#448 Input AIFF produces output MP3 with crackling sounds

[elmimmo]

I have an AIFF file that plays cleanly, but when converted with lame to MP3 it produces cracks and hisses, once every few seconds.

The AIFF file was produced by converting the file "02 Title.spc" from the set "Super Mario World [Super Mario World - Super Mario Bros. 4]" available at http://www.zophar.net/music/spc.html into AIFF using spcplay, a command line tool to play/convert SPC files for Mac OS X, available at the package "psfspcplay_osx_20060604.tar.bz2" from http://tmkk.undo.jp/psfplay/. The specific command-line to produce the AIFF files was:

spcplay -o "02 Title.aiff" "02 Title.spc"

which produced an AIFF file that plays cleanly on iTunes 12.1.2.27 and QuickTime Player 10.4.

I then converted it to MP3 with lame with the following command -line:

lame --preset standard "02 Title.aiff" "02 Title.mp3" --tt "Title" --tl "Super Mario World" --tg "Videogames" --ta "Koji Kondo" --ty 1990 --tn 02

Some of the cracks happen at seconds 1, 4, 5 and 8.

I am using OS X 10.10.3 (14D136), LAME 64bits version 3.99.5 installed via the Homebrew package manager.

[Robert Hegemann]

Well, I can't reproduce any cracks. Maybe upload the encoded mp3 file?

[elmimmo]

Then it must be a bug in the different player I am using?:

• QuickTime Player 10.4
• QuickTime Player 7.6.6
• iTunes 12.6.2

all with for Mac OS X (now macOS) El Capitán 10.11.6. Interestingly, the hiccups sound different in iTunes than how they sound in both QuickTimes. Maybe it has to do with the fact that both source AIFF and output MP3 are 32KHz?

Attached is the MP3, encoded with LAME 64bits version 3.99.5 installed via Homebrew (https://brew.sh).

[Robert Hegemann]

I don't hear cracks and hisses, playing your file with foobar2000 on Windows 8.1.

A few things you can try:
a) lame --decode "02 Track.mp3"
then listen to the decoded wave file
b) lame --preset standard --strictly-enforce-iso "02 Title.aiff" "02 Title.test1.mp3"
then listen to that mp3 file
c) lame --preset standard -B256 "02 Title.aiff" "02 Title.test2.mp3"
then listen to that mp3 file