I have a question or two:
Firstly, is there any way of making a set of MP3s gapless after they've been written? I downloaded the free live Phish show they put up a couple of years ago before they started selling them so there's no way of compressing them myself.

Secondly, what is required to play mp3 gaplessly (assuming this is possible). If I burn the MP3s to a disc (in MP3 format still, I mean) and play it in a CD player that supports MP3, is it likely to manage to play them with no gaps? I noticed when listening that the gaps are far longer than when listening on a computer - it might just be too basic an MP3 decoder; it can't manage rewinding or fastforwarding during a track, anyway.

Thankyou.

(switched order around)

You need a) mp3s with LAME headers (which contain information needed for gapless playback) and b) a media player which can read LAME headers and make something of them. foobar2000 does this flawlessly and I think someone mentioned some input plugin for Winamp which can do it, I can't say for sure.

Your CD player is very likely (not to say 100% though I would think so) not to be able to understand the LAME header and act upon it.


If you're using foobar2000, the fix MP3 header option allows you to specify the encoder delay and adds the LAME header. See this thread for more information.

Cheers