Andreas, did you have a chance to look at the nightly?  The log file clip is odd, but I can't imagine it would affect the sound output.  I'll try to reproduce this shortly.

It would be great if you could attach a track that displays the behavior.

I'm also suffering from this on WinXP rather than Suse.

It only seemed to start with the 6.5.1 WinXP nightly from 2006-10-07 which also prompted me to upgrade to firmware 65. I performed a full rescan (I actually deleted the whole cache/db folder)

Since I don't have very many mp3s it took me a little while to notice this.

Then I upgraded to the 2006-10-09 nightly (and firmware 66), rescanned (deleted folder again) and I'm still getting it.

Anyway, I'll attach a file. I'm interested to know if it's just that I messed the rip up or if SlimServer is getting it wrong.

Richard

Created attachment 1637 [details]
mp3 with noisy click at start

Created attachment 1638 [details]
mp3 with click at beginning

Since firmware 66 (I think) i've been noticing pops when I start some mp3 tracks, or when I skip forward using SongScanner. But I've seen similar problems forever.

My mp3's are ripped from internet radio, so they don't start on a frame boundary.

This is wild speculation - but I suspect that either the server or the firmware or both are doing a bad job of valid frame boundary detection.

Its as if sometimes a false sync byte is used. As I understand it, finding the sync/frame start byte is an excersize in guessing. The more validation, the less likely to use bad data.

As well as the pops, the other indication of this is that slim sometimes missclasifies the bit rate of my clips. They play ok, often after a pop. Other players (e.g. winamp) get it right. If I cut a few thousand bytes off the start of such a track, slim then gets the bit rate right as well. So I'm guessing a false frame detect early in the file was the cause.

I wonder if this has to do with the recent change enabling 'gapless' mp3 playback (bug 1026).  I will have a look.

Nope, seems to go back farther than that, or is unrelated.  Still looking.

bad in 64
good in 55
bad in 60
bad in 57
bad in 56

So, something happened 55 -> 56

Looking at the changes, I don't see anything obvious.  I'm sure Richard can puzzle it out, though.  Thanks Richie and Andreas for the sample files.  Very helpful.

Created attachment 1643 [details]
Another MP3 with nasty noise at start

I've just upgraded to the lastest nightly (6.5.1 - 10311 & FW 66), and I've started getting exactly the same problem on a large number of my MP3s. I certainly didn't notice this under 6.5, but I can't say for certain that it wasn't there. I've uploaded one of the problem files. So far, I've found this affects all MP3s in an album, or none at all.....

Interestingly, I'm on exactly the same hardware as Andreas - Fedora FC5 / Via Nemeniah 1Ghz CPU / 512GB RAM.

For those of us experiencing this it is obviously a major problem. Any chace of increasing the Severity from its current "normal"?

(A different) Richard.

I have tried deselecting all additional plugins & restarting. No change.

I think the problem is related to the new iTunes.  I use iTunes to edit cover art (but I dont use the iTunes plugin) and it seems like I'm only getting the pops/static on files that I've edited the cover art with the new (7.0+) iTunes.  Someone else reported that removing the coverart in iTunes stops the pops/noise.

I see this without ITUNES.

I'm experiencing the same problem, see here:
http://forums.slimdevices.com/showthread.php?t=28668

I found that this issue is really related to embedded coverart, at least the noise disappears as soon as I remove the embedded coverart. I also found, that the noise is longer with big cover art. Another observation is, that files with coverart aren't played to their very end.

My suspect was iTunes not adding coverart in the right way, but I could be wrong.

Cover art isn't the cause of my noises unfortunately. I've just investigated one of my problem albums, and the tracks do not have any embedded cover art.

The ony tags in these tracks are: ALBUM, ARTIST, DISCNUMBER, ENCODEDBY, GENRE, TITLE, TRACK, YEAR

I don't use Itunesupdater, but the tracks were originaly ripped by Itunes (v4.9.0.17)

I've been seeing this too, at least since I installed 

    SlimServer Version: 6.5.1 - 10311 - Windows XP - EN - cp1252

but possibly since 6.5.0 - I definitely don't recall seeing it (hearing it? :)) before 6.5.  All of the current music on my server is mp3, 90% ripped from my own CD's in the last 2 months, 99% with embedded cover art.  I've never used iTunes, so that shouldn't be an issue.  It happens on a large number of my files, but I haven't done any real analysis (I've just heard it while listening to music)...  I don't believe I've heard it while streaming to foobar2000 or Softsqueeze, though I haven't been able to use Softsqueeze since moving from 6.5.0 to the above build.

Created attachment 1645 [details]
Possible fix

Can you guys try updating your copy of 6.5.1 with these 2 updated files, do a complete wipe and rescan, and see if the problem is fixed?  If you're on Windows, you'll need to use ActiveState and run slimserver.pl.

I have activeperl 5.8.8.819 installed.

When I try to start slim 6.5.0 10/16 build with activeperl I get

XML::Simple version 2.15 required--this is only version 2.12 at C:/Program Files
/Perl/lib/Exporter/Heavy.pm line 121.
BEGIN failed--compilation aborted at C:\Program Files\SlimServer\server\slimserv
er.pl line 102.

I've tried the fix and it definitely fixes the problem with the file I submitted. That whole album had the problem and all the tracks play fine now.

Just for info, I'm using the 6.5.1 Windows nightly from 2006-10-09. Obviously, I also have ActivePerl installed.

I'll run it some more and play with some other mp3s just to be certain.

Hope this helps.

Richard

Great, marking this one fixed.

I'm running slimserver on an Ubuntu PC. Copied the bug fix files to the proper place. I no longer hear the glitch on several mp3 files that were playing back with the glitch before the fix.

(In reply to comment #0)
> I use the SlimServer_6.5_v2006-10-05.noarch.rpm package.
> Tonight I'll try it with the last nightly build.
> It's installed on a Suse10.1 / Via Nemeniah 1Ghz CPU / 256GB RAM. In my music
> database are 15000 songs, all of them mp3.
> The problem is, some tracks start with a short click (>.5s). It occurs
> reproduceable at certain tracks. If you like, I can send you some mp3's which
> have the problem.
> It happens both on my Squeezebox v.3 and in Softsqueeze.
> I haven't experienced the problem in 6.3. 
> I also have some strange entrys in /tmp/slimserver.log , which I'd like to post
> here:
> ----------------------------------------------------
> 2006-10-06 06:28:25.2506 About to look for files in /media/usbdisk_ext3/musik
> 2006-10-06 06:28:25.2547 For files with extensions in:
> [(?i-xsm:\.(?:ape|wma|shn|wav|wave|mp3|mp2|flc|flac|m4a|mov|m4b|mp4|mp+|mpc|ogg|aif|aiff|cue)$)]
> 2006-10-06 06:28:49.6614 Found 14851 files in /media/usbdisk_ext3/musik
> 2006-10-06 06:37:20.3269 scanPathOrURL: Finding valid files in:
> /media/usbdisk_ext3/musik/Club/Pop-Low-Res
> 2006-10-06 06:37:20.3558 About to look for files in
> /media/usbdisk_ext3/musik/Club/Pop-Low-Res
> 2006-10-06 06:37:20.3637 For files with extensions in:
> [(?i-xsm:\.(?:ape|wma|asf|wax|asx|lnk|wpl|shn|wav|wave|mp3|mp2|m3u|pls|xspf|flc|flac|m4a|mov|m4b|mp4|cue|mp+|mpc|ogg|aif|aiff)$)]
> 2006-10-06 06:37:20.4400 Found 7 files in
> /media/usbdisk_ext3/musik/Club/Pop-Low-Res
> 2006-10-06 06:40:22.3538 ERROR: file error - status_header.html: not found
> 2006-10-06 06:43:47.9531 ERROR: file error - status_header.html: not found
> File '/usr/share/mysql/charsets/?.conf' not found (Errcode: 2)
> -----------------------------------------------------

(In reply to comment #17)
> Created an attachment (id=1645) [edit]
> Possible fix
> Can you guys try updating your copy of 6.5.1 with these 2 updated files, do a
> complete wipe and rescan, and see if the problem is fixed?  If you're on
> Windows, you'll need to use ActiveState and run slimserver.pl.

At the risk of looking silly, could you give more info on how to implement this fix?  Tried downloading your file and all I got was a file called "attatchment". 
Thanks

My attachment is a zip file.  Or you can just wait for tonight's nightly build to get the fix.

Additionally squeezebox firmware 67 / transporter firwmare 22 includes a fix to prevent the noise being played back even if the slimserver/remote stream send incorrect data to the player. It is currently undergoing internal testing and will ne in a nightly release soon. The problem was caused as a side effect of the fix for Bug #2527.

I've just tried the latest Nightly (SlimServer_6.5_v2006-10-18.noarch.rpm) and those two files, but I still have the same problem I'm afraid.......

I've been experimenting with code I've written to find valid MP3 frames on my bad files.  What I see is a frame that looks valid, until you compute its length and see that the following frame is not valid.  When I strip this invalid frame, the noise goes away.  These files are also misclassified in the lbrary as to bit rate - they get the bit rate of the bogus frame.

I suspect this can also happen when you skip forward in a track - for example with Song Scanner.

This bug has recently been fixed in the latest release of SqueezeCenter 7.0.1

Please try that version, if you still see the error, then reopen this bug.

To download this version, please navigate to: http://www.slimdevices.com/su_downloads.html