Most VBR MP3s have "pop" at beginning in Ford player

[jamieburchell]

Hi there

I recently ripped my entire CD collection in what I believed to be the best MP3 format, that being VBR (-V 0). These MP3s play fine everywhere, except for my car which has a Ford MP3 player.

I've done some testing and it turns out that CBR MP3s are fine, but VBR MP3s start with a loud and annoying "pop" sound, like a bad/corrupt MP3. I've tried the "Force ISO Compatibility" option in the advanced settings, and this seems to fix the issue.

My question is why, and how can I sort the problem out without having to re-rip my entire audio collection?

Example track that does work, from Amazon download:
LAME3.98b
-m j -V 4 -q 2 -lowpass 19.7 --abr

And doesn't work, from dbpoweramp:
LAME3.98r
-m j -V 0 -q 0 -lowpass 19.5 --vbr-new -b 32

Thanks
Jamie

[jamieburchell]

Re: Most VBR MP3s have "pop" at beginning in Ford player

If I ripped a CD, and CDs are 44.1KHz, and the setting's set as "Frequency: As source" then why does the "-b 32" switch exist? According to MediaInfo, the sampling rate is 44.1KHz?

[Spoon]

Re: Most VBR MP3s have "pop" at beginning in Ford player

-b is the bitrate, it is not used when -q is in the command line.

As to why your ford CD player cannot play those mp3s, it seems to have a decoding bug with -q 0, the amazon was a abr as well so try using abr.

[jamieburchell]

Re: Most VBR MP3s have "pop" at beginning in Ford player

Hi!

I tried VBR at different quality settings and the problem remained. It worked fine with all CBR, and VBR only when ISO support was enabled

I haven't tried ABR. I don't want to re-rip my music. So I guess there's nothing I can do?

[Spoon]

Re: Most VBR MP3s have "pop" at beginning in Ford player

Not if the issue lies with the ford CD player.