What causes "Corrupt File Detected"?

ilove1981

Last night whilst playing a track I don't think I have ever played before, I got the message:

Corrupt File Detected - Playback of this track may stop anytime

I tried it again today and I see the same message, at the same point. I've not seen this before so I was slightly worried. It happened right at the end of the track and I was mixing out anyway, but interestingly, the track did play right to the end with no issues.

Does this mean simply that the MP3 file is somehow corrupt or invalid? And yet the song still plays normally?

Thanks for any insight anyone can offer!

JesterMgee

Usually it's just a slight error of some kind in the file. MP3/Flac files have several data chunks in them for the audio, the metadata and the image and if any one of these fails the checksums it could cause this so could even be some corrupt data in the non-audio part but could also just be a simple byte that is a problem and may not be audible.

Sometimes it "can" cause playback to stop or hiccup depending on the issue so is a caution warning really. Ideally if it's an important part of your setlist you would want to get another copy just in case, otherwise it's probably no big deal if you have tested it to play fine.

JesterMgee

Usually it's just a slight error of some kind in the file. MP3/Flac files have several data chunks in them for the audio, the metadata and the image and if any one of these fails the checksums it could cause this so could even be some corrupt data in the non-audio part but could also just be a simple byte that is a problem and may not be audible.

Sometimes it "can" cause playback to stop or hiccup depending on the issue so is a caution warning really. Ideally if it's an important part of your setlist you would want to get another copy just in case, otherwise it's probably no big deal if you have tested it to play fine.

ilove1981

Thanks. I'm now wondering if there are macOS tools to check MP3 files for these issues. I'll have a look around but if anyone knows of any way to test for internal corruption, let me know. Thanks.