[bestham]

In the late 90s sometimes the mp3 files I got sounded awful and there was a little utility for windows named “uncook.exe” that would restore the original sound. It must have been because of some encoding error or mime error in the transfer to or from server. I was too young to know what it was but Uncook often worked to fix this.

[phpnode]

I think this used to happen when files were transferred as plain text rather than binary, but I forget which transfer protocol was affected - maybe FTP?

[justsomehnguy]

>> uncook.exe is a utility to remove line feeds from the mp3 file. Line feeds can be inserted when web sites are not configured properly to serve mp3 files. So Netscape (the browser which actually pays attention to such things as server configuration), can download mp3's as text files.

https://hydrogenaud.io/index.php?topic=736.msg6877#msg6877

>> How many times does it happen? You click a link to an mp3 file while using Netscape, and before you know it the mp3 file starts loading itself like a text file in Netscape. Either that, or you shift+click on a mp3 file then put save to disk. You goto play it after it downloads, and in no time you are disappointed that it sounds like plain screwed up shit, like you are under water, or you are listening to the lead singer of Type O Negative gargleing on a glass of kool-aid!!! Well with this new fix program that Blex has found out there on the net, I will guide you though fixing this irritating problem!!!

http://blex.org/mp3/archives/02161998/fix.html