I have been trying to convert some loss-less WMA files for mobile use and I happened to do it on my laptop by accessing the original files via a remote library server running on my media center machine. I was surprised to find the resultant MP3 files contained a lot of distortion in them and assumed at first the mobile device was faulty. But further investigation showed the files themselves appeared to be at fault. I then assumed it was some problem with the LAME encoder or the settings I had used, but was also wrong; I retried some of the files that most obviously showed the distortion but converted to FLAC instead and they were distorted as well (played back on the laptop). So as a sanity check I converted the same files, copied locally to the laptop and imported into a local library and they were perfectly fine.
So it appears that converting files from a remote library server introduces a problem; yet playing back those files, from the remote library, on the same laptop sounds absolutely ok, which is odd to say the least. Any ideas?
Cheers,
-stephen