You are right as far as the usage of the nogap switch. I was doing it wrong. That must be why I couldn't tell much of a difference.
The ID3v2 spec creates a problem because many decoders don't read certain fields, and others apparantly will add silence if there are parts that it can't understand. I have also read that since the ID3v2 tag comes at the beginning of the file, the decoder can't find the VBR header. I personally haven't had a problem with it since all I really use is the empeg for mp3 listening.

One idea that has come up is to let the decoder know exactly what the encoder delay is - i think you mentioned this in your first post. The only problem with that is the encoder would have to know to look for it.

Heres some numbers I got from a post RT made a long time ago.
"
Total encode+decode delay: (These numbers are measured, and not up for debate)

delay (samples)
forward+backward polyphase filterbank transform: 481
forward+backward MDCT transform: 576

Then we can just split them equally between encoder and decoder: 528.5
delay for foward polyphayse+MDCT (used by encoder), 528.5 delay for
backward polyphase+MDCT (used by decoder). To align the psycho
acoustics with the MDCT window, LAME adds exactly 48 samples of
padding for a total encoder delay of 576.5.
"

I also read somewhere that you can set an encoding offset of 2257 in EAC for lame VBR, but i'm not sure that would fix the problem.

I'm saddened to hear that nothing is really going on with ogg, I was hoping that a programmer could code it up fairly quick.


Sean