Digital Home Thoughts: And Here I Thought MP3s Were More Compatible...

Remember my crisis of faith a few months ago? Well, after ripping my past 5-10 CDs in MP3 format, I ran into another roadblock that made me realize things aren't always as simple as they seem. I had ripped a song in MP3 format using Sonic's RecordNow Deluxe, which uses the LAME encoder (although it's not an encoder, right? What is it - an MP3 codec?). A few weeks later I was doing a project in Photo Story and tried to import the MP3 - and it wouldn't work. What?? MP3s are supposed to be compatible with everything, right? I re-ripped the CD in WMA format and was able to import the track just fine. So now I was confused. :?

I've recently made the acquaintance of some helpful people in the Windows Media group at Microsoft, so I handed the file over to them and asked what was wrong. After some investigation they came back and told me there are some known issues with the LAME encoder creating MP3s that aren't quite...right....and that while WMP has no trouble playing the song, Photo Story was gagging on the file because of this issue. If the MP3 was created using anything other than LAME, I would have been able to import it. So here I thought that if I switched to MP3 for ripping I wouldn't have any problem. But, silly me, I managed to pick the wrong TYPE of MP3 ripping program. <sigh> :roll:

So now I'm back to being wishy-washy on the formats. I think I'll probably go back to WMA, although I really wish it had more advanced features for ripping - I want software that will compare the ripped file to the original CD and ensure that it's 100% correct. Lately I've started to come across more and more CDs that don't seem to rip quite properly. Is iTunes a good MP3 ripper? What codec do they use?

[Conspiracy theorists among you might be thinking that Microsoft purposefully didn't make Photo Story fully compatible with MP3 files, but I personally don't believe that to be the case.]