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More => Old Versions => Media Center 11 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: Rands on March 17, 2003, 10:49:31 am

Title: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: Rands on March 17, 2003, 10:49:31 am

When an album has transitions between tracks, it's often best to rip it as a single MP3 and use a cue file to show where the tracks begin to avoid the MP3 gap problem.  What's the chances of getting MC9 to generate a virtual playlist based off of a cue file?

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: bspachman on March 17, 2003, 11:12:51 am

I'll second this request...but as a work-around:

1) Rip your disc with EAC & generate the CUE file
2) Compress the original WAV with Monkey's Audio
3) Edit the CUE file to point at the newly compressed APE file & run the CUE file through the MakeAPL utility.

You'll end up with a CUE sheet, a full-length APE file, & a bunch of APLs. Import the APLs into your library & play them back with the "gapless" setting.

I'm sure there's a similar procedure for MP3s or OGGs...

Best,
Brad

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: Rands on March 17, 2003, 11:22:44 am

There are programs that will break up an MP3 based on a cue sheet (some without re-encoding) but due to the format of an MP3, there is a slight gap introduced at the beginning of each file which I am trying to avoid.

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: bspachman on March 17, 2003, 12:07:17 pm

Ahh, yes, I remember that now... It was actually one of my reasons for putting my collection into APE format. The APLs don't have that problem...

I don't know very much about OGG, but seem to recall it was also supposed to avoid the dropped fram problem that limits gapless playback.

Best,
Brad

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: NoCodeUK on March 17, 2003, 11:06:01 pm

If you use MC's gapless playback setting and set it to not play trailing/leading and internal silences...there are no gaps. I have some MP3 that had awful gaps which now play perfectly, gap free using these settings.  I have also burned them to CD using the internal DSP settings which includes the playback settings and there is no gap.  Just be sure to trun replay gain of before you burn or the CD will be quite quiet

Adam

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: Rands on March 18, 2003, 06:19:24 am

I've never thought about using DSP settings to burn CDs.  Does that also include equalizer and effects settings?  Seems like it'd be best to turn all of that off.

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: NoCodeUK on March 18, 2003, 12:56:20 pm

You can set it just to use the playback settings so it makes the MP3s gapless without using the equalizer/gain etc...

Lastr time I tried it it did screw the track timings up abit but that was about 20 odd builds agio so that should be improved now...

Adam

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: nila on March 19, 2003, 05:26:52 am

Helium2 has a feature where it will let you have a cd ripped as a single track but will then store internal markers for each track and will let you edit each track as if they were seperate while at the same time keeping them as one big file.

Not sure if any other player (including MJ) is capable of reading the way it does this though. Might be worth giving it a try - they have a 30 day trial version.

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: rocketsauce on March 19, 2003, 06:02:52 am

If you are only playing these files on your computer with MJ/MC and don't need to worry about compatability for portable players or sharing, you could use MPC or OGG, which both support gapless playback.

Rob

Title: Re: CUE files and MP3s
Post by: Rands on March 19, 2003, 06:29:29 am

What I have done was found a program called musiCutter that allows you to split an MP3 by a CUE sheet and does so very well.  As someone else posted, with MC9's gapless output, the gaps are virtually eliminated.  

It would be nice if MC9 supported reading CUE sheets to create virtual tracklists but it is a very low priority with all the available work arounds.