"Cleaning" MP3 file with Audacity

A program I use regularly to encode audio for the web is MP3 Soundstream which converts MP3 or WAV files into Flash, with a number of player options (actually, I steer clear of using WAV, because the program is picky about exactly the WAV format it likes).
Occasionally, I run into problems, the cause of which baffles me. The program either hangs during encoding, or closes, with the dreaded Windows alert that it's seeking a solution, which of course it never does.
Frustrated, I asked Quentin Brown, the program's publisher, what was going wrong. Quentin is a good bloke, who's very good at dealing with queries about his software.
He replied: "Mp3 files can be stuffed with all sorts of code and pictures which can make them unable to be streamed. If you open them in Audacity then re-save them this cleans them."
I did as he says, and the problem went away. If you're having any sort of problem with sound files, then this solution might work more generally.
You can download MP3 Soundstream from http://mp3soundstream.com/.