Mp3 wont play on other divice

[Ian Berrington]

Help Please! I recently purchased a Macbook Air M3 with an Apple USB Superdrive CD/DVD read write and ripped and converted to MP3 my entire CD collection to MacintishHD>my name>Music>Music . It all seemed to go well. I then copied this file to Desktop, and then copied to a Scandisk 2.0 USB 128gb drive from the Desktop file (took 7 hours to copy). Today I plugged it into the car infotainment system, and I can see all the files there, organized by artist and album with artwork etc but they wont play. It took weeks to rip all those CD's until the wee hours of the morning all day long. What have I done wrong? How can I fix this. They play fine from the computer, and some copied to my Android phone via Bluetooth also play fine but wont play on the car system.

[Dat Ei]

First off I hope you have ripped your CDs to a lossless format too, so you can just convert these files to any lossy format afterwards. Second check the specs of your car system which mp3 format it can play (i.e. constant bit rate / variable bit rate, max bit rate).

Dat Ei

[Spoon]

The car player will not like something, perhaps the bit rate is too high, perhaps the embedded album art is too large.

[Ian Berrington]

Thank you for the replies, much appreciated! I think I discovered one of my errors, I was converting to Free Format at a bit rate the car player wont support, thinking I would get a better quality recording, I was wrong. I re-read your help page, and set the player exactly as you suggested, ripped one CD, put it on a USB and it played perfectly. So then I tried to convert my original ripped files but got over 3000 errors. In the end I decided to start from scratch and am currently ripping each one again according to your suggested settings(another 10 days full time). Most are going okay but quite a few are resulting in 2 basic "error" messages saying that "the file failed to convert to MP3 Lame track ripped insecurely" and also "error converting to replay gain encoded file cant be decoded back". Is there anyway I can fix these tracks / files? Any and all help is very much appreciated! I tried to upload a screen shot of the message but the "choose file" defaulted to downloads and gave no other options, my screen shots are on desktop. Thank you again.

[Ian Berrington]

PS I may be wrong, but it appears that any file I previously ripped at the higher bit rate (384) and the result was "Secure" with either a green check or green i will fail to rip to the new settings. Even though I have deleted the previous ripped files and am ripping to a different file path now. Also one last thing, Sorry I was born before computers existed, so I can be a little "Tech challenged" at times. Sometimes a track is "Re-ripping" one frame, or maybe 2, but still results in error. It seems like a small thing, one frame, to result in error.

[Spoon]

If you are re-ripping, rip to lossless, you only have to do that once, then create the mp3 files from the lossless library, or use something like TuneFusion to automatically do it.

[Ian Berrington]

What is "Lossless"? The options I see are "Free Format" , "Bit rate (CBR)", "Quality (VBR)", and "Target". I'm sorry, I'm not familiar with the details.

[Dat Ei]

mp3 is a lossy codec. You lose sound quality to a certain degree. I.e. Flac is lossless codec. It has the same sound quality as the original source (CD). Once you have ripped your CDs to flac, you can use those files to convert it afterwards as often as you like to any other music format. If you convert a lossy format to a different lossy format you will lose sound quality with every conversion. You can convert lossless formats to any other lossless format back and forth without the lose of sound quality.

Dat Ei

[Ian Berrington]

Thank you again! I did try FLAC but didn't understand it, the player doesn't support it. BTW, according to the car manual the player is a Harmon Kardon, and in MP3 it supports MPEG-1, layer 1,2 and 3, MPEG-2, Layer 1,2 and 3, MPEG 2.5 layer 3. Bitrates 8 kBit/s to 448 kNit/s with VBR and CBR, Sample rates up to 48kHz. Thats all Chinese to me but what I have.

[Dat Ei]

Lossless formats are like negatives in photography, while lossy formats are like prints. You can produce uncountable prints in uncountable formats from a negative with a constant quality, but once you only have a print as the source for further copies, you will lose quality.

Your car system might not support flac, but the flac files would be a good starting point for an archive of your music. Once you've ripped your CD collection to flac, you can convert those flac files in new(!) files in uncountable other formats without reripping your CDs, i.e. mp3 for your car system. BTW: there are player which can play flac directly.

Dat Ei

[Ian Berrington]

Okay, so I have a few albums that give me "error" on every track, IE complete failure and nothing ripped or saved. I tried opening another folder called FLAC, changed the ripping format to FLAC without changing any other settings, also "error" on every track. I must have something wrong in the settings?

[Spoon]

Likely the cd drive cannot read the disc, post the full error message please.

[Ian Berrington]

I apologize for so many issues, and I really do value all your support Gents. Of the discs that I have that fail entirely, and there are a few, I just ran some rip variations. ALL resulted in error, including Disc information. The CD looks fine, I can see no issues with it. But no matter what format I choose, and I have tried Wave, Apple AAC, Mp3 LAME, Disc information and a few others it all fails. However, my first attempt with Free format did result in a rip that I can play on the laptop, just not in the car. What am I doing wrong on these disc's that result in error on every track in every format? I just tried to rip it again in Free format MP3 and it also resulted in error. The error message says it rips "insecurely"

[Spoon]

>The error message says it rips "insecurely"

It means the file cannot be ripped without errors, but you should have the final files depending on how badly damaged the cd is, could be invisible to the eye damage.

[Ian Berrington]

The Title of the artist is in the new folder, and the one album art file. But none of the tracks. I just did a file conversion on one album from the first rip in MP3 and it seemed to work, but all the others I try the message says cannot find a valid MP3 frame. But the first rip was in MP3, just with the wrong settings for the car player, and all the tracks from the first rip play on the laptop, in MP3 format. I've now got about 10 full albums that result in "error" but that ripped in MP3 and are playable on the laptop but wont rip again, and I have LOTS still to do.