Wrong time on songs

[NailJ]

Hi guys,

I just added an album but the duration for all the songs are all wrong.
When I do "Auto-Tag by Album" the correct time for all the songs come up but somehow it doesn't stick when I hit "apply".
Any way to change this on a song-by-song basis in MB?
I've tried deleting the album and importing it again but that doesn't help. The correct time shows up in Windows.

Any help appreciated!

[Zak]

This can happen on VBR files with incorrect details.
Try running them through mp3val and see what it reports.

http://mp3val.sourceforge.net/

[NailJ]

Thanks for the suggestion Zak,

I ran mp3val but it says that everything is ok 

[hiccup]

It may have fixed the issue; did you perform a rescan on the files in MusicBee?

[NailJ]

Thanks hiccup, tried that now but didn't help.
I wish I didnt care about stuff like this, the songs play just fine after all...lol

[hiccup]

Another tool you could try is MP3Diags.
It gives much more information and has a large amount of settings.

If the error is not in the time frame of the files, perhaps there are (embedded) cue sheets involved here?

[NailJ]

Thanks again,
I'm not sure what to look for with MP3diags or what to do

(I just installed a portable version of Foobar to check the album on a different player, the time/duration was displayed correctly)

[hiccup]

I'm not sure what to look for with MP3diags or what to do

Looking at the screenshot, what probably is the problem:
The Xing header says the track is at 48000bps, but the MPEG audio stream actually seems to be 256000bps.
That is a factor 5.33 difference, which is the same as the difference in time between what MusicBee reports and what it should be.

What you could try: create a copy of the file(s), run them through MP3diags using the 'hammer 4' icon at the top.
(the higher the number, the more it will try to fix)
And then see if the bps numbers match for both the Xing header and the mpeg stream?

[frankz]

Good eye.

I believe that Foobar's "Utilities -> Fix VBR MP3 Header" (mine's in the right-click menu) will also correct this.  Despite the name, I've read that it rewrites headers for CBR files too.

[hiccup]

It does leave the question though why all other mentioned software look at the stream data for the duration, and MusicBee looks at the header for it. Maybe that should be changed?

[NailJ]

Nothing changed with the numbers, as far as I can tell, after running MP3diags and 'hammer 4'  

[NailJ]

I didn't rip this album from a CD or download it from major vendor like Amazon or iTunes, instead I bought it directly from the artist site (in the form of a 78 MB .zip file).
First time I've done that and the first time I've had this issue, very strange.

[sveakul]

It does leave the question though why all other mentioned software look at the stream data for the duration, and MusicBee looks at the header for it. Maybe that should be changed?

That verifies a related experience.  I have a M4A file created by wrapping an original AAC via Mp4Box.  When played in MusicBee, the sample rate shows in the Track Information section as 44.1kHz.  However, in Edit/Properties the sample rate is shown as 22kHz.  So one function must be getting the rate from the wrapper, and the other from the stream.  MediaInfo shows 44.1kHz.  Extracting the raw ADTS AAC file and playing that shows 44.1kHz sample rate in Track Information and "unknown" in Edit/Properties.  So Track Information is getting the sample rate from the stream, and Edit/Properties from the header.

Which begs the question, why does the wrapper header NOT show the correct sample rate.  The only clue I've come up with in this case is that MediaInfo shows this particular ADTS stream as being "Format Version 2", and during extraction Mp4Box says "Extracting MPEG-2 AAC."  Literally every other AAC extraction I've done with the same tool shows as "Extracting MPEG-4 AAC", and the result is shown as "Format Version 4" in MediaInfo.  So apparently there is something about this particular AAC ("Format version 2") that is tricking Mp4Box into using "22kHz" in the header instead of the actual stream rate.

[NailJ]

Fixed!

Huge thanks to hiccup for helping me out via pm!

[sveakul]

Fixed!

Please let us know what worked so that others may benefit, thanks!