In reply to:

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I believe (not sure about this) that the nogap option in LAME requires that the bit reservior be disabled at the encoder level. I could be wrong about this. If that's the case, then the nogap option might cause the files to be less "efficient" in terms of trading quality for size, so you would need a bigger file to achieve the same quality. That is, if I understand how the bit reservior works.

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IINM, --nogap does not disable the bit reservoir - instead, it causes it to be emptied at the end of each track. So there's no degradation of quality.

It is possible to disable the bit reservoir (--nores, IIRC) - this is what you must use if you're making one big MP3 and then splitting it later. This does potentially reduce the quality (unless the track were so even that the reservoir was never called upon anyway).

I need to investigate the begin/end markers that Lame puts into MP3s and see if they can give us seamless playback. If so, I'll make a concrete suggestion into Wishlist forum. If anyone beats me to it, I won't be upset...