GNOME Bugzilla – Bug 350360
MP3 produces popping sound
Last modified: 2006-09-03 21:52:33 UTC
Please describe the problem: Certain MP3 files I play using Rhythmbox/Gstreamer 0.10.3 constantly produce a terrible, somewhat low frequency 'popping' sound, this appears to occur at certain frequencies only (it is not relating to my speakers). This is not new to me, as I have heard this behaviour before in some early Windows based MP3 players too, but that had since gone. The problem seems to now have re-emerged in GStreamer. It only happens on some MP3 files as far as I can see, and not on OGG files, so it has to be something to do with the MP3 plugin. I am particularly hearing this 'popping' sound on the free MP3 songs by 'Generation Trance', downloaded from http://generationtrance.com/mixes.php?showcat=3 I am currently listening to 'Voices of Winter 2004', which produces the 'popping' sound described. I am using good quality speakers and audigy 4 sound card, and I am not running the speakers too loud, so it has nothing to do with that, the popping sound is even produced on low volume settings. Steps to reproduce: 1. Use good quality speakers, so the popping sound can be heard easier 2. Download an MP3 by 'Generation Trance', or use another MP3. 3. Play in Rhythmbox and listen carefully for popping sound. Actual results: I hear a low frequency popping sound on and off, on certain frequencis Expected results: The sound should be clean, as it is when playing the same MP3 in Winamp/Windows. Does this happen every time? Yes Other information: Creative Audigy 4 Pro sound card Creative Gigaworks S750 speakers
Could you put up a sample somewhere (use 'head --bytes=5M foo.mp3 > first5m.mp3') or e-mail me a sample or a link to a torrent please? (The forum says 'stream down' and requires login/registration).
Which distro are you on? Do you know if you're using the MAD decoder, or the Fluendo one? (What do gst-inspect flump3dec and gst-inspect mad show?) What are the package versions you have for GStreamer core and GStreamer Plugins Base? I can't immediately reproduce the problem, using 300MB of mp3s downloaded from the Generation Trance website.
I am running Ubuntu Dapper, it appears to be using the Fluendo one. I do not have the gst-inspect command installed for some reason, but I do know that I am definitely using the Fluendo one. The fluendo version is 0.10.2.debian-1 GStreamer plugins base is 0.10.7-0ubuntu5 I do not see a GStreamer core package in the list in synaptic at all, so I am not quite sure what package name Ubuntu uses for this instead, but I do see I have GStreamer ALSA installed, which is of version 0.10.7-0ubuntu5 and GStreamer ESD which is of version 0.10.3-0ubuntu4, if that is of any help. These are all default packages of Ubuntu Dapper, with all updates applied, I haven't compiled anything from source or installed something cutting edge regarding gstreamer. Maybe if you could tell me which song you downloaded from generation trance, so I could maybe give the offsets in the music, where I hear these popping frequencies?
I fetched GT_vs_Project_C_-_Voices_Of_Winter_2005.torrent, and got this big archive with several different mixes of Voices Of Winter: "Sorrow", "Eternity", "Timeless" and "Jan VS Justine" I'm now testing using the Fluendo mp3 plugin from Dapper and I think I do hear the noise you mean, but I'm not sure. Can you hear them if you use: gst-launch filesrc location=filename.mp3 ! mad ! audioconvert ! alsasink ? This may be related to bug #349719
Created attachment 70592 [details] image of sample difference between flump3dec and mad Attaching a picture that shows the difference between the decoded output samples of MAD and the Fluendo decoder. You can see quite a bit of noise between the 2, but interestingly only in the left channel. If you can confirm that you don't have the problem with the MAD decoder, then we'll close this bug as NOTGNOME and tackle it as a Fluendo decoder problem.
I can confirm that, I have played the song via the command line using MAD: gst-launch filesrc location=02_GT_vs_Project_C_-_Voices_Of_Winter_2005_(Eternity).mp3 ! mad ! audioconvert ! alsasink this did not produce the problem described I then played the same song via the command line using Fluendo: gst-launch filesrc location=02_GT_vs_Project_C_-_Voices_Of_Winter_2005_(Eternity).mp3 ! flump3dec ! audioconvert ! alsasink This does produce the noise described I can also confirm that it is only in the left channel, I had noticed this before but forgot to mention it with the original bug post. You may as well mark the bug as NOTGNOME then, but thanks heaps guys for guiding me through this, I now can play music without problems, simply by having uninstalled the gstreamer0.10-fluendo-mp3 codec, rhythmbox then uses the mad codec instead, I would have not figured this out otherwise.
Thanks for confirming! I'll go ahead and fix this in the Fluendo plugins trac.
*** Bug 354138 has been marked as a duplicate of this bug. ***