All music files corrupted, seeking input

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hepjen
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All music files corrupted, seeking input

#1 Post by hepjen » Fri Dec 03, 2010 1:41 am

Hi everyone,

I'm writing to ask for your input. My DJ music files are corrupted, as of today. When a song is playing, the music distorts occasionally (about twice a minute), as if I downloaded a corrupted music file. I tested my music with various DJ players (WinAmp, ITunes, Windows Media Player) with the same result.

While testing, I played music from my external hard drive, and the same thing happened. Which makes me think it has something to do with how my netbook is playing the music files (no matter which DJ player I am using). I've had the netbook for about 2 years, and it's running on Windows XP.

I'm not sure what caused this, but yesterday, I returned from traveling. I have a hunch that it may have been either airport security, or perhaps I bumped my netbook enroute and something was damaged. The netbook seems to be working normally except for this.

I do have some urgency to fix this, as I have a DJ gig this Saturday. If I cannot find a solution before then, I will DJ off my 2 IPods (which, fortunately, I last synced before my trip, so the music is playing fine). I don't have all of my songs that were on my netbook on the IPods, but at least I have a good amount of working songs. I have a ton of music on CDs, but my last working CD player broke about a month ago. And my netbook is my only computer.

If you have any insight that might possibly help me fix my netbook so that it plays songs without corruption, I will be very, very grateful. Thanks for your time, and wish me luck.

Thanks,
Jen

lipi
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#2 Post by lipi » Fri Dec 03, 2010 1:55 am

I suspect something is consuming enough CPU to starve the player every 30 seconds or so. I'd expect a skip rather than distortion, but it's possible the music distorts instead.

You should open task manager (ctrl-alt-del -> task manager), look at the performance tab, and see if cpu usage spikes to 100% whenever the music distorts. If so, go back to the process tab, order it by CPU usage, and wait till you see one of them jump to the top when your music skips.

The next step depends on what that process is.

It's also possible disk is the bottleneck, rather than CPU, or even the audio device on the netbook (it's probably pretty wimpy), but let's look at CPU first.


To make sure your external hard drive and its contents are O.K., find another computer, hook it up, and make sure you can play a file without distortion. If it *does* distort, it means the files are in fact corrupted. A virus would be my first guess, in that case. It's hard to accidentally corrupt a whole collection of files, especially in a specific enough way that a) they continue playing and b) they're distorted.

hepjen
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#3 Post by hepjen » Fri Dec 03, 2010 2:37 am

Thanks, Alex. The CPU doesn't seem to be spiking when the music distorts. I ordered the processes by CPU, and I don't see any particular process spiking when the music distorts.

I will test the music on my external hard drive with another computer tomorrow.

lipi
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#4 Post by lipi » Fri Dec 03, 2010 2:44 am

Some other things to try in the mean time:

1) play a youtube video--does the sound distort then, too? If so, that points to something outside the music files and audio players (another process, or hardware).

2) download an audio file from somewhere (amazon.com has free mp3s here: http://www.amazon.com/Free-Songs-Music/ ... =334897011 ). If that does not skip, your files are indeed corrupted. If it does skip, in all likelihood your files are O.K. (or whatever corrupted them acts really quickly...).

hepjen
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#5 Post by hepjen » Fri Dec 03, 2010 11:37 am

I played a YouTube video, and it distorts. I downloaded an audio file from Amazon, and it also distorts.

So, hopefully my music files are OK. In the meantime, any more ideas on how to clean up the netbook so that the files will play normally will greatly help for my DJ gig tomorrow.

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Mr Awesomer
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#6 Post by Mr Awesomer » Fri Dec 03, 2010 12:05 pm

Could be the onboard audio chips drivers are screwy. Try reloading them/making sure they are up to date.

If that doesn't work your onboard audio chip is most likely loose or has gone bad.

Try playing via a USB sound card. Just grab one at Best Buy... if it doesn't solve your problem, easy to return. If it does solve your problem, using it instead of getting your onboard audio fixed will probably be cheaper.
Reuben Brown
Southern California

hepjen
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#7 Post by hepjen » Sat Dec 04, 2010 1:55 am

The problem is fixed. Apparently my 2WIRE DSL wireless router causes some sort of buildup which causes the audio to distort in the netbook. As soon as I disconnected from wifi, the files played normally. I rebooted the wireless router, and the audio still plays normally. It looks like buildup may periodically occur in the future, but I can live with this simple fix. Strange but true.

In case anyone else encounters the same kind of problem, I found the solution here:

http://vip.asus.com/forum/view.aspx?SLa ... 1&count=13

Thanks, Alex and Reuben, for taking the time to respond. Your suggestions helped me to narrow down the problem and find a solution.

And I'm all good for my DJ gig this afternoon. Hallelujah!

Jen

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