Hi guys,

I hvae alots of music on my player that was previosuly created without xing headers. Is there any way i can do a mass search and fix while the files are still on the empeg ?

This is a FAQ entry. Including the "Still on the empeg" part.

I have a similar problem. I use Audiocatalyst which uses the Xing encoder. For some reason it doesn't put the VBR jump offsets in at all. VBRFix thinks that the files are fine and won't try and fix them though because it detects the Xing header.

The only way I have found so far is to MP3 Tag Studio, but it will only do one directory at a time. i.e. it won't do things recursively. So for every CD I rip I then have to run it through MP3 Tag Studio before uploading.

Does anyone else have this problem with Xing/Audiocatalyst?

If you have this trouble with Audiocatalyst not making VBR headers, it is probably the bug described here. I am guessing that you installed RealJukebox at some point after installing AudioCatalyst.

i just got through this entire nightmare. there is a c program posted here that fixes the problem. it has a bug in it, and requires a little tweaking to get it to work on a windows platform, but i got it done. it only works on one file at a time. i did a "dir \s \b *.mp3 > temp.bat". i then inserted the name of the utility (mp3tool) in front of each line, and let the puppy run as a batch file. this cleaned up everything. i can post my executable mptool file for the pc if anyone is interested, but i offer no support, or take any responsability for mishaps.

-ted

Hmmm. I don't think I ever had Real anything installed since that program and all the other crap it installs tends to really p*** me off. I had kinda disregarded that FAQ entry because I am so sure I would never have installed RJB.

If this is the problem, if I reinstall Audiocatalyst will the problem go away or I am stuck with this forever?

(edit - I have actually already done this and it didn't help)

It's really annoying me at the moment. Does anyone know exactly what RealJukebox might have done?

Greetings!

Mark Lord has mp3tool (I don't know if it is the same one) compiled for use under Linux and also for running on the empeg itself. Much nicer if you need to do a lot of files - it will take multiple files (even FID files) as input. The only thing is that it will FIX a header, but will not create one if it is not there. The VBRfix program will do this, but it is in visual basic. There was an attempt a while back to integrate the two utilities, but I have not seen anything come out of that yet...

I have this problem too - my files are missing the header. I never loaded any other jukebox software, but I used Siren (Sonic Foundry) to encode. Great sound. No headers... No longer made...

Being a former Audio Catalyst user, my advice would be just download EAC... Setup is kind of a bear but you don't get all the header issues and the quality is great... plus it's free!

True. I have heard very good things about it, and I have tried it once. But...

1) I did all of my previous ripping and encoding about 2 years ago, while on the waiting list for the Mark2.
2) It took me, working constantly, batching jobs for running at night / during the work day, over three months to finish (1,250 CDs and burned out a CD Writer doing it)
3) I have no intention of redoing these unless some major data loss happens (or a faulty rip).
4) Other than the header / timing problem, the files sound great!

Thanks for the info, though. I have heard great things about EAC, and I recommend it to people just starting their rips. One of these days, I may revisit re-ripping / encoding, but not in the immediate future.

Yeah.... I recently re-encoded all my music... I was using a dual Athlon XP 1600 with a gig of ram... 2 40x CD Roms... and around 1000 CD's... it took me close to a month (would have been quicker but after the first 200 CD's I slacked off and slowed down on swapping CD's out). It's definately a pain but worth the hassle, now all my ID3 tags are correct, higher bitrates make me happy and everything is in order. But I definately don't blame you for not wanting to go through that again.

I don't know exactly what RealJukebox was supposed to have done, I only read that this was a common problem. I assume that it was supposed to have replaced a DLL or a codec with an older version, breaking the updated Xing encoder that was included with AC.

I'll bet that it was some other program (something other than RealJukebox) which did the same thing, then. Not sure what. It'd be nice to know which file it was so we could fix it by hand.