I am ripping all my CD's into WAV files and then using Lame to encode them with the standard preset. Unfortunately I noticed a very very small (1/4th of a second) gap put at the end of every song. I hate to sound picky, but since a lot of my CD's are mix CD's, it damn near kills the effect of the CD. Is there any way to fix this short of cropping out every single mp3 I own? I know it's just a part of mp3's but I figured maybe there is a fix...

IF NOT, maybe there's CD burner software that when burning mp3's to an audio disc it removes this small gap?

Many different players use some form of 'gapless' mp3 playback. Of course, these are not really gapless, but most do a pretty good job.

When burning to audio CD, shouldn't the gaps be removed as the files are no longer in mp3 format?

Use Foobar2000 and the gap killer plugin to convert them to wav before burning. That way you won't have gaps.

actually Foobar plays them actually gaplessly using the info present in the LAME tag, however this only works for recent versions of LAME.

Really? Cool! B)

Which versions of LAME have this feature?

Why not add the --nogap switch to your settings? The easiest way to do so is via Speek's ALL2LAME frontend, since that also sets the necessary --nogapout switch (for the output directory). In the "Gapless encoding" section, check the "No Gap" box.

When using the --nogap switch the encoder will borrow as much audio as necessary from the next file, in order to fill the last frame of the current file (and turns off the bit reservoir for those last few frames). This effectively eliminates any extraneous silence encoded into the MP3.

- M.

Just stick with the recommended compile, 3.90.3 (available at Rarewares) and you will enjoy this and many more benefits

Oh, and grab a copy of the latest Foobar2000 beta

You can use EAC and rip the file as an Image + Cue and play with Winamp 2xx with a plugin or Foobar.

If you want to rip a mix as individual files instead of one big file, use mpc, which doesn't have the gap problem.

When I want to burn a seamless mix that's been chopped up into individual mp3s, I use Wavelab and remove all the silences. I usually try to locate the single file and cue, though.

OK, I tried --nogap but it completely killed VBR (Everything hovers at around 150kbps) and there's still a very slight gap (albeit smaller than before). Is there any other way to solve this?

Do you really need to use mp3? I wouldn't use mp3s if I were you. mp3s are not gapless, and without the help of external plugins (in most cases crappy), most players can't play them perfectly gapless.
You should consider other audio formats like musepack (.mpc) or ogg vorbis (.ogg). You should be able to playback these without worrying about gaps
Also, i believe there are some Cool Edit filters for these formats, allowing you to edit your wavs and encode them directly in Cool Edit.

Good mixes

Use --nogap carefully. As in, don't use it on everything - only on CD's where every single track runs into the next.

From my experience, it seems to not only eliminate the gaps, but shift a frame or three of each song into the previous song. There are no duplicate frames, but it seems as if things are shifted.

Okay, I don't care so much about PLAYING the MP3's with gaps as I do with burning them with gaps. Is there a way I can burn them from the mp3's so they are IDENTICAL to my original CDs?

When you say "burn," I assume you mean burning them as Red Book CD-Audio? In that case, there is only way to ensure the decoded audio will be written without gaps between songs: encode the entire album as a single MP3, and use a CUE sheet to define the track indices within your burning software. (Exact Audio Copy is capable of extracting CUE sheets, and also of using them to define track indices when burning from any compatible source.)

- M.