Strange Sounding Files

[Linja]

With some of the files, they sound really wierd. It's mostly trig files. The ones that are affected sound very... I'm not sure how to describe it. It's clearly not distortion, but the voice sounds odd, really synthetic and kinda underwater? Like I said, I'm not sure how to describe it, a file that does it particularly strongly is the trigfreeze file. Is anybody else experiencing these problems? Most of the files work fine.
I noticed a similar effect when I use the noise reduction feature of my audio program too much, do you use noise reduction EMG?

Perhaps there was just a problem with the download? Tell me what you think.

-Linja

[EMG]

It may also be the compression level of the files, for reasons I have yet to determine, Windows Media player seems to play the files the best.

With some of the files, they sound really wierd. It's mostly trig files. The ones that are affected sound very... I'm not sure how to describe it. It's clearly not distortion, but the voice sounds odd, really synthetic and kinda underwater? Like I said, I'm not sure how to describe it, a file that does it particularly strongly is the trigfreeze file. Is anybody else experiencing these problems? Most of the files work fine.
I noticed a similar effect when I use the noise reduction feature of my audio program too much, do you use noise reduction EMG?

Perhaps there was just a problem with the download? Tell me what you think.

-Linja

[n00b]

As far as I can tell, it sounds like the files are clipping. (ie: the signal is trying to overdrive the output). It seems to happen most with hardware players, as software players can be a bit more liberal with thier filtering codes. The captured frequency seems to have more to do with it than the bitrate. Though the reletively high compression (to keep file sizes down, dialup users like me appriciate it) probably isn't helping.

[n00b]

I just took a look at the output on an oscilloscope. The strange sounds appear to be spikes where the average amplitude jumps by a factor of atleast 4. They don't last very long, but occur fairly regularly. I don't see this with other files on the same player.

EMG: if you still have the files raw (iirc, that was part of the $200 "everything on a DVD package"), you might try switching MP3 codecs. If you're using musicmatch, try CDex w/ the LAME codec or vice-versa. Turning "normalization" on might also help.

[Linja]

Thanks for your help guys. Yeah, they do work better in Media Player, and they work ok in Musicmatch. It's just on my Mp3 that they're messed up. And the normalisation helped a bit too. Thanks a lot.

[n00b]

For a playback, try Winamp w/ the MAD plugin:
http://www.mars.org/home/rob/proj/mpeg/mad-plugin/

It's a high precision MPEG decoder that manages to mask most of the pops from some CDs of mine that got damaged from a CD case.