Songs sometimes end abruptly - before the song is over - VBR encoding?

[Thunderball]

Hi all:

I have about 14000 audio tracks - all MP3, almost all encoded as variable bit rate. Many times, in Freebox, a song will just end abruptly - before the song is really over - some seem fine. These files play fine in Windows Media Player, WinAmp, and my portable players (although track progress times are not always correct--). I'm assuming that this problem is due to the VBR encoding - right? Is there a way to make Freebox handle the tracks correctly? (I don't relish the thought of re-encoding ALL of that music!)

Thanks!!

[eist1]

Thunderball,

Looks like it is the VBR issue, I have a bunch of albums that are VBR and won't play, had to re-encode them to CBR which fixed it, but Barcrest is talking about converting Freebox to Windows Media Player Engine, which would probably fix the problem, but it is not too popular with some of the other users due to WMP performance, hopefully he will try it out because I'd like to use some of the WMP plugins as well.

[Thunderball]

eist1-

Well, I've voted to switch to the Media Player engine - hopefully that will help. By the way, what app did you use to re-encode your files? What bit rates are you using? Any change in sound quality after the conversion?

Thanks!

[eist1]

I used Audio Conversion Wizard, it does batch jobs, so you can point it to your folder and it will convert all of the songs. I am using 192 Bit Rate, and I didn't notice that much of a difference, as I converted 192 to 192. Hope that helps

[Thunderball]

I'll check it out - thanks for the advice--