Hey,

Previously, I have ripped and encoded all my CDs to MP3 with LAME(3.98+).

Now, usually, I just burn tracks to data CD, so I can use in my Alpine CDA-9856. But I have started to burn theme MP3 CDs for the road with Nero 8 using an Audio CD setup. But with the latest MP3 CD I burned included "The Wall", and I've notice large gaps in playback.

I read some threads here, but I am little hazy.

(I have Nero 8. I can get foobar, if need be...)


Do I-- Just need to burn a data CD (MP3) with Nero 8 to ensure gapless playback?
Or Must I-- Burn a CD with selected MP3s with foobar to ensure gapless playback?

Thx!

Your car CD player probably won't play these gaplessly


If foobar can burn, this will work.

Alternatively, you would first decode the mp3s with mpadec, then burn the wavs with Nero or any other audio CD creation tool.

I heard but I am not sure that the latest lame will now also correctly decode, removing both the encoder delay and returning a correct file length. Up to lame 3.97, it would only correctly skip the encoder delay.

Okay, red first...
Would foobar (or other media programs) play them correctly?

Then, blue...
I thought if you got the burninator plug-in, this would work?!


Am I on the right track?

Red: foobar or LAME can decode without gaps thanks to the encoder delay and padding info stored by LAME when encoded. iTunes is also pretty good at getting gapless playback right, if enabled, as I understand it.

Don't know about burning CDDA from fb2k.

If you want gapless playback on your car head unit, you almost certainly need either album as single MP3 or simply to burn CDDA instead of MP3 because gapless playback isn't implemented in standard MP3 CD players.

Another option is an iPod or any Rockbox DAP playing through AUX line-in (i.e. using its own gapless decoder, not simply passing the MP3 to be decoded within the head unit).

Thanks!
Yeh. Good now I know the score. My head unit does have interface for the iPod. But I do not have an iPod.

I don't mind a slight gap in audio. I am old enough to have bought LPs for my music collection, before there were CDs. So, small gaps are fine, but if by making a Audio CD of MP3 files in Nero; I've added 2 seconds per track-- that's what I don't want!

If you right-click on all tracks and set the pre-gap to zero seconds.(*) This will get rid of the gaps in Nero.

* The tracks should have been decoded with a gapless decoder such as foobar2000. Some old versions of Nero complained if you tried to change the pre-gap for track 1; in such cases, you could select all tracks except track 1 and then right-click.

Isn't this for an audio CD though and not an mp3 CD? I think the OP wants to make a mp3 CD. In other words, a CD that holds 50+ mp3 files. Then again, I could be wrong as their last statement really confused me:


So are you making an audio CD from mp3 file or are you making an mp3 CD? The two things are completely different. An audio CD holds 10-14 tracks in the uncompressed PCM (2.0) format. These uncompressed tracks can be made from lossy sources such as mp3 files, AAC files, WMA files, etc. An mp3 CD actually stores the mp3 files on the CD meaning that it can hold 50+ data files in a specific or nonspecific order. I originally thought that you were making an mp3 CD (per the title of your thread) but this statement has really confused me.

I think the OP would've liked to make a gapless MP3 CD, but this is impossible on his head unit, so would be content to burn a Red Book CD (CDDA).