A really odd thing happened while driving yesterday: in the middle of one track playing, the empeg suddenly played a few seconds from a totally different track. It then resumed the original track and pretended nothing had happened.

After some looking into it, it turned out that it's not the empegs fault (never really suspected it 8-; But I'm still puzzled:

The track I was playing was downloaded from Limewire. Happened to be Pink Floyd - Comfortably Numb. The few seconds were from the German national anthem. I'm pretty sure it didn't come over from Limewire that way... I had adjusted tags in iTunes before uploading to empeg.

Any guesses on what corrupted the file?

Armin

I am not sure how it happens, but I have had that same experience in the past. Never involving the empeg though. I think it happened when I was doing mass file transfers from one computer to another. I still have a few songs around that have the same 'feature'. I know they were good copies at one time though, and then corrupted.

If Limeware is like Morpheus was, it will branch out the download and get various parts of the song from differnet users so the download is faster. It is rare, but errors can occur where it gets part of the track from the wrong file - usually one that is the same length or tagged wrong. That was my guess before you even mentioned that it was from Limeware.

That's pretty much what I thought. I guess it just picked the injected bits out of an odd song, one that was in a totally different place on my harddrive. Unless it actually downloaded that bit from someone, and it's coincidence that I have it elsewhere.

Armin

A really odd thing happened while driving yesterday: in the middle of one track playing, the empeg suddenly played a few seconds from a totally different track. (...) The few seconds were from the German national anthem.

Heh, they got you.

There are people who do this on purpose: Deliberately upload a messed-up track into the file-sharing network with the intent of pissing off the pirates.

This is not a software bug or a sharing-service problem, it's the work of a vigilante. Slashing the "Z" into the front of your shirt is the "do-it-yourself" part of the task, though.

Are you serious Tony? ha! If so, that's funny as hell! I heard of a guy who wanted his CD promoted so he titled all of his tracks "Britney Spears - Track 2" etc weeks before the new album was out. hehe

I heard of a guy who wanted his CD promoted so he titled all of his tracks "Britney Spears - Track 2" etc weeks before the new album was out.

When you sign up as an MP3.COM artist, part of the usage agreement specifically prohibits that behavior, and it specifically mentions naming your tracks "britney spears" as an example. I wonder if it's because of that guy?

And yes, I am serious, I even read a news article about people doing this. It was supposed to be a big organized movement.

That's actually pretty cool. I think that if record companies used tactics like that - or inserted little commercials in their mp3s, I would consider that fair play (instead of using lawyers like hitmen).

Actually, they already went further than that. It's kinda obvious that P2P is a *GREAT* way to distribute viruses...

Armin

In reply to:

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I think that if record companies used tactics like that - or inserted little commercials in their mp3s, I would consider that fair play.

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One of my favorite bands the Barenaked Ladies did this. With their last album, the first single was released first on napster a good couple of months before it hit the radio stations. The problem was that every thirty seccond they would come on and tell you to buy their CD when it came out. But, this was great fun because the guys are canadian and have the best (bar none) banter of any band, so their interuptions were entertaining... It was completely possible for fans to edit out their sketches, but most did it for themselves and didn't share the edited version. I think I've still got the orginal sitting around somewhere, it was great and showed a great use of Napster by a big label band.

I doubt the file you're talking about had this happen to it accidentlaly... Though many P2P programs merge file fragments, even the most basic ones check CRC/MD5's to make sure the orginal file and the new file are the same. (ok, "same". but very close to same)

Matthew

Or it could have just been flaky encoding. Back when I used to use Audio catalyst, if I tried two encoding sessions at once putting the files in the same directory across a network this would happen (yes encoding music to a network drive is a bad idea, it was a long time ago, I know better now) .... don't ask me how... all I know is I had Soundgarden's "loud love" intermingled with Lard's "Mate Spawn and Die", it did this to several tracks a few seconds of one song, a few minutes of the other. What sucked is that I'd encoded so many songs without checking them these little jewels were scattered throughout my entire collection...

I've been using Limewire for some time now...what I have found (and REALLY despise) are wannabe DJs inserting their own voice-over intros and outros to songs...You never know what you're going to get when someone else rips the tunes...I'm getting soooo tired of all those references to desert storm etc.

But I guess it's the price you pay for leaching heh heh...