BeatPort & Ableton Live: mp3 compatability.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

I am unable to load mp3s downloaded from Beatport as clips into Live 8.1.1 (or earlier).

Message says file could not be loaded as it might be corrupt of unlicensed.

Is this a general issue. Just me? Anyone else tried?

The same clips are fine in any other application I own including foobar2000, VLC & Audacity and the Beatport license specifically states that in the US (source) and UK (me) they can be used for public performance. Although I'm not doing that..

WAV files from beatport and mp3s from other sources load up fine.

Beatport support wasn't much help. 5 days to get a semi-auto reply asking me to download the files again and that they had made them available for same. Then didn't. So it'll be another weeks wait before i hear from them again.

[8O]

I have some Beatport-purchased MP3s (320kbps) which I bought about a year ago and they're working fine with L8.1.2b2 and L8.1.1. Dunno if they're DRM-protected or not... I think not. I'm on Mac OS X 10.6.2.

Can you convert them to a different format (e.g. to AAC) and see if Live reads them then?

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Thanks for your help.

I don't normally use AAC so that might take a bit of fiddling about but if I convert the original Beatport files to WAV or even simply load in another application and re export as mp3 with a different filename they all work.

I'm on Windows Vista 64 and the beatport files are all under 3 months old and it applies to all of them.

Maybe it has something to do with tags?

p.s. they also work if I convert to FLAC.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Knobbed it.

If I remove the APEv2 tages from the Beatport Mp3 files they load and play in Live no problem.

Surprised this hasn't come up before. If it has I could find it in a search.

[akm]

Just want to say something... I personally totally don't understand what is the point in buying mp3's from Beatport? If I ever pay for music - I buy perfect wav's, in all other cases I'm getting mp3's for, lets say, "preview" purposes for free ))) So, man, don't buy mp3 files!

[bLumEi]

this has come up before i had the same problem, I just can't remember what I did to solve it
but i found the solution on this board.


~e

here it is :

http://forum.ableton.com/viewtopic.php? ... p3+problem

have fun

[bLumEi]

Just want to say something... I personally totally don't understand what is the point in buying mp3's from Beatport? If I ever pay for music - I buy perfect wav's, in all other cases I'm getting mp3's for, lets say, "preview" purposes for free ))) So, man, don't buy mp3 files!

I personally don't understand, what is the point of taking files which needs at least 6 times more space than mp3 files to have exactly no hearable difference between them?

there was a big test with 192 kbps/44khz mp3s and CD-Audio quality on heise.de, even with quite nice hifi stuff, they didn't get the difference.

my 2 cents,

[akm]

What? What? "No hearable difference"?! What part of your body are you using for listening?! Even on my not so "maga hi-fi-end" equipment the difference is HUGE, absolutely obviously.

[akm]

To be honest, I never bought the same track in both wav and mp3 to compare them.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Mp3 are cheaper, smaller, you cannot tell the difference in listening tests and it's handy to have access to tagging.

Obvious anything I intended to use seriously I'd get the best quality available but even then I'd compress to FLAC. Not to save space so much as to get tags back. I'd like to do away with 16/44 and use 24/96 then compress down to whatever was appropriate at the time.

ymmv however.

Also I've found that I get better value by paying for music than spending money on $100/m cable.

[spektralisk]

Message says file could not be loaded as it might be corrupt of unlicensed.

Try to install quicktime. Afaik live uses quicktime decoder while decoding mp3 to wave files. I had this problem lately which I solved be installing quicktime.

[RonaldDumsfeld]

Afaik live uses quicktime decoder while decoding mp3 to wave files.

Thanks to scorp and bLumEi for this tip.

Stripping out the APEv2 tags lso worked for me.

I'm on Windows so I'd rather not bother with installing Quicktime but if it means I can skip a tedious step and maintain full tagging for future compatibility I will. Asked Ableton support advice. See what they say first.

[Donnie]

Just want to say something... I personally totally don't understand what is the point in buying mp3's from Beatport? If I ever pay for music - I buy perfect wav's, in all other cases I'm getting mp3's for, lets say, "preview" purposes for free ))) So, man, don't buy mp3 files!

I switched to wav for about a week until i realized that it was a waste. They cost more, take way more space, and nobody but anal sound geeks give a shit about the quality difference. In fact, many of them dont even care anymore. The extra overhead isnt worth it for some track you are going to play out for awhile.

To the op, on rare occasion I would get an mp3 from beatport that wouldnt load in ableton. It was either a codec install or quicktime install that fixed it, cant remember exactly since its been a few months.

[8O]

What? What? "No hearable difference"?! What part of your body are you using for listening?! Even on my not so "maga hi-fi-end" equipment the difference is HUGE, absolutely obviously.

To be honest, I never bought the same track in both wav and mp3 to compare them.

There was a blind test done on this forum a while back. Conclusion: no-one could really tell the difference at high bps. You'll hear a difference at 128, sure, but at 320...? Try it out yourself...

[Spine]

I'v just installed Quicktime.. everything has fixed it self