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[BobW]

Can anyone help me please? I just downloaded the trial version 7.2 and I'm having problems getting gapless playback to work for MP3's.  

I'm trying to import some of my Pink Floyd CD's which commonly have one long song (no gaps in audio) that are broken into 2 or more tracks.  In the settings-options-playback menu, I have gapless selected in playback mode, and have also tried moving the performance slider between more skip resistant to more responsive (more responsive seemed to work a little better).  

I'm still hearing noticeable and annoying gaps when trying to play back the MP3s.  

Does anyone have any suggestions about this?  Other than this issue, I love the program, and will buy it if I can get this worked out.  

I tried several other products and didn't like the way they operated and most had the same issue.  I also tried Music Match, had a similar issue, and their tech support said they wouldn't help me til I purchased the full version  

Thanks in Advance!
Bob

[ZRocker]

The 'problem' is the MP3 format...MP3 is lossy format and is not a 100% exact copy of the original.  So, the end of one track and the start of the next track will not be exactly as the original.  For 'gapless' playback, MP3 is not perfect.  I use Crossfade with 0.1 s duration...does pretty darn well.  Still, because of MP3 it'll never be perfect.

Also, your MP3s may have additional silence at the beginning or end...which you will 'hear' during playback.  This happens during the rip process.  You need to use a product like mp3Trim (freeware) to get rid of the annoying silence after ripping & encoding MP3s or to cleanup your current MP3s.  If you use mp3Trim on tracks already imported into MJ, you should delete them from MJ and re-import (to make sure MJ has the latest, correct info about the file...or use MJ's Library Update function, maybe).  I use mp3Trim Pro because I like the advanced features it has (like drag & drop support for trimming files as a batch...quick an easy).

[Charlemagne 8]

ZRocker,
Is MP3Trim better than MJ's "Media Editor"?
I have it but have never tried it. Media Editor leaves a few millisecond dead space between cut sections. Very small, hard to isolate but still audible.
What I'm asking is will MP3Trim get down to the level needed to splice "seamlessly".
CVIII

[ZRocker]

Cm8,

It's really apples and oranges.  mp3Trim is good at cleaning up, amping and fixing MP3 files only (it is not a graphical editing tool for audio files).  mp3Trim works with MP3 files directy in native MP3-format and does not require any re-encoding (like general audio editors do when working with lossy audio formats...re-encoding is bad).  mp3Trim is the defacto standard for cleaning up MP3 files quickly (removing silence from beg/end of files, amplifying without re-encoding by adjusting each MP3's frame gain setting, frame error detection/correction...even tag removal if you desire).

I don't use Media Editor (can't speak to it), but use Goldwave for any hardcode audio file editing (but, never to re-encode to MP3 after editing an MP3 file...rather, save in .WAV format for whatever special project I'm working on currently).

I hope that helps...

[BobW]

Hello again,

Do Media Jukebox support people read this forum?

From the MJ 7.2 version help menu, it states the following about Gapless playback:

"Gapless    Track changes are perfectly seamless.  There is no pause between the end of one track and the beginning of the next.  Useful on classical and other recordings where track boundaries don't always occur during silence. "

My track changes aren't perfectly seamless, so I'm still struggling to get them to be....

BTW, since my last post, I have since tried this on a faster laptop with more RAM (1Ghz PIII 256M RAM), which hasn't helped.  In one continuous song that is "2 tracks", I can see the second file opening in the playback window and it's time counting back between -2 and -4 seconds, so it looks like it's trying to do the gapless, but not doing it correctly since there is approx 1/4 second gap in between the "tracks"

I understand the bit about the MP3 encoding being lossy, but it looks like the MJ player is trying to compensate for this, but not quite working proplerly.  

This is with the 7.2 trial version, I'm waiting to buy a program such as this until I can find one that works properly.  I also don't want to have to encode songs to MP3, then turn around and have to edit a bunch of them to get rid of pauses and gaps in the songs.  

I tried lowering the compression of the MP3 (bumped up from 96Kbps to 256 and it didn't help either.  

With this not working properly, I'm wondering if there is a problem with the version of MJ, or my PC configuration, or something else.  
Thanks!
Bob

[ZRocker]

Bob,

You need to read my post and cleanup your MP3s (ensuring there is no milliseconds of silence at the beg/end of the tracks which is introduced during the ripping phase...try mp3Trim)...and try using Crossfade (aggressive) with duration set 0.1 secs.  I know exactly what you are talking about and it's a ripping/encoding issue (not an MJ playback issue).

[BobW]

Thanks ZRocker!
   I downloaded and tried Mp3trim as suggested and that helped a lot!  I guess I got bogged down by seeing "perfectly seamless" in the MJ help.  

     Do you recommend an MP3 encoder plug in to MJ, I'm currently using the Lame MP3 plug-in, though I see in your previous post that it's still a function of MP3...  It might be worth it to shell out the $$$ for mp3trim pro for the drag and drop batch processing since I don't want to mess with each file individually.  

Thanks Again!!!!
Bob