Newbie Question, Gaps in sound stream Options

[shoneinc]

Hi - sorry if I am posting this to the wrong topic area. I get these little sound breaks in all my sound streams regardless of source. (see attached image). I have been looking for some software that would eliminate them and I came across Foobar 2000. It sounds like I could copy with the skip silence feature would eliminate them but I am not having any luck. Is this the correct feature for me to use to eliminate these gaps? Thanks.

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[AndyH-ha]

You may need to optimize your system for audio. Most things computers do can be interrupted temporarily, in order to do something else -- multi-tasking. Often these breaks are too short for the user to notice, but regardless of whether or not they are noticeable, every task is picked up again at the right place and things come out correctly.

Audio is not like this however. When you are recording, or playing back, the audio keeps flowing. If the computer ignores it for any length of time, beyond the amount stored in processing buffers, it is just gone. When the audio task is picked up again, whatever happened during the break is missing.

Background task, like virus checkers, automatic updates, and message checking applications, are prime offenders. Windows power savings modes can also cause the problem. As the CPU and other hardware are cycled down because Windows decides they are needed at full power, audio can be lost. You may need to run at High Performance.

There are many guides available on line under such headings as optimizing your computer for audio. There may be threads in this forum.

[MichaelW]

Just eliminating the silence won't be satisfactory, as it will foul up the rhythm. When I tried digitizing some vinyl (long ago), the computer I used first couldn't keep up, and so dropped bits of the audio. I was only aware of it because weird things happened to the beat--I'd be bopping along when there'd be a sudden skip. Very disconcerting: at first I worried that my heart was playing up.

Do these silences occur in music you have digitized (ripped, or encoded) on the computer? Do they also happen on stuff that is already encoded? There are quite a lot of places you can legitimately download mp3s free of charge, so you could work at eliminating one possibility. How grunty is your computer? AndyH-ha is quite right, but the need to optimize would apply especially to older machines. It used to be strong advice not to do anything else on a computer when capturing or encoding music, but in the days of 4 cores on every desk, that is perhaps less important.