It seems many of the personal development mp3's are flawed. What is it that is causing them to play slowly and such a high level of distortion?

what do you mean by personal development mp3's?

do you mean the cds that were ripped (encoded into MP3 format)?
well some the tools to rip CDs just have a bad performance this can result in bad sound quality. there is also the issue of slow computer systems. if the system can not handle a CD rip easily and the person ripping is still running another program while ripping it might cause those 'clutch' noises in the mp3 track.


there is not much to do against it except to redownload the song - check for a different file size that way you can be sure that you're not downloading the same file again.
to all those who produce the bad mp3 I can only say let it be.

I highly reccomend mpeg dj for encoding available at www.xaudio.de it's a small efficient program with only usefull features and no worthless bloated crap like audiocatalyst. It's very fast and sound quality is excellent. I've used it on computers as slow as 200 mhz.