Gapless MP3

PG, because I didn’t want to hijack jperkinski’s thread which was more about plugins (UAD Render Bug (silence at end) - WaveLab - Steinberg Forums), I figured I’d just ask about his MP3 problem in another thread. I didn’t know there were issues with MP3 because I rarely make MP3 and I’ve always used LAME in Wavelab when I do, sometimes with live albums. It seems Wavelab LAME plays gapless in Windows iTunes, but Wavelab Fraunhofer doesn’t (at least on my machine). Does that make sense? Is that normal for Fraunhofer? I’ve noticed the padding in LAME when decoded in Wavelab, but it never had an effect when playing in iTunes so I never worried about it, but it would be a problem with Fraunhofer. Is that something that can be changed?

Yes, I think something can be changed in the FH codec, but it’s not easy and you will need to wait.

Nowadays I wolu only use lame, as its far superiour to Fraunhofer sonce some time.

I was thinking the same thing, that it could be possible to recognize the padding that mp3 encoding does and remove it so we can have gapless mp3s rendered from Wavelab when it comes to live concerts and other continuous things.

Actually, the LAME doesn’t appear totally seemless either. There’s usually at least a dip at the crossover point. And in players that aren’t compensating, like my Foobar, it’s an audible dropout because of the padding. The only totally seemless audio I’ve heard is the Wavelab Ogg Vorbis playing in Foobar, the Ogg having audio all the way out to the edges. And the test files on the following page, which also have no padding:

http://wiki.hydrogenaud.io/index.php?title=Gapless_playback

I guess I just don’t understand padding, even if the lossy can’t be sample accurate (?). Is part of it to avoid clicks? Not sure I wouldn’t prefer that to blips and dropouts.

Didn’t Wavelab 6 have an option for no padding in some of the encoders? I’d still like to hear what that would sound like with the current players.

But seems like no matter how the options are changed in Wavelab it’s always going to be a question how it’s going to turn out after the sellers encode it.

1/30/19 - 2/12/19 posts: