# error mne.io.read\_raw\_cnt()

**URL:** <https://mne.discourse.group/t/error-mne-io-read-raw-cnt/7350>\
**Category:** Support & Discussions\
**Tags:** eeg\
**Created:** [August 9, 2023, 10:10am UTC](https://mne.discourse.group/t/error-mne-io-read-raw-cnt/7350 "2023-08-09T10:10:20Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 2

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**Author:** ![drammock](https://yyz2.discourse-cdn.com/free1/user_avatar/mne.discourse.group/drammock/32/4_2.png) [@drammock](https://mne.discourse.group/u/drammock)\
**Post date:** [August 9, 2023, 6:01pm UTC](https://mne.discourse.group/t/error-mne-io-read-raw-cnt/7350/2 "2023-08-09T18:01:00Z")

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Welcome to the MNE Forum @Hadary0712 !

We’ve seen (and fixed) similar errors with our Nihon reader:

- [How to fix: “UnicodeDecodeError: 'ascii' codec can't decode byte”](https://mne.discourse.group/t/how-to-fix-unicodedecodeerror-ascii-codec-cant-decode-byte/2939)
- [support latin1 in annotations in nihon files by agramfort · Pull Request #9384 · mne-tools/mne-python · GitHub](https://github.com/mne-tools/mne-python/pull/9384)
- [FIX: support latin1 in channels in nihon files by MatthiasEb · Pull Request #10429 · mne-tools/mne-python · GitHub](https://github.com/mne-tools/mne-python/pull/10429)

And similar CNT errors have been reported before: [Error reading \*.cnt eeg file](https://mne.discourse.group/t/error-reading-cnt-eeg-file/2796)

One important note is that there are 2 different file formats that both call themselves `.cnt` files: Neuroscan CNT data format and ANTNeuro CNT format. MNE-Python’s reader only works for Neuroscan format. We have an open issue discussing support for ANTNeuro files: [ENH: import ANT Neuro .CNT files (some code available) · Issue #3609 · mne-tools/mne-python · GitHub](https://github.com/mne-tools/mne-python/issues/3609) On that thread, [this comment](https://github.com/mne-tools/mne-python/issues/3609#issuecomment-1272557341) nicely summarizes the currently available workarounds.

If you’re getting this error with a **Neuroscan** CNT file then what we need to be able to fix it is a sample file that causes the error, so we can locally reproduce and then debug. Can you provide such a file?

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_[View the full topic](https://mne.discourse.group/t/error-mne-io-read-raw-cnt/7350)._