Gapless formats

[LeSedna]

Hello

I'm always annoyed to hear that gap between songs in mp3, especially when it's a live CD or a conceptual/ambiance cd.

I've read its because of encoding and decoding that create this artifact because of the transformation (it's mathematical). So it all depends on the format, and on how it is handled if it is handled (auto detect by a player of those blanks for example)

Do any of you always or occasionnally avoid those gap with any good method or anything ? I'm sometimes thinking I could create a 1 file version of an album by hand to be sure it works everywhere..

 

[sprack]

Have you tried setting a very low crossfade time? In the range of 10-20ms.

 

[Notuern]

Definitely has to do with your player.
Are you running Foobar?

 

[GarethSE]

Rip your CD's with EAC and it detects the gaps for you, and if there aren't supposed to be any, there won't be any. It's a bitch to set up, but it's worth it.

 

[LeSedna]

Definitely has to do with your player.
Are you running Foobar?

Well I just noticed in my player, Mediamonkey, even mp3 are gapless in the way they are chained (even with no "crossfade" activated).

EDIT : BTW, I had loved foobar for a long time, but Mediamonkey was a true revelation for me. It's like iTunes that wouldn't be a bitch, that wouldn't be slow for tremendous mp3 libraries, that would have plenty of practical options, and would be smoother to use. And I like its design.

It's my portable MP3 player, an old Archos, which creates a gap between songs, and I thought it was the same on my computer.

I guess it's only my portable player who doesn't manage the gaps. Sorry for the thread then.

BTW, Gareth, is EAC the software called "Exact Audio Copy" ? How can it remove gaps for mp3 format ? (because if I understood well, gaps are inherent to the mathematics at the compression/decompression and any gapless approac is a derived approach like crossfade managed by the player)

 

[Notuern]

The problem is that allot of the media players out there dont "pre-encode" at all.. so you get a tiny gap between songs simply because it starts to encode the song.
Foobar

 

[LeSedna]

I posted 1mn before you, don't know if you read my post then . Anyway yes foobar is nice to use. Did you skin it ? I remember it was a bit complicated to customize but some results were nice.

 

[GarethSE]

Yeah it is, and I'm not brushed up on whether a certain file-type could mean no gapless, but I swear I've ripped Meshuggah - Catch 33 in mp3 before with it being gapless. Maybe I'm crazy. Hm.
I rip everything in flac now anyway. no loss of quality, no gaps that shouldnt be there.

 

[LeSedna]

Yeah it is, and I'm not brushed up on whether a certain file-type could mean no gapless, but I swear I've ripped Meshuggah - Catch 33 in mp3 before with it being gapless. Maybe I'm crazy. Hm.
I rip everything in flac now anyway. no loss of quality, no gaps that shouldnt be there.

I think only lossless formats are supposed to be gapless because of the maths that don't involve the creation of an artifact gap. So FLAC is by nature gapless.
MP3 is not supposed to be because of its standard. If good players makes it gapless, I guess it's because the programmers implemented a way to chain two song by overlapping correctly the files so that no gap is heard. Also, I guess the ripping software actively edit the files or what they write in it so that this gap is removed, but at decoding it's still supposed to be there. I'm not 100% sure though.

Also, like on my mp3player, the gap is only due to the hardware/firmware that is not able to do so. Because of buffers, or reading time, or whatever.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback

 

[Notuern]

I posted 1mn before you, don't know if you read my post then . Anyway yes foobar is nice to use. Did you skin it ? I remember it was a bit complicated to customize but some results were nice.

Im running Foobar with the basic skin.. i keep mine minimized most of the time anyways so i dont really need anything flashy.

Yeah it is, and I'm not brushed up on whether a certain file-type could mean no gapless, but I swear I've ripped Meshuggah - Catch 33 in mp3 before with it being gapless. Maybe I'm crazy. Hm.
I rip everything in flac now anyway. no loss of quality, no gaps that shouldnt be there.

MP3 in it self is gapless, but the song needs to be encoded a couple of seconds before it actually starts if you dont want a gap(since the encoding basically is like unpacking a rar-file in real time.).
Foobar and VLC is the only players i know that do this.

 

[sprack]

According to wikiality LAME > 3.90 encodes are gapless if the album is. iTunes is not.