lame has had preliminary --nogap support for some time now, but I have not yet figured out a way to successfully play back resulting files totally gaplessly - has anyone else yet figured out how to do this? When I encode with --nogap, the resulting files can be combined to a single file, which does play back gaplessly, proving that the encoding does successfully achieve gaplessness, however all current playback solutions seem to insert some blank frames between tracks at some point in the playback process.

I've tried all the winamp gapless output plugins, which work by leaving the wave device open between tracks and not inserting any silence - using these, uncompressed wav files, as well as ogg files, do playback gaplessly, implying that the output plugin is functioning as advertised. When playing back --nogap mp3s however, there is a small audible gap. Since the only thing that has changed between these scenarios is the input format, my conclusion is that the silence must be being introduced in the input plugin. I have tried Winamp's stock nitrane decoder, as well as the MAD decoder, and another mpg123 based decoder plugin, all with the same results. Does anyone know of another mp3 decoder winamp input plugin which does not introduce any silent samples? Or is there another explanation for this behavior I haven't thought of?

Any ideas welcome

Just use mp3cue

http://www.guerillasoft.com/mp3cue/index.html

Its a slight pain but overal the best option.. you can make up the right waves from the cue files (use EAC to create them) works with all formats too

Whilst your there I can also recommend albumlist

http://www.geocities.com/safai_ma/

Make the plugins work for you!