Opening malformed MP3 files

TBP

Contents

1. Malformed MP3 error message
2. Workaround-1
3. Workaround-2

Malformed MP3 error message

Sometimes when trying to import an MP3 file you may see the following message:

Peter 16Jun21: ToDo-2 improve the image.

This indicates that Audacity's default MP3 importer detected an error in the file.

There are millions of "faulty" MP3 files downloaded from the Internet every day that will play correctly in other software, but not in Audacity.

So the question is: How do I import a "slightly faulty" MP3 that plays in other applications, but is rejected by libmad (Audacity's default MP3 importer)?

The answer is: Import it with FFmpeg instead of importing with libmad. There is a downside to using FFmpeg, which is that it does not support Metadata as well as libmad. FFmpeg misses the "Artist" and "Year" tags, while libmad supports all of Audacity's metadata fields.

Workaround-1

I think this is the "best" way.

In the File Import dialog, select "FFmpeg compatible files" as the file type choice filter. See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/importing_audio.html#filetypes

The benefit of doing it this way is that you will still be able to import properly formed MP3s using libmad, by setting the file type choice filter to "All files", "All supported files" or "MP3 files".

The downside is that some users may be unfamiliar with file type filters (If I recall correctly, macOS makes the filters non-obvious), and then get confused that some supported types (such as AUP) are invisible (because they are not supported by FFmpeg).