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Can mp3's degenerate?

Ok, I realize this probably seems like a stupid question, but hear me out:

Every so often, quite rarely really, I notice blips and glitches in songs that I never noticed before. Usually I'd notice them in older songs that I hadn't listened to in a while, so I assumed that the glitches had always been there and I just never noticed due to inexperience or lack of familiarity with the song or whatever. However I was listening to an mp3 today and I noticed two obvious glitches that I KNOW were never there before. It's a song I've listened to often and am intimately familiar with, so there is no chance that this is a result of an oversight on my part. Furthermore, the file has remained, unedited, on the same hard drive for over a year, so any data loss can't be due to gratuitous copying and pasting.

Does anyone know what might be causing this? Would defragging the hard drive do it (although I don't defrag very often)? Anyone have similar experiences? It's disconcerting to think that files might be able to degrade with time (as improbable as it seems).

Though this doesn't belong here. I'll try to answer anyway.

There could be few reason causing those glitches.
Fragmentation of your hard drive could cause it, though it is highly unlike. But running defrag every now and then is worth the effort.

Or your hard drive can have physical bad sectors which cause the data to be unreadable by normal programs.

another possible problem could be maybe a virus??? many mp3s are chalk full of virus' that spread to other mp3's. i KNOW i have (and had) some and i KNOW i gave them to my brother's computers (which are on my network). heh, oh well, its the price to pay for my mp3 collection...

quote:

Originally posted by ezbeats another possible problem could be maybe a virus??? many mp3s are chalk full of virus' that spread to other mp3's. i KNOW i have (and had) some and i KNOW i gave them to my brother's computers (which are on my network). heh, oh well, its the price to pay for my mp3 collection...

You are full of shit. Mp3s cannot contract viruses.

"Fortunately, since MP3 files can't execute by themselves it is not possible to infect them with computer viruses. "

http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/virus.html


Thunder: If he has bad sectors.. there would be a fuck of alot more going wrong than just his mp3's poping :| I thinks.

I think it's just in his mind.

es

quote:

Originally posted by Thunder5 this doesn't belong here.

Sorry. I guess I thought people in the Production forum might have a bit more technical knowledge than people in Music Discussion. My apologies.

quote:

Originally posted by Vert You are full of shit. Mp3s cannot contract viruses. "Fortunately, since MP3 files can't execute by themselves it is not possible to infect them with computer viruses. " http://www.mp3newswire.net/stories/2001/virus.html es

Was just about to make that thing clear...

Though there might be viruses that mess around with your mp3s though viruses can't be spread as mp3s.

Check my edit ^^.

es

quote:

Originally posted by Vert Thunder: If he has bad sectors.. there would be a fuck of alot more going wrong than just his mp3's poping :| .

Well if he is lucky enough, then only the mp3 is fucked..

Data cannot degenerate like analog material can. Your pops and clicks and whatnot is most likely caused by heavy fragmentation...although the virus idea is possible - virus comes in, screws up mp3 data...I just can't see the point of writing a virus that would only put in minor pops and clicks and such. The only organization I know of that would write such a thing would be the RIAA, and if they were going to do that they'd go all out, not just a few pops anc clicks.

could aslo be a 'skip' or some error in downloading. especially if it's P2P

*TA does not support file sharing*

could be lack of cpu sound card buffering shorts in your wires..etc..

Try burning them to a CD as audio. Play it through your stereo and see if the glitches are still there. If they're not its more likley to be something to do with your PC hardware (soundcard/etc)
Also as far as a virus is concerned - I've heard of virii deleting/moving or renaming MP3s, but not corrupting them. I wouldn't be surprised if one exists tho'!

as said before...if it was a virus it would do a lot more then just adding a pop here and there so that's probably not the problem

bad sectors could in theory be the problem but the chance that it just affects a few mp3's here and there and nothing else is practically somewhere around zero

my guessing would be that it's either soundcardrelated, an error in your download or a bad rip

sometimes when you rip a CD glitches and pops can occur if the CD your ripping from skips...
as you probably know the laser reads the CD while it's spinning (duh ). Sometimes the laser miss due to something (try bumping and shaking your CD-player while ripping and you'll know what I mean), everytime the laser misses the CD has to spin a whole lap to get back to where it was...this is what causes glitches and pops while ripping

now I know that was a poor explanation but I think you get it anyway

im not extremely computer techy but I also believe it could be a soundcard problem.Either that or your processor is working too hard (unlikely if you have at least a pentium 2).Is it only that tune that does it?You said something about your older tunes doing it too.

1)Do a scan disk in your system tools and see how many bytes are in bad sectors.It gives you a report after its done so check it.
2) are you listening to it on headphones?If so that connection might be screwed up as well making it seem that there are a few small glitches.

well thats the best I can suggest I hope it might help

virus can infect any file, even *.doc, it depends only on the virus itself....
but not Access ones
seriously, try to 1) find bad sectors and cure them (norton disk doctor)
2) defrag (speedisk )

quote:

Originally posted by Cosmic Energy virus can infect any file, even *.doc, it depends only on the virus itself....

infect yeah but not spread, and as I pointed out earlier...if there was a virus destroying mp3's it would probably do a lot more then just adding a few glitches in like 5 songs

quote:

Originally posted by Cosmic Energy virus can infect any file, even *.doc, it depends only on the virus itself.... but not Access ones seriously, try to 1) find bad sectors and cure them (norton disk doctor) 2) defrag (speedisk )

You obviously don't understand why .doc virii work. They work because MS Word does not only rely on file extensions but also checks format headers. .dot files are automated documents. They may contain macros that are also able, to access your harddiscs. If you open .dot's they will create the resulting document on opening, .dot or .doc the result is a document but .dot execute code for that. Now rename your .dot virus to .doc and noone can tell the difference.

As for Mp3's... same thin applies for MediaPlayer. There were problems like with MP 6.4 enabling attackers to run code from .asf files. By renaming this to .mp3 you would have an MP3 virus. But then again. MP does check file Formats and tell you that the extension doesn't correspond.

quote:

Originally posted by halo You obviously don't understand why .doc virii work. They work because MS Word does not only rely on file extensions but also checks format headers. .dot files are automated documents. They may contain macros that are also able, to access your harddiscs. If you open .dot's they will create the resulting document on opening, .dot or .doc the result is a document but .dot execute code for that. Now rename your .dot virus to .doc and noone can tell the difference. As for Mp3's... same thin applies for MediaPlayer. There were problems like with MP 6.4 enabling attackers to run code from .asf files. By renaming this to .mp3 you would have an MP3 virus. But then again. MP does check file Formats and tell you that the extension doesn't correspond.

Hey Halo I do understand and the ".doc" was just an example, look here further please.
I even thought first to write smth like ".asdf" but wrote ".doc" because it's much more decent file extension, oknpexcuseme?
It's something like was a long time ago in MS-DOS,
if you do have a resident virii process running and you want to access any file
(via open()/fopen(), or simply via viewing this file in your file manager, editing it or accessing by any other means)
then this virii process tries to infect this file (which you want to open).
Some virii looks for format/extensions, some don't, so some virrii's infects only *.exe, some all files.
So some virii can infect mp3, some don't (not to destroy it, just add his body and so can add that blips and glitches).
See my point?

Hey so much "I'm leeter than you" attitude from some of your guys here, sorry....
No offence, of course, excuse me if I did.....

So:
1) Run disk doctor first
2) Run antivirus software (kaspersky, norton (symantec) antivirus, etc) on all your logical drives
3) Do defragmentation

Don't run antivirus software before disk doctor to avoid system crashes because of reading possibly lost or bad sectors while running antivirus software.

quote:

Originally posted by Cosmic Energy hey halo I do understand and the ".doc" was just an example, look further please: I even thought first to write smth like ".asdf" but wrote ".doc" because it's much more decent file extension, oknpexcuseme? look it's like was a long time ago in MS-DOS if you do have a resident virii process running then when you want to access any file (via open()/fopen(), or simply via viewing this file in your file manager, editing it or accessing by any other means) this virii process tries to infect this file which you want to open some virii looks for format/extension, some don't, so some virrii's infects only *.exe, some all files so some virii can infect mp3, some don't (not to destroy it, just add his body and so can add that blips and glitches) see my point? hey so much "I'm leeter than you" attitude from some of your guys here, sorry.... no offence, of course, excuse me if I did.....

If you want to look more intelligent, try using some punctuation...

es

hey excuse me
it's capitalization by the way

are the pops and scratches in the same place every time you play the mp3?

does this same error occour if played off another medium - differant partition, different soundcard (onboard vs external), etc etc

Try and eliminante every single 'possible' you have, then whats left should tell you whats causing it.

I too, have noticed that MP3 files that I haven't played in a while tend to have new "pops" I won't even try to offer an explination, computers aren't really my thing. Unless they make a computer one day that's a turbo diesel, with intercooler and uses a 24 volt electrical system...now..that's a hell of a computer! *DROOL*

Anyway, back to the subject...you're not alone, i've seen MP3's go downhill, but no idea why..

quote:

Originally posted by Cosmic Energy hey excuse me it's capitalization by the way

thats some funny $hit right there you guys crack me up sometimes.

quote:

Originally posted by Cosmic Energy hey excuse me it's capitalization by the way

I mean honestly, grow up. People who type like you look like you have the IQ of a 11 year old, and deserve zero respect for not even bothering to attempt to make their posts easy to read. Eh fuck it, I have zero reason to ever read one of your trash posts again.. /me adds to ignore list.



es

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