Karaoke Forums

I am running WinCDG Pro for my karaoke software. I just purchased and downloaded a song from a reputable site...I have bought from them many times in the past and have never had any problems. I have one song that will not play properly though this time. The lyrics appear but no sound. I downloaded and installed the free program Karafun on my computer to try and track the problem and it will play the song correctly! So I know this isn't a corrupted file or naming convention problem.

Has anyone ran into a similiar issue or have any ideas? I read somewhere that some programs won't play variable rate mp3s...could this be the issue?

Thanks in advance for any input!

Amethystm00n

It plays fine with Karafun & not WinCDG. So the file is fine. You are getting video but no audio, so WinCDG video portion is working fine. I notice in the specs of the program that it has multi sound card capability, is it being pointed to your active sound card? This would be my guess. I don't use the program so do not know how to do so, most likely would be in a tools or options or something to that nature.
OK I downloaded the demo in the upper left corner of the program says preferences. Scroll down to Output Options & select your sound card.

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Thanks for taking the time to download the demo in an effort to help! All my other songs are playing just fine in WinCDG so I don't think it's a sound card issue...but I will certainly take a look just in case. I will let you know one way or the other.

Amethystm00n

I'm wondering if the file is zipped, and wincdg doesn't recognize zipped files.

Go with that for a minute to either rule it in or out.
Is the mp3 that won't play a variable rate?
Look at some of the ones that do play...are they variable rate?
If there is only one that is a variable rate and it is the one that doesn't play then convert it to a constant bit rate (CBR)

I don't think that VBR is the issue, but it is certainly easy enough to rule in or out.

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Update...I wasn't the sound card. It was set to "default" so I did try specifying mine, but it didn't make any difference.

As for the suggestion on the .zip files...WinCDG does recognize them but I have tried both zipped and unzipped and it still fails to play correctly.

On to the VBR...can you tell me how to tell whether the mp3 is a contant or variable bit rate? I tried looking in the properties, but I couldn't tell. I guess I haven't looked at what bit rate it is saved at compared to others that are working correctly...I will follow up on that.

A further side note: The mp3 will play just fine from Windows Media player (minus the lyrics of course) so I don't think it is a codecs issue.

I guess it isn't a big deal that one song out of thousands isn't playing. However, I would like to figure it out why just in case this comes up again with future downloads.

Thanks and I will post another update if I figure anything else out!

Amethystm00n

have you tried playing it with other players?? There are free download players out there, such as Karafun, Karaoke Builder Player... winamp.

Could just be a bad download. Have you contacted the site you got it from to see if they can retransmit it?

((EDIT>: Nevermind... saw where you'd already done this... my apologies!))

another option to think about is if you get the mp3toolz... you can combine it to a .bin file... and then rerip it back to mp3+g!

That might just do the trick...good idea knightshow.
I was thinking along the same line, first use mp3toolz to unzip and then to rezip(thinking it might be a zip compression issue as I have seen that before as well), but after seeing your suggestion I would try the way you suggest and that would cover both bases.

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Music speaks to the heart in ways words cannot express.

If it is in a zip archive I bet it is a naming issue. Try unzipping the file and seeing if the .mp3 and the .cdg are named the same in the zip file. Sometimes a special character like a quote, a paren, a bracket, or a colon can cause a problem.

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Alas for those who never sing, but die with all their music in them.
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Thanks for the suggestion about checking the file names, but I had already tried that as well. Even went so far as to try renaming both the .cdg and .mp3 files just in case there was something I wasn't seeing, but no luck.

I haven't given up yet!

Amethystm00n

I can email you the old beta verson of mp3toolz (doesn't use the .net framework), so if you want to play with it, let me know!

I have AVS Audio Tools so I used the "convert audio" feature in that program. The original file was saved at 256kb, which shouldn't have been a problem as I have other files saved at that rate that work just fine. However, most seem to be 192kb so I decided to convert it to that just to be sure. And guess what...NOW IT WORKS! Whoopeeee...success at last

So I don't know if maybe the original was a variable bit rate or just had some funky (hidden) setting in the mp3 settings. At least I know what to do if I run into the issue in the future.

Thanks for all the ideas, suggestions, and help!

Amethystm00n

Hi Amethystm00n,
Whats the name of the cdg file you have that won't play? I'll send you another cdg .zip of the same file, see if that'll play for you.
Shocky

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