[Feisty] mplayer fails to play mp3 audio correctly with mp3lib

[Brian Neltner]

Binary package hint: mplayer

A number of people have <a href="http://www.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=355545"> reported </a> that mp3 audio either fails to play, or plays with screeching instead of the correct audio with the most recent versions of mplayer in Feisty Fawn.

I did some investigation, and found that I have two computer with different behaviour. My desktop, which I've upgraded to Feisty from Edgy, makes horrible screeching noises on playing mp3 audio. There was previously an error reported where mp3 audio didn't play at all due to mp3lib being disabled on compilation. This is not the same error, mp3lib is definitely compiled in, but it is not decoding correctly. To check this, I compiled from source via apt-get source and double-checked the /debian/rules file to make sure it was correct (it was). Additionally, I downloaded the source directly from www.mplayerhq.hu and it also fails with the same behavior.

However, on my laptop (which was a fresh install of Feisty instead of an upgrade), the mplayer package decodes mp3 audio perfectly. Both computers are up to date Feisty installs, and both worked with previous versions of mplayer (the desktop works fine when I downgrade to a mplayer package I compiled a year ago). With my previous version of mplayer; however, it is using ffmpeg's mp3 decoder instead of mp3lib, so the results aren't necessarily comparable.

Here is what I have done to try to narrow down the problem.

1. mplayer uses mp3lib and successfully plays mp3 audio on my laptop, which has an equivalent Feisty Fawn installation, except that it was installed fresh instead of through a dist-upgrade from Edgy as with my desktop (which plays screeching noises instead of the correct audio). This makes me suspect a config file from Edgy that was intended for use with the Edgy version of mplayer is overriding a correct more current config file from Feisty. Very likely, the difference is simply that the laptop *lacks* the config file, as mplayer will default to quite sane setting in the absence of instructions to the contrary.

2. Looking for a config file, I could not find codecs.conf anywhere (either in /etc/mplayer, in the list from dpkg -L mplayer, or in my ~/.mplayer directory). This strikes me as odd as I seem to remember it causing all kinds of heck many years ago -- but it could have been made unnecessary 3 years ago and I would never have noticed.

3. I don't see anything suspicious in the /etc/mplayer/ configuration files, nor in my own home directory (only mplayer.conf, and gui.conf type files, no codecs.conf that would be likely to mess with which codecs are used and how).

4. It's not the *binary* itself, because the same version of the mplayer package installed on both computers, with both having up-to-date versions of Feisty, don't behave the same way.

5. My next step will be to delete my ~/.mplayer directory to see if something in there is confusing the system. After that, I'll start looking at mp3lib to see if there could be a similar config file mixup for *that* software instead of mplayer.

At the end of the day, I'd give it a 70% chance of being a problem with some legacy configuration file for mp3lib.

[Brian Neltner (neltnerb)]

I don't seem to be able to find which library "mp3lib" refers to. My best guess is the lame libraries. Does anyone know?

[einarb (einar-air)]

I can confirm that I have this problem as well on a machine that was upgraded from edgy to feisty. When using mp3lib I get a screeching noise out of the speakers, but if I try to play anything else (ogg, flac etc.) it plays smoothly. I tried setting -ac ffmp3 and that works on some files, but others show other symptoms (skipping, garbled).

It might be worth noting that I'm using spdif output to the home stereo, but mp3lib in mplayer is the only app to display this bug.

[Benjamin Hodgetts (enverex)]

Same here. MPlayer seems to be trying to play MP3 files as RAW Wave files for some bizzare reason (when it uses mp3lib). This is quite annoying as I use MPlayer's plugin for Firefox and this bug renders it virtually useless unless I like being deafened by loud noise, heh.

[Brian Neltner (neltnerb)]

I just confirmed that this bug still exists after the large dist-upgrade today.

Still not sure what's going on, but users upgrading from edgy are probably going to run into this.

[Phil Housley (undeconstructed)]

This bug looks the same as Bug #85751. (Sorry, there's not much help there either.)

[Chris Eineke (chris.eineke)]

i can confirm this bug. Latest feisty, no old packages. Switching to the ffmpeg library works around the screeching sound.

Side note: screeching and a lot of white noise, but I can hear faint voices. The sound is decoded at the right speed.

[VincentRC (vreneco1)]

I have the same problem (Feisty upgraded from Edgy). I have launched a video file from command line and this is what I get :

Playing XXXXXX.avi
AVI file format detected.
VIDEO: [XVID] 608x336 24bpp 23.976 fps 1022.7 kbps (124.8 kbyte/s)
Clip info:
 Software: Nandub v1.0rc2
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
open: No such file or directory
[MGA] Couldn't open: /dev/mga_vid
[VO_TDFXFB] Can't open /dev/fb0: No such file or directory.
[VO_3DFX] Unable to open /dev/3dfx.
==========================================================================
Opening video decoder: [ffmpeg] FFmpeg's libavcodec codec family
Selected video codec: [ffodivx] vfm: ffmpeg (FFmpeg MPEG-4)
==========================================================================
==========================================================================
Opening audio decoder: [mp3lib] MPEG layer-2, layer-3
AUDIO: 48000 Hz, 2 ch, s16le, 128.0 kbit/8.33% (ratio: 16000->192000)
Selected audio codec: [mp3] afm: mp3lib (mp3lib MPEG layer-2, layer-3)
==========================================================================
AO: [alsa] 48000Hz 2ch s16le (2 bytes per sample)
Starting playback...
VDec: vo config request - 608 x 336 (preferred colorspace: Planar YV12)
VDec: using Planar YV12 as output csp (no 0)
Movie-Aspect is 1.81:1 - prescaling to correct movie aspect.
VO: [xv] 608x336 => 608x336 Planar YV12
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 8 bits!01 41/ 41 13% 4% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 26 bits!2 42/ 42 13% 4% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 22 bits!4 43/ 43 13% 4% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 75 bits!8 44/ 44 13% 4% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 29 bits!2 53/ 53 11% 3% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 25 bits!0 72/ 72 9% 2% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 59 bits!8 77/ 77 9% 2% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 13 bits!3 80/ 80 9% 2% 0.8% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 21 bits!2 95/ 95 8% 2% 0.7% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 37 bits!0 101/101 8% 2% 0.7% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 23 bits!4 103/103 8% 1% 0.7% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 14 bits!3 107/107 8% 1% 0.7% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 23 bits!4 111/111 8% 1% 0.7% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 22 bits!0 113/113 8% 1% 0.7% 1 0
mpg123: Can't rewind stream by 22 bits!1 116/116 8% 1% 0.7% 1 0

[Onkar Shinde (onkarshinde)]

Please just mark a bug confirmed instead of adding dialogs about confirmation.

[Oliver Schehnk (templar)]

I managed to fix this problem by building and installing the latest version of MPlayer from their svn repository.

My current version is now: MPlayer dev-SVN-r23555-4.1.2
This was compiled using: gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 (Ubuntu 4.1.2-0ubuntu4)
My kernel is: 2.6.20-16-generic
I am running: Kubuntu Feisty Fawn 7.04