certain MP3s won't play

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Level 1

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certain MP3s won't play

I downloaded an album from Google Play and four out of the five MP3s will not play in iTunes or my iPod. The only difference that I can see is that one song is at 320 kbps VBR while the others are at 294 kbps VBR. (It is also odd that some of the songs would not be at the normal 320 kbps.) iTunes can see the songs and show me the details, but it just skips of those songs without any error message.
WinAMP, VLC, QuickTime, and Windows Media Player can play the songs just fine.

The album is "Live at Sundance" by "The Civil Wars". It is free if other people want to download it themselves and see what happens. I tried downloading it with another account and got the same issue.

Yes, I also posted this at the Google Play forum (I see no way of emailing google for support).

Windows 7

Posted on Oct 8, 2015 10:13 PM

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Answer 1

the fiend

Level 7

22,506 points

Oct 9, 2015 2:17 AM in response to i_SW

It looks as though the album is no longer available, and even when it was, that was only in the USA. So I for one am unable to test the files.

Possibly, the reason that some files are at 294 while others are at 320 is the use of VBR. That mean Variable Bit Rate. The more complex the music, the higher the bit rate and it varies throughout the piece. Sometimes, as a consequence, players may have trouble playing the file. So perhaps the problem is the file itself was poorly encoded.

Since the tracks appear to no longer be available, your only course of action is to find a programme that will correctly decode (play) the file and use that programme to convert it to another format.

Try Googling "convert VBR to CBR" (constant bit rate), or perhaps someone else can offer a better solution.

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