fyi to the Car Talk website staff, there seems to be a numbering problem with one podcast on the NPR website now, number 1919, May 11, titled The Tao of Fred Glass . I believe the audio content matches the prose description, but the mp3 player displays it as number 1918 for some reason, which made it difficult to figure out the correct listening sequence. To add to the confusion, podcast numbers 1923-1926 seem to be missing their titles.
Podcast Discontinued, Or Just a Glitch Today?
They still haven’t fixed it on Spreaker yet. No Cartalk to be seen there…
I passed these issues on to Connie to look into. We’ll see what she says.
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I am in Scotland. The podcast is all I can get. The last 5 podcasts have been of a different size, and I suspect a different encoding, as a result my old MP3 player can’t play them.
Are npr/cartalk/whoever phaphing with the cartalk podcast mp3?
Hi Chic, I have not noticed any change in the MP3 files. I use an old cell phone (Sam Gal S3) to listen to them and they play fine. Not sure what’s happening in your case.
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It works on my Android phone and PC, but not on an the Roberts Bedside Internet radio that I use. I’m an IT guy so I can recode it, so it doesn’t much matter, but it is different. I just had a look and the file structure is entirely different, and even though the audio quality remains the same (64kBps) the file size is greater, there is no ID3 tag information. It looks like it’s an mp3 only export from a Telestream video encoder, so it may have DRM on it.
I wonder if NPR are trying to quietly kill off Car Talk by slowly disenfranchising it’s listeners to the point where they can say it doesn’t have the audience
My cheapo mp3 portable player hasn’t had any difficulty playing any Car Talk mp3 podcast, including the most recent ones. Are you folks having difficulty with the podcasts downloading them from the NPR source? If not, suggest to try that source instead. That’s where I download from.
I did notice one difference, the comments/title metadata attributes were blank in the recent four podcasts, which wasn’t the case before.
Seems unlikely. I expect it is just some technical difficulty that has cropped up, likely due to problematic software revisions or using a different software vendor than before. As is often said “everything can now be done with software”; true, but that doesn’t mean it will be done correctly … lol …
@chicthomson … Since you live in Scotland, do you read Practical Classics magazine? Danny (the editor) recently sold off a bunch of his long-held cars and used the loot to buy his new “classic”, a 2000 Honda Incite. He found it in Scotland, and drove it back down south to the home-office, interesting article (May 2019 issue I think).
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Since you live in Scotland, do you read Practical Classics magazine? Danny (the editor) recently sold off a bunch of his long-held cars and used the loot to buy his new “classic”, a 2000 Honda Incite.
Occasionally, for my sins I restored MGs, the occasional Alfa Romeo and once or twice a frogeye sprite and a Lotus Elan, to get away from the keyboard. Retired a few years now, so much less time on the creeper!
Oh and I get my Cartalk MP3s via the NPR-One app.
I’m just a wee bitty concerned that others with less IT witchcraft might start missing out on the podcast and use that as a reason to ditch Cartalk altogether.
Chic, try this website: https://www.npr.org/podcasts/510208/car-talk
I have no problems with the MP3 files there.
I can’t see a way to download files from there these days.
Tha option seems to have ‘gone away’.
See that little downward pointing arrow below the description of the podcast? To the right of the “playlist” link? Click it and you’ll soon be downloading. I’m not sure why they make it so confusing, but that’s what you get from the hi-tech wizards these days.
Thanks for that, but I’m afraid it doesn’t work.
When I click that ( in Firefox or Chrome on PC) it simply plays the episode. It used to give me an option to download, until a few months ago.
I can game it by extracting the URL from the link and downloading that way, but just clicking the down arrow makes it play, in a new tab. ?
Chic, I know what you mean. I run into this at other websites sometimes. It does not happen here though for me. By “gaming” you mean right clicking the arrow and choosing “Save link as”.
More or less.
Save link as will save a ‘salted’ link, with a load of extra junk appended to the filename.
So, Right click, Save Link as, and then delete all the cruft after .MP3 in the filename, to make it D/L an MP3.
Just don’t try and play the MP3 on anything expecting a Lame encoded mp3 file!
OK, I just tried that, in preference to using the NPR One app as I usually do.
The file is twice as big (52M v 26M) but that is because it’s at twice the audio quality ( 128kbps v 64 kbps), and it plays on everything!
I’m calling that a result.
Big thanks to glasspilot for the steer, happy Scottish bunny today!
[quote] (chicthomson): Save link as will save a ‘salted’ link, with a load of extra junk appended to the filename.
So, Right click, Save Link as, and then delete all the cruft after .MP3 in the filename, to make it D/L an MP3.[/quote]
I don’t see any “junk” AFTER the .MP3. Just before. When I download any file I rename it and make sure the last four characters are: .MP3 so your MP3 player will know what to do with it.
(Edit: I screwed up the “Quote” stuff above, not sure what happened!)
Yah, I don’t know why you have all that stuff AFTER the file extension. So it works for you to delete all after the MP3? I just have to rename all forward of the “dot”. I make it simple: car_talk_7-6.mp3. (No dot after the “3”)
Yep works fine.
As i hinted above I suspect US providers are having to salt /record downloads to EU in case they get in regulatory strife.
But that’s just a guess. 