I post this as one with many years experience editing and creating audio CD's from many different sources. Success creating hundreds of projects working with wave files has not prepared me for the challenges of MP3 and comprehensive information on the subject is hard to come by. I have several questions so please bear with me.

1. Mp3 files played on my system(AMD Athlon 600 ,384MB RAM) have audible ticks here & there when wave files do not. They are not encoded since on review they never appear at the same point in the file. They also are not present when the file is burned & played on a set top player. ( I use the Fraunhofer codec in Roxio EMC7 @ 160 or 192kbs, cbr). Is this codec any good and why the tics?

2. I leave the MP3files in the folders EMC7 creates for each riped CD and burn the folders to CD. Set top player has no problem opening them but will solid memory, HDD players open folders if I were to drag them to the player? I have not gotten into that yet but want my methods to be compatible.

3. I am using MP3 Tag to add tags to the files so hopefully they will show artist & song title on enabled players. It writes both ID3v1 and ID3v2 to the file. ID3v2 is in UTF16 but ISO8859-1 is also available. Sounds like there is no winning here as some players can not read UTF16. What should I use to be most compatible? When I do delve into a personal player, it will NOT DRM the files as they are OWNED by me, otherwise I will stay away from personal players and just play the MP3 CDs.

4. And then there is the gapless play issue whenever a song spans two or more tracks. My set top player will not play the files gap free. I read that one RIO model will. Do I need to alter the files before the burn or is this strictly a player issue? Waves do not have this problem.
Thanks in advance for any input.

re: #4

Gaps are an inherent issue with the MP3 format (and most lossy audio formats also need certain conditions to be met in order to play back gaplessly). I don't believe it's avoidable in your situation while using the Fraunhofer codec. But the LAME mp3 codec features gapless playback/decoding when used with a supportive player/decoder.

The gold standard MP3 encoder is the LAME one (read the Wiki at this site). If the tics are present only on your PC, it could be either a problem with your playback software or hardware




Depends on the hardware player. You're gonna have to be a lot more specific than that to get any meaningful answer on that one.




Again, depends on which player, and on what you mean by DRM. Some players (such as the iPod) limit the number of PCs you can sync the player with, and (using the standard software) don't allow you to upload songs from the iPod back to your PC. Others, such as the Toshiba Gigabeat, store files in a proprietary internal format that renders them practically unreadable unapproved software. The Zune copy-protects ANY songs shared via its Wi-Fi features. I could go on - it's difficult to make a general statement.

I know it is a sofware or hardware issue. I guess a better way to state the question is: Using WMP v9.0, what would cause MP3 files to present tics when wave files do not. I would think if waves are ok then my hardware is OK. I should certainly have enough processor speed and the decoding is not done on the sound card. I'm not sure what that leaves. WMP 9.0 came with XP Pro.

As for burning files in the folders: Is this a good idea or are most people loading files to portable devices with no folders present? Of coarse on the HDD they will be in folders otherwise who could keep track of them?


What I mean by DRM is any effort by the software to limit in any way what I am able to do with my own music. It's very easy to say NO to that crap. If we all did it would go away fast! Soon we will own nothing except the right to "use" products. Forget borrowing your neighbors cup of sugar..that's against the end user agreement. Sorry for that but I feel strongly about this issue and will not comply. I'll just do without my Mapo and stick with raw digital audio

I have taken the advise of those on this board and dowloaded the Lame but on EAC site it says WARNING- Beta version. If not experienced use older V0.85b4 or 0.95pb5. In the download box these numbers are not present. Which one should I download and can EAC encode wave files from HDD?

Use the beta. It says beta, but there's no showstopping bug in it.

Its not very good. I'm guessing the tics have something to do with Roxio. Try EAC.



Depends what player you buy. As long as you're tagging them, it shouldn't be a big deal though.



You need to use a gapless MP3 encoder (Fraunhofer is not) and a gapless MP3 decoder (foobar, winamp via plugin, iTunes, iPod, anything with Rockbox).

Try playing MP3 in foobar2000. If there are no tics, then the problem is in WMP9. Turn off all DSP settings and equalizer function in WMP. Try playback again. Personally I've encountered at least one file that WMP (I was using v10 at the time) played choppily, but it was a LAME 3.96 rip of a rap song. I solved the problem by doing the above.

If that doesn't work, upgrade to WMP11 (you should probably do that anyway) and try that.


EAC can encode from an HDD if you mount a disc image on a virtual drive so that EAC sees it as an actual physical disc, but that's generally not a very sensible idea since it's best to use EAC to do the original physical rip in the first place.

(EAC can encode from an HDD if you mount a disc image on a virtual drive so that EAC sees it as an actual physical disc, but that's generally not a very sensible idea since it's best to use EAC to do the original physical rip in the first place.)


Whichever program I use to do the original rip, they will still be stored on the HDD as waves. This is to preserve the original quality and as a secondary backup method. So I will need to encode using waves as a source. Why is it so dificult for eac to use waves?
I am still having trouble deciding which download of EAC to use. EAC website links to another site for "hi-speed" downloads. On that site are two choices. International with/ and without CDRDAO. And each of these has "Windows Installer" and "Zip Archive" Seems like a very poorly designed site as I don't have a clue what these mean. Please tell me which ones to download as the last thing I need on my system is unusable software. I am on dialup & no link for that.

If you already have WAVs, EAC can indeed encode them to a compressed format such as .mp3 (Tools > Compress WAVs...). First, make sure the "Delete WAV files after compression" checkbox in EAC Options is unchecked if you don't want to lose your WAVs.


You only need the version with CDRDAO if you plan on using EAC for burning also (thus it's not necessary). Installer vs. zip archive is a matter of preference, personally I'd recommend the windows installer version as it keeps things simple (i.e., automatically installs EAC to ...\Program Files\Exact Audio Copy for you).

Here's a good guide for getting your EAC up and running, it was invaluable to me when I was getting started with ripping:

http://users.fulladsl.be/spb2267/

Thanks for the tip and the link. I have more reading to do.