Corrupted FLAC files after tag edit

[tbessie]

I just edited my post above after clarifying my thoughts about how this "sync tool" might work. I think the design I've described is a little more direct and simple (and easier to use) than previous ideas. Let me know what you think.

- Tim

[Bex]

Ok guys, as promised, my "Advance Duplicate Find & Fix"- script has now been updated (by me and Trixmoto) to allow for easy transferring of database values and copy tags/Album Art. Check it out and let us know what you think.
http://www.mediamonkey.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=13000

[jaco]

It has been almost a month and I haven't seen any mention of this problem being made on the home page of the MM web site, or any emails sent out to registered users warning them of this problem.

Developers of MM, please realise that every day wasted is a day where many users out there are corrupting more of their precious FLAC files. Is this how little you feel for your user base? That definitely does not send out a good signal!

I'm already busy looking at alternatives, and I'll strongly recommend the alternative to everybody if this situation continues for much longer...

[Bex]

This has ben added in the FAQ:
http://www.mediamonkey.com/faq/index.ph ... artlang=en

A note to the article on the main website should however be a good thing!

[jaco]

Yes, I did see that post. However, rusty posted this on 13 June:

[quote]Enough with the excuses. Most importantly we want to make this right. I'm going to:
a) send an update notification so that all pre 2.5.5.998 users are told to upgrade to MM 2.5.5.998 (done--but see note below).
b) update the announcement on the home page re. 2.5.5.998 to describe the problem (done)
c) post a note to our support page containing a description of the issue along with the flac fix tool and post the same note to our forum and make it sticky (done).
[/quote]

So far I've only seen c) being addressed (and only partially so)

I'm still waiting to see any progress on points a) and b)...

[Teknojnky]

B)

Note: users of versions 2.5.5.996/997 and FLAC should update immediately. See the following note for details.

from the right side news bar on the front page

A), haven't seen an email go out either, but its also possible that spam filters caught it

[jaco]

Hi Teknojnky,

Thanks for pointing that out to me. Unfortunately it's not very visible (I lmost get the idea it has been done on purpose, but that is only my opinion). When I go to the home page I look at the date of the top recent news item. The current top item is dated Jan. 30, 2007. When I see that I don't even read the rest since it has been the same for the past six months. I believe most other readers of the home page will do exactly the same.

I would suggest putting a recent news item with the date of June 13, 2007 in the recent news section with the urgent notice. That would place it at the top of the recent news and will make sure it gets the attention of people visiting the page.

Just my 2 cents!

[ogdoad8]

I have not yet run the MM FlacFixTool ( http://www.mediamonkey.com/beta/FlacFixTool.zip ) on my collection (thousands of FLAC files tagged with MM). I am quite scared of the results and honestly scared to let any MM code touch my FLAC files right now. It surprises me how long it took MM to address this issue and the fact that they are pushing forward with MM3 without fully addressing this serious problem.

What does the AudioTester utility ( http://www.vuplayer.com/files/audiotester.zip ) actually test? Will it identify FLAC files that have been corrupted by MM's bug, or only once they've been attempted to be fixed? Can somebody explain specifically what's being tested by this utility and how to see if any of my files are damaged? Does running "flac -t" test something different?

Personally: I keep a bit-perfect archive of my CD collection by ripping to FLAC using EAC + AccurateRip, then using MM to download album art and fix up tags, and then playing my music mostly with Sonos devices or portable players (downconverting to MP3 from FLAC). So the primary purpose for me of MM (for which I paid and have been strongly recommending to people) has utterly failed and possibly caused me a tremendous amount of lost time. I hope the MM developers understand that many people use it specifically for its tag management of their archive-quality audio data, and for this use it has gone from A- to a big red F.

[ogdoad8]

I've now run both the AudioTester utility and the FlacFixTool on my collection. None of the files showed up as damaged on either one, and for this I am quite thankful.

If it helps anybody track this down, I was using EAC with FLAC 1.1.2 (fairly old) to compress my FLACs. Possibly this bug doesn't surface with older FLAC versions? I'm not sure, but it didn't seem to affect me for whatever reason.

Sorry for the rant, but I really think this should be addressed with high priority. Maintaining the integrity of large music collections is paramount and it seems like nobody even knows (or has said) what this bug really is.

[redsox]

I haven't run any tests on my files (other than flac -t, which confirms a lot of files are corrupt) but will probably start using the MM issued 'flac fixer' on thousands of files soon. I have the following question:

Will the flac fixer tool be superior to doing a flac to flac conversion, other than automating the process for many files?

In other words:
If I simply do a flac to flac conversion in 998 on a corrupt file (let's assume it's been tagged several times and lost 60 bytes of audio), it will remove the first FRAME (which might be a few KB, depending on compression level) ?

If I run the flac fixer on the other hand, will it be able to somehow reset the frames and end up with a fixed file that only lacks the 60 BYTES of data originally loss, rather than the entire FAME?

Let me know if this makes no sense at all (my understanding of file formats is limited)

Thanks!

[Bill]

I ran the FLAC fixer and it corrupted many of my files. It looks like the files are still there and they are shown in the library. However, MM will not play the file. It just skips over it like it has zero length. I guess when I have time, I'll have to replace these files.

[GlennT]

I know... old post. But I used MM to tag nearly ever one of my FLAC files when I ripped over 500 CDs 3 years ago. It tooks *months*, using EAC +Accurate Rip. I never noticed anything was wrong until I decided to make a lossy copy of the library for my wife's new iPod. I couldn't understand how nearly ever single file could be corrupted, and happened across this message thread. As you can imagine, I am *not* happy. So far, it seems all the original files are playable with my Slimdevices Squeezebox, but I wanted to try the fix anyway. I ran the FLAC Fix tool on a copy of the library, and while it says it "fixed" virtually anything it found wrong (i.e. I didn't see any failures), many of the resulting files are completely un-playable now. And for many of those that will no longer play , I can go back to the old copies and even MM will play them.

I'm not sure what I'm going to do, since at least half are failing the FLAC tester with sync errors, even *after* running the FLAC Fixer tool. I could probably just re-encoded using what I have - I'm sure I wouldn't hear a difference and that sure would be better than hauling boxes of CDs out of the basement - but I hate to have to do that.

[maddmaxx]

Amen to that. I have a myriad of flac files that all check out as okay, using the flac -t command, but when I play them in mediamonkey, they skip all over the place, they were all okay before I used mediamonkey to update the tags with things like year and genre... pretty hokey, considering I paid for mediamonkey gold... any comments, or suggestions would be gratly appreciated!

[Peke]

Is there any way that you send one of files (megaupload, hotfile, netload.in) to analyze. Simply send me PM or Open support Ticket with link where I can DL it for testing.