When previewing audio files on Dropbox, the playback skips or drops out. Any ideas?

[Tinlinmusic]

Hello, just wondered if any other music tech-y people have had any trouble with glitchy audio files when using Dropbox to share them?
A track that I have mixed and bounced down on my studio pc, which plays fine with no problems, once shared On DB if you listen to the track on a different device it is full of digital glitches and audio dropouts.
Any ideas?

[SECRETSOUND]

Yea, not a tenable situation for me.  I'm paying $9.99/mo and then I wound up using Google Drive.  Not good.  I'll send in a ticket as well.

[kroft]

FWIW, I haven't been able to reproduce the problem using uncompressed audio (AIFF or WAV). So that might be a workaround, but I don't want to be uploading huge files. Or has anyone had the problem when the file uploaded is in an uncompressed format?

[Tinlinmusic]

I initally noticed the problem when using mp3s, but the same thing occurred when I tried a 16bit WAV file. However, it seems to be ok if you 'make available offline' i.e. download it to your device.  Though this kind of defeats the object of having a Dropbox folder.

[kroft]

Well, there goes the theory that the problem is only with compressed files. Thanks for saving me the trouble of testing more AIFFs and WAVs! Let's hope they sort it out soon.

[SECRETSOUND]

After I gave my clients the workaround I got this from one of them:

Something is definitely off with these files. After downloading you are correct there is no more skipping. But after (deleted) and (deleted) there is this drop off of volume for the next 3 songs and almost sounds like it’s in mono not stereo. Vocals sound like they are coming thru a transistor radio. So that’s as far as I got I’m stopping there. 

When I listen to (deleted) wav file directly from Dropbox is sounds perfect. And doesn’t have this drop off. Only when listening after downloading. 

May I suggest trying Google Drive if you have that option? I use it for all my videos and films and it has always worked perfectly. I think Dropbox is just having some issues. 

So I wound up using Google Drive.  Reported all this to Dropbox.  Waiting...

[Tinlinmusic]

Wow, that’s not good 😕

[kroft]

Really? Wow -- that's much more serious than bad playback. If it mangles the file then Dropbox is not a safe repository for files, which is its main purpose. Are you sure this is happening?

[SECRETSOUND]

No, I only know what he told me which I reprinted.  Too many issues though.  My ticket is in.  This needs to get fixed pronto.  I've used DB for years and have never had a single problem until this week.

[Daphne]

Hey everyone, just jumping in here!

For those who mentioned submitting a ticket with our team, can you please let me know the ticket numbers (eg. #1234567) you received so I can check up on those?

Thanks!

[kroft]

Hi Daphne,

Mine is 10657128.

Thanks!