Okay, I played with some deliberately-split tracks and they sound exactly as you would expect them to sound if you dumped the bit reservior between two frames. There is the slightest tiniest glitch at the boundary, but there is no pause and no dropout. It sounds infinitely better than it did before 2.0, where there was an actual droput there (however small).

It's not perfect, but the glitch is so miniscule that you probably wouldn't notice it during regular listening. If it still bugs you, you can do my trial-and-error trimming method which will get you quite a bit closer to perfect.

Remember that the player has got NO CLUE that Track B is a continuation of Track A, and it's actually doing the Right Thing to dump the bit reservior and restart the decoder when it encounters a new track. If it didn't, then two disparate tracks would have a glitch at the boundary, and that's not good either. In fact, it would be worse. So I think the player is doing the Right Thing now. It's certainly doing the best it can with the material it's been given.

I'm not sure how the new version of LAME is going to handle those boundary points. I'm curious to see how the player software handles it. If LAME is able to make two tracks dovetail without the decoder having to do anything special other than play the two parts really close together, then the car player will do it flawlessly.



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Tony Fabris