I've scanned through the forums for this topic, and burning MP3s to a CD seems like a somewhat complicated issue that I couldn't find a clear answer to.

I have an Alpine MP3 CD player in my car, and I'm just learning of the problems associated with playing MP3s on it. First, there are gaps between each song while it sounds like the player is searching for the next song. Is there any way to stop this? Is this an inherent issue with the player or with the burning process? Second, the player plays the songs in whatever order they were burned to the disc, but I have yet to figure out how to control the order of the songs. I would assume that they're in alphabetical and/or numerical order, but it never seems to be in the order I would have expected. I'm using Nero to burn the discs; is there a better option?

It sounds like most of your problems are issues with your particular player. I suggest RTFM (Read The Manual).

If there is a significant gap between songs, you are right that it is the player finding the file. Ideally the player would do this before the current song ends, but that will need a firmware update from Alpine (if the player supports that).

Other suggestions:

1) If you are using a packet format, where you can add or delete files after the initial format, that is much slower for file seeking. Try just burning in the standard CDR format (where once you burn the disk, you can't change anything).

2) you could merge multiple tracks as one file.. no gap, but you can't jump directly to the middle track unless you player has bookmarks (doubt it).

As for the problems with alphanumeric order, that could be due to the filenames being too long. The player most likely reads ISO 9660 names, so while the files may be displayed sorted the way you want them in Nero, if what you see is Joliet names the results may be not what you expect.

I have read the manual - from cover to cover, actually. Alpine is unfortunately very non-specific about MP3 playback, other than a basic definition of what it is and that the player is capable of playing them. Does anyone know more specifically about Alpine's handling of this? Probably not in this forum... does anyone know of an Alpine forum - or any car audio forum in general - that is of good reputation?


Sigh... Alpine doesn't seem to have a support email or forum of any type to ask such questions. I'd be surprised if my player is capable of firmware updates. Without sending it in, at least.


I burned a disk and finalized it, but it still puts a gap in between songs. It seemed like maybe it was a little quicker than with a non-finalized CD, but gapped nonetheless.


I don't know anything about bookmarks, but I think I know what you mean and my player definitely doesn't do that.

I've always held Alpine in pretty high regard, but I'll be disappointed if I can't figure out a way to stop it from putting gaps between tracks. Out of curiosity, does anyone know of any brand(s) of car stereos that handle MP3s really well?

-jeff

1) I should be installing an Alpine 9815 next weekend, so I will be able to tell you a bit about it

2) mp3 is not gapless, so you will always have gaps

3) Pretty much any cd based mp3 player is gonna have a decent gap while it seeks to the next track, in my experience, Alpines are some of the quickest to seek.

What is meant by MP3 not being "gapless"? I don't see how the file format itself affects that. How does it differ from the CDA format, which evidently is gapless? What causes some players to pause between MP3 files? There's no gap when listening to them through Winamp.

read the forums abit about mp3 and gapless playback.

This has been answered a number of times on this forum, so you would probably find more adequate answers doing a search, but, yes, the MP3 format itself lends to this problem. As a matter of fact also the CD-DA format can't store audio of arbitrary length because it records in frames of 1/75 of a second. So if the lenght of a track is not evenly divisible by 1/75 of second, then you'll get a small gap between it and the next one. Something you will not usually notice because this limits are known and taken into consideration by mastering engineers.

Back to MP3, there are "extension" to the standard and encoders that (with the help of the decoding part) will bypass this limit and give you a true gapless experience. LAME is one of such encoders (the only one I know of) and Foobar2000 or WinAmp (with the help of an external 3rd party decoding library) are decoders that can handle it. No portable Digital Audio Player I know of gives you gapless playback, thus.

Sergio

I don't think the problem I'm having is really related to the issue of gapless formats... I'm not talking about a tiny fraction of a second that's being inserted at the end of a track because of imperfect frame length - I'm talking about a rather large (though probably no longer than a full second or so) gap that is being caused by the player spinning the CD trying to find the next track. It's the next friggin' file!! I'm not playing in shuffle mode! What the hell is it that's causing the player to do that? How is an MP3 file different from a CDA file as far as going from one song to the next?

I'm still unclear as to whether this is simply something that every CD-based player does that I'll have to learn to live with, or whether there's something I can do during the ripping/encoding/burning process that can minimize or eliminate it. Short of just making one long file for each album. I don't want to do that for obvious reasons. Hello, tape deck!

virtually no portables or car stereos have the ability to play mp3's gapless, its not the file format limitation, its the implementation thats the problem.

What software are you burning with?

If you are using Nero: Even if you burn DAO (disc-at-once)(closed session / finalized) instead of TAO, it's more than likely still adding a 2 second pause (gap) between all tracks. After you've added all the songs to the session, highlight them all and right-click, select 'properties', then change the pause value from 2 (the default) to 0.

If you're using something other than Nero, you should check if something similar can be done.

If the intention is to burn an audio cd from mp3s (rather than burn mp3 files onto a data cd), then foobar2000's cd writer will write audio cds gaplessly.

I am burning MP3s as MP3s onto a data CD, not turning MP3s into audio files. I am using Nero to do this. I know there's 101 ways to do anything with Nero, but using the "StartSmart" program there's an option to "Make MP3 CD" which opens a Nero Express window specific to finding and adding MP3 files. That's what I'm using. I don't see any options about changing the gap between songs. I don't know if Nero has anything to do with it, but my Alpine simply starts seeking between each track. I can hear the CD spinning up and down, like it's in shuffle mode with a regular CD. I'm just trying to figure out if this is normal, if this also happens with other MP3-capable car CD players, and if there's any way to avoid it.

I simply don't understand - regardless of any gapless file issues - why it doesn't go from one song to the next without spinning up. I would expect that I can put in a CD, whether it be store-bought or made from MP3s, and it would simply play from beginning to end without stopping, stuttering, or spinning up and down. Obviously I'm expecting too much, but I'm at least trying to figure out the mechanics of why it doesn't.

This is probably an issue I need to take up with Alpine, but this forum has been my first stop. Thanks for any insight anyone can provide.

Nero Express... that figures...
You would have to use Burning Rom to change the "pauses" as I was describing.

Not that I know if it would fix the problem with your CD deck's playback. But if you want to remove the 2 second gaps between tracks, using Nero, that's how.

Good luck

Or use the freeware burnatonce (Settings->Options->Audio Mastering, untick 2 Second Pause).

The problem with mp3's though is even if burning the disc without 2 second gaps there will many times be a gap due to what has already been described 'mp3 isn't gapless' -- turn off your media players gapless feature (pre-buffering) to make sure there really aren't any, but this is no gaurantee. Some wav editing may have to be done to cure the problem, e.g.; combine two tracks then manually eliminate the gap, listening to where you edited so that the transition is gapless, then split them into individual tracks again and burn the disc without the 2 second gaps. This can be a big nuisance if a whole album is gapless, but it can be done.

HE DOESN'T WANT A CD-DA

HE WANTS AN MP3 (DATA) CD

As far as the spin up:

This is due to the way cd based players buffer. They reach the track, buffer it, when it is done, find the the next track and buffer that. There's really no way around it.

Gap is due to it being a disc of MP3s and the player not doing any read-ahead. I assume this was one of the first MP3 playing headunits? Older ones tend to do that, but newer ones do too, just depends on the model and brand.

As for order, really can't help you there man. You can't discern ANY type of ordering?

I remember my mp3 playing cd player (god what were they called, the first big production unit that was made for playing Mp3s, I'm totally blanking on the name) was horrible with that. As in if it was a long song it would sometimes spin up too slowly and the song would pause while it got it. And it never spun up the disc until the song was completly over, so forget about smooth track transitions.

I so love my Zen Xtra <3

This made me think and open Nero for a another look. Now I see that my recollection was wrong, and the only way that 2 sec. gaps are introduced is if you create a Music CD. In which case the mp3s are being converted to CDDA format, of course. My apologies.

WIth a regular CD the player is spinning all the time (exception for some portables to conserve battery). So there is no spin up time, plus you are guaranteed that the next track is physically next to the current one on the disk, so no seek time.

With an mp3 disk, the player typically loads the whole track (or a few minutes worth, depending on how much memoty it has) and spins down. So it finishes the first track, then starts spinning up and looking for the next track. Since your player is changing the track order (maybe due to file name truncation), the next track it plays is NOT necessarily right next to this one.

This is not true of all players. My RioVolt started that way, but they fixed it in a firmware update so it starts loading the next track before the current one is through... bye bye to those file seeking gaps (still has them in packet disks, but not in regular ones with all files written at once).

So, what can you do if there are no firmware upgrades?
1) choose the CDR format where you write all files at once.. no "unfinalized" and adding some more later!
2) shorten the file names to 8 characters or less, as it sounds like your player wants "DOS compatable" names.
3) if it plays in name order (not using track number tag), then you need to put the track number on the front of the file name.

Thanks for all the responses, guys (any gals?). The Alpine I have is the CDA-9827, which is from last year's model line. So it is hardly a first-generation MP3 unit from Alpine.

Sorry, I never really gave an update to the play order issue. I think I have that figured out. I put the track number first thing in the file name, and then I also number the album folders so they burn/play in correct order. Initially, I was thrown off because it would be playing from what I expected to be the 01 folder, but was playing from, for instance, 03. This is simply because the folders are nested and it's assigning 01 and 02 to the parent folders. Duh. And then the up and down arrows (to change folders) were doing the reverse of what I expected, so I was confused at first. It was just a bad combination of being in a hurry to start driving and being annoyed with how it was (not) working. Anyway, I've since figured out how it works and the files do play in an order that I would expect. Although it's still annoying that the player isn't a little more intelligent about using tags for ordering.


1. I've already tried finalizing the disc and it still spins up between tracks.
2. In the manual, it does say that you should strictly adhere to the ISO9660 standard. There is a maximum folder depth of 8, 31 characters in a file name, and you can only use A-Z caps, 0-9, and "_" in file names. Now, if you use other characters or more than 31, it just means that the file name might not display properly. It says it still shouldn't have any problems playing the disc.
3. Done.

I imagine if Alpine hasn't already put it in existing models, they don't have any firmware updates that would make the player spin up and find the next track prior to the last one ending. But I'll ask.

If you plan to burn MP3 CDs (data CDs with MP3 files on them), I suggest you use BurnAtOnce. If you want an easy-to-use software, you can try RecordNow. I don't Nero because it truncates the number of characters in the filename. The other two softwares that I mention do not have that limitation. So, you can rename yor MP3 files in a better order and burn them.

Not sure if it applies to your situation, but with my home CD/MP3 player I always burn all my MP3s to the root of the CD(no folders), and I burn it as a regular data CD.
I've never had a problem with gaps using this method.
Granted it can be somewhat "messy" with no album folders.
Might want to try it, just to see if it improves anything.