When ripping CDs, it strikes me that whatever is in the pregap logically belongs at the start of the track that it precedes, rather than at the end of the track it follows. In other words, the content of track X, index 0 belongs at the beginning of track X, not the end of track X-1. Live albums are the most common example where this is important.

The problem is that I can't figure out any way to get either EAC or Plextools to do it this way: they always put the pregap on the end of the preceding track. I'm pretty certain that I've exhausted all the options in Plextools, but EAC has so many that I might easily have missed something.

Any suggestions?

In EAC: Actions -> Append Gaps To Next Track.

In PlexTools Pro XL V3.00: Prefences - Disc Extraction - Pause Settings - Use PreGap

1. Thanks for pointing this out. I must be blind not to have spotted it. Unfortunately....

2. Those options at the bottom of the Action menu are all disabled on my copy (which is V0.95 prebeta 5). How does one get them enabled?

Thanks for this. However, I'm just using Plextools Pro. I don't really feel like forking out the necessary $$$ for the XL version.

My apologies for being stupid. I just realised that one has to do a "Detect pregaps" first. It's late, and I'm getting too old for this stuff.....

Personally I hate it when people put those pregaps at the beginning of a track because if I convert to a lossy format for listening on a portable then I have to move the pregaps first to the end of the previous track.

Also, what live albums have pregaps? As long as the audio is seamless there shouldn't be any pregaps at all.

Muse's Hullabaloo Disc 2 has an INDEX 0 on TRACK 1 (it's only crowd noise if I remember rightly), as well as other tracks I believe.

I think cliveb has been through this with me before, but I think there is some confusion in your statement as to what is a pregap.

I believe the PREGAP cuesheet statement will insert a given amount of silence before a track. However, the gaps in EAC are represented by an INDEX 0 command, not a PREGAP command.

Please someone correct me if I'm talking nonsense.

I agree that if a pregap is silent, then it's probably best to put it on the end of the preceding track (or discard it), but where it isn't silent, it's nearly always part of the next track. On live albums, announcements between songs that are in the pregap almost always refer to the song that's coming up, so they naturally belong with that following song.

Here's a good example: The Who, Live At Leeds. After "I'm A Boy", Pete Townsend makes a fairly lengthy announcement (more than a minute) about the next song "A Quick One". It's in the pregap to "A Quick One", and putting it on the end of "I'm A Boy" makes no sense.

Yes, that's correct. On an audio CD, formally there isn't really anything called a "pregap" - just stuff in index 0. In cue sheets, the PREGAP command does indeed instruct the burning program to insert some silence into index 0. Unfortunately most CD rippers refer to the content of index 0 as the "pregap", so that's the term I used in my original posting. And of course what's in index 0 needn't be silence.

So this is a case where the term "pregap" has two different meanings, and in a certain sense CD rippers have usurped the term for their own purposes. It's very much like how the term "jitter" has two distinct meanings. (And whaddaya know, it's CD rippers that usurped *that* term for their own purposes, too - they've got a lot to answer for )

Ok I get what you are saying about pregaps on live albums.

The kind of 'pregaps' that drive me crazy are the ones that people put at the start of a track but it's just silence from Index 0. If it's just silence I find it incredibly annoying to have it at the beginning of a track.

Just out of curiosity are you planning on splitting the tracks when you rip or will you be ripping a single file with cue sheet?

I'm ripping to separate tracks (in Monkeys Audio format), and then transcode to whatever lossy format I feel like (Vorbis at the moment) for portable use.

I think live albums shouldn't be the general reference here. Actually it's vice versa: Whenever the gap isn't silence, it mostly belongs to the previous track, because it still contains some quiet music. That's why EAC's default "append gaps to previous track" appears sensible to me.
The best thing would be track index = subindex 00, thus no pregaps...

The main reason that "append gaps to previous track" is used by default is simply because the gaps are not stored in the TOC, you have to detect them. It's the way all other rippers like CDex rip tracks. When you play a CD in a player and skip to a certain song, it starts at the Index 01 and not Index 00.

That's news to me. In my experience, non-silent stuff in index 0 is nearly always something to do with the following track.


Quite true. But what's in index 0 is still part of that track. If it was part of the previous track, it would be index N (where N>1) of that previous track. This is how the red book standard for audio CDs was intended to be used, it's damn well how it *should* be used, and in my experience it *is* almost always how it's used. I will grant that some bands might dick about with indexes for "artistic" purposes, but they are the exception.

The "append gaps to previous track" makes perfect sence. That gap mode emulates a normal cd player. If you play all the tracks continues, then the gaps will be played, and if you skip to a new song, then the gap will not be played, just like a normal cd player. There is only one drawback to this: If you program the tracks to play outside the normal order, then the gaps will also be played, but a normal cd player would skip them. But if you dont program your tracks, then it emulates a cd player perfectly. On the other hand, if you append gaps to the next track, then every time you skip to play a new track, then the gap is also played first, but a normal cd player would skip it, so that is in my oppenion a bad gap treatment, if your goal is to emulate a cd player. -Martin.

That's exactly what Gambit said in his post...

I have no problems to do whatever I like with the pregaps beacause of EAC and any Wave Editor...

I still don't have a clue why are you discussing it...

My goal is not to emulate a CD player, since that is actually impossible. Portable players don't know about indexes, and without such a concept it is not possible to behave like a CD player in all cases.

Given that one *cannot* arrange things just like a CD player, we are left with the problem of what to do with the content of index 0. If it's silent, then it probably makes most sense to stick it on the end of the previous track, as per your position. But now consider the case when it's *not* silent. We have three options:
1. Chuck it away. That doesn't make sense: when you play the whole album you'll lose that bit.
2. Add it to the end of the previous track. This would make sense if the content of index 0 is part of that previous track. Which it isn't.
3. Put it on the front of the following track. This makes sense if the content of index 0 is the introduction to that following track. Which it usually is.
If you're going to play the whole album through, options 2 and 3 give the same result. But if you're going to be selecting isolated tracks to play, my position remains that option 3 is correct.

Yeah, that's it... but, what's the problem to detect pregaps and append them to the next track in EAC?
I still don't have a clue why are you discussing it...

The thread has moved on. I originally asked for advice about how to do this, and is was answered early on in the thread.

Since then, others have posted different views on where the pregaps belong, and that's what we're discussing now. It's just a friendly (I hope) exchange of opposing views.

Don't join if you think this thread is useless...

Cliveb is right with his statement "Logically the pregap/subindex00 belongs to the next track." The cuesheet demonstrates it, also the pregap of the first track may exist but the pastgap of the last track does not. Additionally, we're even talking about "pregaps"- the word suggests the relation to the next track.
But gaps are actually misused; they often contain the last part of the fade-out of the previous track instead of a silent gap or no gap at all, if the following track doesn't need a separate intro or whatever. Sorry for repeating content...

i have a question about cue sheets,
which option should i choose in EAC to be compatible with 'gaps at beginning' and what type for 'gaps at end', i guess the only good format is cuesheet with corrected gaps in cojunction with leaving gaps at start of next track, but quite unsure about that.

Servil : If you rip with "Append Gaps To Previous Track" then you should select the "Multiple Files With Gaps (Noncompliant)" cue sheet. If you rip with "Append Gaps To Next Track" then you should select "Multiple Files With Corrected Gaps". As of which gap mode thats the best, is a matter of oppenion. But in my oppenion, the default gap mode is the one that emulates a cd player best. But if the pregap is longer than 2 seconds long, then you wont get the extra samples extracted with that mode, so if you care about that, then the "Append Gaps To Next Track" is the way to go. -Martin.

Or you just select "Current Gap Settings..." That way you can be sure that you have selected the right option.



That is only the case if the pregap of the FIRST track is longer than 2 seconds.

Sorry, that was offcource also what i meant...(about the pregap) -Martin.

Neither append to Next or append to Previous is perfect.
I use Previous as it comes closest to the behaviour of a CD player.
However there are some cases where Append to next would be more suitable (although I will still use Previous); these cases are usually random playback situations in which a track ends in a gap being an audio intro to the next track, and the next track doesn't follow as we're in random playback.