Strange noises on playback

cadman

I thought I would update the new forum on problems I was having with strange 'chirps', 'cheeps' and other odd noises during playback.

I started out with the configuration shown in the signature below and played around with alternative LAME binaries and DLL but still have this problem on playback. Eventually I decided that I would try MusicMatch to see if there was any difference. Conclusions so far are:

1. I REALLY HATE Music Match! The GUI is absolutely dreadful and frustrating to work with. The application is prone to dialing out at almost any opportunity - a situation made worse by a GUI that does not provide any difference in visual feedback for controls or hyperlinks.

2. That rant aside, so far I've had no more funny noises duding playback. I'm still monitoring though.

The next step would seem to be to download the Music Match mp3 files with xPlay to make sure that the transfer is not the problem. I wouldn't expect that to be the case so it looks like it's to do with the EAC and LAME side of things.

I really want to stick with those two if at all possible so could anyone:

a) Point me at a good reference on using iPod with EAC and LAME.

b) Advise me whether there is any deifference between precompiled versions of LAME that could be causing my problems.

c0 Any other advice would be cool.

Thanks for any help.

Steve

cadman

I was just thinking.

If another EAC + LAME + XPlay user is reading this and doesn't have a problem with noises on Playback could you do me a favour...

Post your EAC compression settings i.e. which LAME version/compilation, what command line options or presets, whether you use the executable and/or dll etc. This would really help me narrow things down further.

Thanks.

Steve

cadman

So my iPod had been checked out by Apple and should be a perfect machine with no faults.

I have rebuilt the PC and reinstalled all the iPod software as listed in the sig file below. What is really annoying me is that I am still getting annoying chirps on playback. Assuming that the iPod is not the problem then this must be something to do with my Pee-Cee.

Has anyone had problems of this type I wonder. I just don't know where to begin looking now - could it be the FireWire card? EAC and LAME appear to be the dog's bollocks (a very good thing) when it comes to encoding, and certainly sound much better than MusicMatch to my ears. Maybe I should just buy a Mac as I HATE Windows anyway!

Anyone got any advice for me to try?

Cheers,

C

Spacec0w

well, i have a 3rd gen with 2.0.1 and have been using 3.90.3 (the latest "recommended" compile from www.hydrogenaudio.org) EXE and EAC with --alt-preset standard. I use ephpod 2.70a to transfter.

As far as i can tell i get no chirps or anything.. BUT i just today heard a bass sample that gave a weird effect i don't hear on my PC. so just going from that i would think that the ipod just might have some problems with VBR or perhaps just Lame in particular. is there any way to "let apple know" about this kind of thing? an update would be nice. in the meantime it would be good to hear from anyone else who uses, lame, vbr, or has any other experience with this sort of problem.

Quote: I REALLY HATE Music Match! The GUI is absolutely dreadful and frustrating to work with well, i agree with you here about musicmatch, and as far as i'm concerned there's no alternative to Lame- quality wise.

Also- how often are these chirps and how noticeable? maybe i just haven't heard them.

BTW in case anybody wants to test this--here is the sample that gave my ipod problems (original wav, mp3)
http://home.ix.netcom.com/~severia1/problem_sample.rar

cadman

Originally posted by Spacec0w

how often are these chirps and how noticeable? maybe i just haven't heard them.

In my case they were pretty infrequent and some of them were really quiet (while others were really obvious).

I've just got my pod back from Apple again after a second investigation so I don't know yet whether I am still going to have this problem. If I do I will just have to assume that the pod is now OK have being checked twice. There's no reason why it should be LAME or EAC, maybe it would be down to me peecee hardware. I'm sure if I switched to a dual 2GHZ G5 Mac everything would be fine

Cheers.

cadman

Originally posted by cadman

I've just got my pod back from Apple again after a second investigation so I don't know yet whether I am still going to have this problem.

I do now though...

I still have the same problems so it's back to the drawing board. All my files have been newly encoded again with EAC and LAME using --alt-preset extreme (I know, but at the moment I've loads of space free!). I'm going to try re-transferring 'dodgy' tracks to see if that fixes anything.

Today I am mostly listening to Johnny Cash American Recordings