Bitrate query

Submitted by nowhere on Fri, 02/08/2013 - 03:01
Forums: 
Soulseek General Discussion

How come some mp3 files show up as being 320/192 in my Music folder in Windows (when I look in properties) and also show up as 192/320 on Soulseek when I download them, but when I share them they show up as a lower bitrate such as 128 or 160? What is their true bitrate? For the most part bitrates stay exactly the same but I have noticed this a couple of times. Sorry if this is a "noob" question or whatever and thanks to anyone that takes the time to reply!

Submitted by Nir on Sat, 02/09/2013 - 17:28.

Is this in SoulseekQt?

thescarletfire's picture

Submitted by thescarletfire on Sat, 02/09/2013 - 18:02.

In my experience, the older NS client did indeed show wacky bitrate qualities. For example, the client would report 128kbps but after a download, the file would show that its actually 320kbps mp3.

QT does not suffer this in my experience yet.

mezuss's picture

Submitted by mezuss on Mon, 09/15/2014 - 23:06.

It happens in QT, too. And it also works the other way round. Once I looked at 2 search results for an EP and files in both cases had same file size. I chose the 128kbps result and after download checked the file properties in my Foobar: actual bitrate was 320kbps.

It's been like this for years now.

Submitted by microwave on Wed, 09/17/2014 - 14:48.

You, the searcher, don't scan the remote computer's files to figure out bitrates, so it doesn't matter what Soulseek client you use. It only matters what client the remote user has. That client is what's doing the scanning and indexing of the files and getting the bad bitrates. If they are using SoulseekNS, then their ID3v2-tagged VBR files (I think those are the problematic ones) are going to show up in everybody's search results with the bad bitrates. I don't see any way to avoid it other than to wait for people to stop using NS.

MELERIX's picture

Submitted by MELERIX on Wed, 09/17/2014 - 10:19.

seems the issue only affect VBR files.