Actually, you wouldn't need a cue sheet at all.

You'd just need a ripper program that was smart enough to:

a) Encode the entire album as one long MP3, then

b) Split the big MP3 cleanly at exact frames that are close (within .026 second) of where the CD thinks the track boundaries should fall.

Then everything would play back perfectly in player programs that cached the stuff properly.

I've just never seen a program that would do this for you.

See, the problem isn't the player's fault, it's really the encoder's fault. The problem is the encoders inserting silence into the first and last frames. If the ripper did one huge "encode" and then split it after encoding, it would work around the encoder's problem.

The real solution would be to go back in time and locate the folks designing the first MP3 specification, and force them at gunpoint to include support for continuous-track material (such as allowing a frame's length to be specified so that the last frame wouldn't have to be padded, and then allowing the first frame to start on the first sample).

Does anyone know the technical reason that the first frame gets padded with silence? I know why the last one does, but why the first? One of the Fraunhofer techs once told me that it was the nature of the algorithm and there was nothing that could be done about it, but I'm curious as to why.

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Tony Fabris