Low-bitrate playback goes weirdly awful

[vladkorotnev]

The mp3 decoder makes strange warping sounds when playing files with less than 128kbps bitrate.

Test case: http://vladkorotnev.me/webtunes/player.php?kind=album&album=63&track=1

Listen to tracks 1 to 9.
These tracks were recorded from a radio station that broadcasts these 96kbps tracks in 192 kbps, then transcoded to the original bitrate of 96.
Expected behavior: acceptable quality playback with degradation usual to 96kbps MP3 files.
Resulting behavior: unacceptable mess.

Listen to track 10.
This track was recorded from the same radio station but no transcoding was applied because the original quality (before Icecast encoding) was also 192kbps.
Expected behavior: acceptable quality playback with degradation usual to 192kbps MP3 files.
Resulting behavior: works as expected with some acceptable degradation.

The tracks can be downloaded (play a track and then click the right "down arrow" key in the player control display) and played in whatever player you use or viewed through a spectrum visualizer (such as Spek) to prove that it's not the recording itself being the cause of unexpected behavior.

Great JS plugin otherwise though, enjoyed building with it, thanks Audiocogs!

[devongovett]

Yep, definitely noticed this. I'll check it out.

[vladkorotnev]

I'd like to note however, that works as expected with some acceptable degradation in fact means a bit more degradation than usual 192kbps have, but as you've stated that the decoder won't be much compatible, it might be not worth the hassle to fix these slight issues.

[devongovett]

Those tracks you say were transcoded back to 96 kbps are actually 128 kbps when I downloaded them. Still sound bad though, not sure why yet.

[vladkorotnev]

Uh it might be i was thinking about the wrong files