How to Repair MP3’s

Aug 30, 2010 - 3 Comments

repair mp3 If you have MP3’s that are skipping, sounding weird, or that a media player like iTunes won’t open, sometimes you just need to run them through an MP3 validator app to check and repair the files. A great free MP3 checker is called MP3 Scan+Repair, it’s got an easy drag and drop interface that will repair MP3’s quickly.

Repairing MP3 Files in Mac OS X

  1. Download the MP3 Validator here, it’s a free app that we will use to scan and repair the problematic mp3 file within OS X
  2. Launch the app and then drag MP3 files into the interface for them to be automatically checked.
  3. When an error is detected in an MP3 file, a little icon will appear next to the name in the app
  4. To initiate the repair, click on the hammer icon to repair the file
  5. Note that you might want to make a backup before repairing the MP3 since it does overwrite the original file.
  6. The repaired MP3 will appear in the same location as the original corrupt MP3

The process is pretty quick and you can repair a bunch of songs at once, it fixed one of my stubborn MP3’s immediately and now it plays and opens fine with iTunes.

repair mp3 files

I’ve never really figured out exactly why some MP3 files will become corrupted and then need to be repaired, but it’s nice to come across a free app that handles the repairs quickly. In my experience MP3 corruption usually happens when downloading music from new music sites and blogs, so perhaps the file becomes corrupted in the transfer process.

If you don’t want to download any additional software you can try some other methods. I’ve found creative workarounds in the past when iTunes won’t play a song that involves importing the file into QuickTime and exporting it as a movie track before reimporting into iTunes… this works fine but it’s a bit of work just to play an MP3.

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Posted by: William Pearson in Tips & Tricks, Troubleshooting

3 Comments

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  1. manuel navarrete says:

    Um is not that it worked fine once it ran out of battery life never turn back on,then I put it to charge it kinda did sparks it burn the usb cord,got a new one,plug it to the computer,it said malfunctioned

  2. […] all else fails, you might want to learn to repair MP3 files, it’s not complicated and it will fix most other problems. […]

  3. […] Write comment There is nothing more frustrating than diggin in the crates, finding those gems, tagging them in your own unique way, running them through MP3Gain, running them through Mixed in Key and then adding them to iTunes and Serato only to find out that they are corrupt!!! So before you curse the DJ Gods and chuck your hard earned Macbook Pro out the window, check out MP3 Scan + Repair. Essentially MP3 Scan + Repair is an mp3 validator for Mac OS X. In other words, it checks if any mp3s are corrupt and if it finds any, it will replace that mp3 with a non-corrupt version. The really cool thing about this program is that your tag information stays intact as well as date added information so all of your hard work has not gone to waste. Below is an excerpt of the step by step process taken from OSX DAILY: […]

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