MP3 Muting

I'm testing the demo of Raduga to see if it fits my needs, and I discovered that it doesn't work so well with my MP3's. Two distinct things happens:

1) The file is not recognised by raduga as a playable mp3 and I avoided this checking the "ignore all errors" tab. (I still don't understand why my freeware winamp plays the raduga's refused files very well)

2) This is a more subtle issue. Some files seems to start playing, 'cause raduga don't skip them and both the "gauge bar" and the "countdown to the end of track" are running, unfortunately there is no audio at all. To let the song start playing I have to move the gauge into another position. Of couse even these files don't have any problem with both winamp and mediaplayer 7 & 8.

My system is a P4 1800 1Gb ram WinXP Pro MB Asus P4B with embedded soundcard and a terratec EWS88MT audio card.

I must say that failing compatibility test with audio files puts this software under a not so bright light. Most of my files are encoded with lame MP3 encoder (last version) and the industry standard Fraunhoffer MP3 enc at rates from 192 to 320 KBps both Jont stereo and stereo.

Maybe I'm just making mistakes configuring your software but I really don't understand which ones.

Thank you in advance for letting me finish my evaluation of your SW.

Ettore.

Re: MP3 Muting

Raduga is not compatible with with Lame files encoded at 320. I recommend Fraunhoffer or the FREE Blade encoder. It works well with both. Xing also works well too.

Re: MP3 Muting

Thank you for the fast answer ... but it is easier said than done. Despite of your statement, Raduga works very well with Lame files encoded at 320 and/or other rates but only with WinME.

With the same hardware (P4 1800 1Gb ram MB Asus P4B with embedded soundcard and a terratec EWS88MT audio card) I installed WinME and all of the compatibility problems disappeared (!!). The files that Raduga was in trouble with, now are playing (I'm referring to the subtle issue. Some files seems to start playing with everything OK except ... the sound).

There are still 2 problems:

1) I want to test (and maybe use in future) the program under XP Pro because I need a stable operating system which claims to be better (under these terms) of the Win9X/me platform.

2) Now the scheduled mini playlist has some problems: When it starts the sound "Jumps" and you can hear a continuos glitch noise during the fading at the end of the mpl.

I'm sorry to disturb you so much, but I'm very astonished about all these problems that don't allow me to complete a serious "burn in test".

Ettore.

Re: MP3 Muting

Raduga is so easy to use - there is nothing that you can configure :-) In fact, it runs best if being installed on a virgin Windows 2000/XP system with original Microsoft sound drivers.

Please use the DSPlay too (http://www.wolosoft.com/files/DSPlay.zip) to check that you are using the correct version (1.50) of the Fraunhofer MP3 decoder.

I just encoded a file with Lame at 320 kbit/s
( lame -b 320 xxx.wav xxx.mp3 )
Then I loaded the file in Raduga and it played just fine.

Re: MP3 Muting

Dear Wolfgang,

Thank you for the answer.
I do believe that Raduga is easy to use and this is one of the reasons why I'm testing it.

I Installed Raduga on a virgin Windows XP system with, of course, native Microsoft sound drivers. Well, It simply doesn't work. period.

The fraunhoffer codec installed afterwards (v 1.9) was a tentative way to let those file play. Then I tried to install Win ME from a blank formatted disk ... and it magically worked!!

As seen my name is not Harry Potter :-), allow me to be a little bit more cautionous before saying that raduga works "out of the box", simply because it's not true proven by tests made by a definitely not absolute beginners in I.T.

What I really don't understand is why Raduga is so sensitive to which encoder was used in the first place. I'm not saying the crossfading between multiple files at specified times doesn't work ... I'm simply talking about the basic functionality of an MP3 player: to play MP3 files. Never had any skipped or refused MP3 file by any other player I used.

For the rest, Raduga is quite interesting but I need to stress it to say I can count on it. And this can be said Only after I will be able to play all the MP3 files I have, or I will have from the monthly review or audio magazine that doesn't care about the fact that raduga exists.

Ettore.