More rambling about gapless playback...

Question: The resulting SRV files... do you have a PC-based gapless player or plug-in that will play those tracks seamlessly?

After some experimentation, I find that the latest WinAmp, coupled with the "Dudsoft Gapless Output" plug-in, does the best job I've heard so far at removing gaps from my "split" MP3 files---that is, my live SRV album encoded as a single MP3 file, and split into multiple files across track boundaries.

It's very satisfying to hear, after getting used to the inevitable gap. Still, it's not perfect. Between some tracks I cannot hear the gap, and between others I can hear the faintest blip. So, I suspect that the "bit reservoir" is being flushed between tracks---and its effect on the sound depends on the amount of information saved there.

One thing I did differently this time is to feed WinAmp files with absolutely no metadata; i.e., no tag data, nothing but pure audio frames.

It may seem like this is my quixotic crusade here, but after some consideration I feel like the "split MP3" technique that Tony proposed awhile back is definitely possible. The conditions that it places on the MP3 decoder seem simple enough: 1) the decoder must be able to accept multiple MP3 files in sequence without introducing a gap of its own; and 2) (importantly) it must preserve all of its "state" information between files.

It is factor #2 that I don't think WinAmp is quite getting right. And yet, I don't believe #2 will affect normal MP3 files; my examination of LAME mp3 files is that they seem to "flush out" the bit reservoir at the end of the track by adding blank frames at the end as necessary. So, such a file would not corrupt the beginning of the next file.


Michael Grant
12GB Green
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