could be wrong. I do not recall the details on how we resolved it. Wasn't our fault, the label just fed us sh*t data. That's all there was to it. Their ability to manage data was incredibly poor. I couldn't believe the crap they did.
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Relevant to the thread:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xt9vhbkfZ3Y
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I don't hate them because they're talentless. In fact, they're not completely talentless, and are pretty skilled at what they do.
I hate them because they're self-rightous pricks who have forgotten their duty to their fans.
Same reason I can't stand Smashing Pumpkins.