Troubleshooting: Processing Audio Files

This section is for helping users who are having problems related to the processing of audio files. This can include automatic key, BPM and beat intensity detection, as well as the built-in media player and time/pitch shift functions.

A common problem is the file type is not supported. Rapid Evolution currently supports the following audio file types:

• MP3
• FLAC
• OGG
• WAV
• AIFF

If you are using Windows or Mac OSX, these additional audio types are supported:

• AAC
• MP4/M4A

If you have Quicktime installed, Rapid Evolution can use these libraries to support even more audio types:

• 3GPP/3GPP2
• AMR
• AU
• CAF
• DLS
• GSM
• MIDI
• M4A, M4B, M4P
• QCP
• SD2
• SDP
• SF2
• SMIL

With the Quicktime libraries installed, Rapid Evolution should support any time of file iTunes supports, and more!

Note: For unsupported audio types, you can still perform automatic key detection by using the live audio input key detector. You should configure Rapid Evolution to use an external media player from the OS which supports the files (such as Winamp or iTunes).

There are sometimes supported audio files which still cannot be processed by Rapid Evolution. Often times Rapid Evolution will report an error “Resetting to invalid mark”. In these cases there is not much you can do except to re-encode the files. You can also email the file to qualia@mixshare.com to help get these files fixed in future releases.

Note: these errors are resolved if Quicktime is installed and in use by Rapid Evolution.

If you get this error message and your song plays in some media players then the file is corrupt. You should use a repair tool such as MP3 Repair Tool to fix the file. Please note that it is highly likely that you will lose all tag info.

In order for Rapid Evolution to process your songs, the paths to the audio files must be correct. This generally only occurs when the file locations have changed. You can view the path for a song in the filename field of the song properties dialog:

Tip: If the path is correct, then the play/read tags/write tags/rename buttons will be enabled, otherwise they will be disabled.

You can detect broken file links (paths) under the right/option click menu:

This will show you which of the selected song's audio files could not be found.

The accuracy/speed levels for automatic detection can be found under options→audio:

If you have set your BPM detection accuracy level too high, it can take unreasonably long amounts of time to detect, and appear as if it is not working. The higher BPM accuracy levels are for experimental purposes or when extremely high precision is needed, and it is recommended to leave the BPM accuracy at the fastest setting. On the contrary, the most accurate key detection accuracy setting is relatively faster, and can be handled by most machines. Your mileage may vary…

Misconfigurations in the Java Runtime Environment have been known to cause problems reading audio files. Uninstalling and reinstalling Java can often alleviate these problems.

There is a known issue where the Quicktime libraries are not compatible with 64 bit Java. If you are running a 64 bit version of Windows, you must launch RE2 with a 32 bit installation of Java in order for it to pick up the Quicktime functionality. Both the 64 and 32 bit versions of Java can be installed at the same time. Either the 32 bit Java install would be made the default, or you can edit the “re2.bat” file and update the reference to Java to point specifically to the 32 bit install.

For a few users who could not detect from MP3s, it was found that by launching Rapid Evolution by double clicking the “re2.bat” file in the program directory, rather than the desktop shortcut or start menu (which uses “startRE2.jar”), they were able to successfully detect from the files.

This might be a problem if you:

• Receive error messages in Rapid Evolution indicating you run out of memory
• Have lowered the default maximum memory value specified at installation time (currently 200mb)
• Have a large song collection (~10k+)
• Are detecting from a large audio file

Normally you should receive an error message indicating you have run out of memory, but not always.

To alleviate these problems, re-install Rapid Evolution and raise the maximum memory value.

If all else fails, and you're not sure what the problem is, you can look in Rapid Evolution's log file “re2.log” in the program directory. This will often contain error messages indicating the source of the failure. If there are no error messages, then you can try enabling debug logging under options→general and checking “re2.log” (after you've reproduced the problem again).