Re: [Gwc-general] Encoding to MP3 problem, byte swapping occurs

[John C. <jo...@in...>]

Alister,

Thanks for the patches.  I tried the first one on my present 
home install of 0.21-11 (still using the old lame 3.97) and 
confirmed that now the mp3 files become byte-swapped.
I installed the latest lame 3.99.5 and confirmed that the 
mp3 files are encoded correctly.  This is a great relief, 
now I no longer have to keep using that old lame version.
I'm not sure exactly why this byte swap code was added, but 
it might have been to correct something in the older lame 
versions. I do remember that everything worked fine until 
lame got upgraded to 3.98.  I seem to remember that some 
changes were made to the syntax of the command line options 
starting with lame 3.98, so maybe that had something to do 
with it.  But it's still odd that no one else has complained 
about the hiss noise problem in these last five years or 
so.  Does that mean that on some systems gwc and the new 
lame manage to produce a correct mp3 anyway?  I wonder if 
it's sound card related.  I don't have time to experiment 
with this too much but I know my home and work machines both 
use an Ensoniq ES1371.  So if the problem is not present for 
most users, it would not be prudent to remove that byte swap 
code in the main gwc distribution.  More needs to be learned 
about what's happening.  I'm on an i386 architecture so I 
don't have native byte swapping, so that's not it.  Hmm...

I went ahead and made the three changes you recommend in 
0.21-19 and so far so good.  It didn't freeze up on me and 
encoded a usable mp3 file.
There is something new in 0.21-19 that I'm not sure I 
understand. After I get the "encode to filename" dialog and 
click OK, I get another box that says to enter the track 
name.  I didn't know what to put so I just put the number 1 
and it took it, but the box didn't completely clear and 
there is no encoding progress bar.
I don't know what it did with that track name?  It didn't 
end up in the id3 tag info.

Thanks again, I'm now using the latest lame with no issues.

John



On 09/24/2014 08:39 PM, Alister Hood wrote:
> OK,
> (1) if you want a fixed build of a version which is 
> producing static, you can just rebuild after deleting this 
> from encode.c:
>
>     optcnt++;
>
>     options[optcnt] = "-x";    /* Swap bytes */
>
> But I guess this option must have been added because 
> someone actually needed it... I wonder if it is machine 
> specific and can be tested for at compile time, or if it 
> is audio file specific?
>
> (2) in 0.21-19 if you rename the start_encode_old() 
> function to start_encode(), and rename the start_encode() 
> function to start_encode_new_disabled(), then "Encode 
> Selection As..." will work.
> But again, based on the changelog I guess the new function 
> must be needed on some systems:
>
> > GWC Changelog
> > 0.21-19
> > ...
> > BUGFIX: Encoding to ogg or mp3 has always been broken, 
> can only encode to once during GWC session.  Fixed by 
> using named pipe
>
> The "old" function works fine on my system - I can encode 
> more than once during a GWC session.  For the "Simple 
> encode..." feature to still work with it I also had to 
> remove this line:
>
>     options[optcnt] = pipe_name ;    /* named pipe */
>
> These changes and also a fix for "Simple encode..."ing 
> mono files are in my git version:
> https://github.com/AlisterH/gwc/commit/47f7397e6ab6971aed348494b6a5afcd3001d990
>
> Regards,
> Alister
>
> Alister Hood wrote, On 24/09/14 12:01:
>> Hi John,
>>
>> I've found the current version of gwc (I'm not sure about 
>> old ones) freezes if I try to "Encode Selection As..." 
>> mp3 or ogg, but "Simple encode selection as mp3" works fine.
>> FWIW I currently have lame 3.99.5
>>
>> John Cirillo wrote, On 24/09/14 03:47:
>>> I just installed gwc on my work computer and when I go 
>>> to encode to mp3, I see a message in the command line that:
>>> Assuming raw pcm input file : Forcing byte-swapping
>>> As a result the mp3 is garbage, just a loud hiss.
>>> I remember that this started happening long ago at home, 
>>> and has persisted ever since then, persisting through 
>>> complete reinstalls.  It is not dependent on the version 
>>> of gwc.
>>> I am currently at 0.21.18 at work because 0.21.19 
>>> freezes when I try to save anything.
>>> At home I think I'm using 0.21.05.
>>> I seem to remember having reported this problem before, 
>>> and so far the only solution has been to uninstall lame 
>>> and force an install of lame 3.97 which I kept from my 
>>> old Squeeze install (or before).
>>> The newer lames work fine when encoding a .wav from 
>>> command line but from gwc this byte-swapping happens.
>>> Is there something I can do, maybe something I can set 
>>> in gwc?
>>> I can't believe I'm the only one who has encountered 
>>> this. Happens consistently on three computers (work, 
>>> home, and laptop).  I think it started happening on or 
>>> after Squeeze. I've gone through Wheezy and now at 
>>> Jessie with the same problem.  Installing lame 3.97 
>>> seems the only solution.  I don't understand.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> John Cirillo
>