Music ripping geeks - your help wanted!

[charlesr]

THIS IS DRIVING ME NUTS!

Okey dokey.

I have a whole bunch of DJ mixed CDs (dance compilations where a DJ has mixed each track into the next one seamlessly). When I rip them, and listen to the album playlist, there's a gap, seemingly regardless of what encoding format I use or what I play them back on. The gap varies in size depending on the player and format between tiny (acceptable) and say 1/3rd of a second (unacceptable).

I'm using Nero to rip and plugins for mp3, FLAC or wav. I'm told standard mp3s aren't gapless due to the nature of the format, so was hoping when I tried FLAC or WAV (which are supposed to be gapless), I would have more luck. Unfortunately not. I've tried winamp and windows media player with all 3 formats and a panasonic in-car mp3cd player and a benq joybee portable mp3 player for mp3s only. All have gaps.

When I play back a CD in windows media player it plays back without the tiny gap perfectly. Sooo.... help please.
Have you successfully ripped a DJ mix album and played the ripped tracks back on anything without gaps? If so, what did you use to rip, which format did you use and what did you play it back on?

Thank you muchly.
I will have your babies and sell you my sister if you can help me solve this.

charlesr

[marcus]

I used a MP3 joining program to make them into one big MP3 if the files are split, and just burnt that to Audio CD with nero. Ive not done it for ages, and cant remember the program, but a quick Google should do it. If you are totally stuck for finding one, ill dig out my old CDs in a while.

As for ripping, I use Exact Audio Copy and the Lame codec for the best quality, and the above method when burning.

You could try the 'disc at once' (not track at once which will make a gap) option in nero, whether or not its good enough to eliminate the gap Im unsure though.

[oblivion_6]

I just rip the mp3s as normal then my mp3 player takes out the seconds gap between them, maybe your playback software or your mp3 player can do the same

[charlesr]

I'll try that rip combo. Thanks. I doubt it's going to help though if what I'm told about mp3s is true though. No need for a burner because I'm wanting to play the files back off my PC using either my laptop using winamp or media player or something like a roku soundbridge or a squeezebox3. Anyone tried this using FLAC or WAV?

[charlesr]

I just rip the mp3s as normal then my mp3 player takes out the seconds gap between them, maybe your playback software or your mp3 player can do the same

Heheh. I've had this answer from so many people. Read the question
There is no gap. It's a DJ mix CD. I'm looking for real geeks who know what they are talking about here. For example the guy "radish" here (I'm PMd him but no reply yet).

[Cobertizo]

The information below probably isn't geeky enough for you, but I hope it is helpful in some way. Even if it isn't, I suggest you take a look at the HydrogenAudio forums in general, since that is probably the most hardcore mp3/audio codec discussion haven ever.

It seems that you can make gapless MP3s nowadays, using (at least) either LAME or BladeENC. If you want to play back from a PC without gaps, but are using non-gapless MP3s, then Foobar2000 with the Gap Killer plugin can help a lot. It's an intelligent gap-remover, so does a very good job. There is also a tool within Foobar2000 which can rejig the header of the MP3 so that it becomes gapless. More info here: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/...dpost&p=146860

That's a bit of a time-consuming process if you have loads though! One other tip that I noticed along my search - it appears that if you are using MP3, it may be best to stick with id3 v1.0 tags rather than v1.1. This is especially relevant if you are using EAC, since I think it prefers 1.1 by default.

I used to use Foobar when I was using a PC a couple of years ago, and I was listening to a lot of dance compilations. I found that the Gap Killer plugin made for seamless transitions the vast majority of the time. It was a shock to come to iTunes, which has a really jarring gap!

[charlesr]

Many thank to Cobertizo for his PM suggesting I turn the next-track buffer up in winamp. It's set to 0ms by default. Changing it to 1000ms completely fixed the problem. FLACs are now completely gapless and mp3 gaps are almost imperceptible.

[smouty]

Most of the DJ mixes I've seen are one long mp3 file. They come with a .cue file for navigating to each track. I needed to add a .cue plugin for winamp but it works fine.