december 23, 2001
These are the short silence gaps at the beginning or end of music tracks that result from ENCODING an audio track into mp3 format. They are NOT the gaps on a CD between audio tracks put there by the CD manufacturer. mp3 gaps were NOT there originally and are merely an artifact of the encoding process. These sections of silence are needed by the mp3 encoder and decoder to ensure that there are an equal number of "samples" in each part or "frame" of the mp3 file. The mp3 encoder/decoder needs this so that it can perform its frequency analysis properly in order to compress and later play back the audio signal.
Almost every audio track encoded to mp3 will have these small gaps added to either the beginning and/or end of the final mp3 file. Generally they are less than a second (often 0.1-0.2 seconds long) and may not noticeable at all. But they clearly can be heard when playing tracks sequentially where no break originally occured in the sound or playing between tracks on the CD. Operas and vocal works are an example where this happens frequently.
They introduce silence or a "gap" that was not originally present on the CD or in the music. While this is generally not noticeable for audio tracks where the sound or playing ends before the end of the track, some audio tracks continue uninterrupted from one track to the next. In these cases, the individually extracted and encoded tracks will have a short but audible silence at the end of each track. When these mp3 files are played in a player like WinAMP, you will hear a short silence gap (and sometimes a small click) in otherwise continuous music. This annoys people and detracts from the enjoyment of the music.
Also, if you later decide to convert these mp3 files back into waves files or an audio CD format, the gaps will still be present and you will have to make some effort to remove them by editing the wave files or by making adjustments in your CD-Audio burner program before burning onto CD. It can be fairly time consuming to get a "perfect" audio CD if there were a lot of continuous tracks originally.
There are two basic ways:
Once you have ripped audio tracks and converted them to mp3 format, the gaps will be there. In that case there are a variety of tools to remove gaps, edit wave files, play them by detecting and eliminating gaps, and many CD burning programs will allow you to edit mp3 files or control "cross-fading" which can help eliminate the gap. But the better solution is not to have the gap in the first place; so the person ripping and encoding the audio files must take a few special steps to ensure that the gaps are not present.
Generally just extract the tracks that run together originally as a single file. The "track" markers on a CD are just arbitrary anyway. Most extraction software allows you to do this. For example in Exact Audio Copy (EAC), you can simply choose the menu: "Actions | Copy Range..." A dialog box will appear that lets you set the starting and ending points (tracks) to extract a range into a single file. You do not need to do all tracks on the CD this way, just the ones that run together. One strategy would be to extract the entire CD into individual tracks, then delete the files where the tracks run together and perform the Copy Range function on just those tracks again.
When you extract tracks this way, you might want to consider naming the single new "track" so that people will know that you have done this. Consider naming it something like:
02-03 Track 1-Track 2.mp3
(of course Track 1 and Track 2 should be replaced by the original track names) If you produce an .nfo file, it is always a good idea to put a note there that you have done this.
Yes, and there is no requirement that you do it. But it makes life much easier for those who get your files. And you would benefit too from others who do the same thing so that you don't have to deal with gaps in their files.
If you have a CD where there are many tracks like this, you might just consider ripping the entire CD as a single file. The problem with this is that all of the original track information will be lost. But there is a solution to this problem too. You can create something called a "cue sheet" for the file that contains all of the original track and CD timing information.
It is just a text file with a standard format that contains information about the CD (Title, Artist, etc.) and the tracks that were on it (names, times, gaps, etc.). A cue sheet can be produced automatically by some audio extraction programs, like EAC, when you extract the entire CD as a single file (or even as separate files, if you want).
Many programs can also use cue sheets to burn audio CDs; reproducing the track splits and timing exactly and automatically from the information the cue sheet contains when you burn in "Disk-At-Once" mode. See the link for more information about CD burning programs that support cue sheets.
And this link that provides general information about burning CDs:
http://users.forthnet.gr/ath/axatis/FAQs/CDR/Basics/modes.htm
Just select the EAC menu "Actions | Copy Image & Create Cue Sheet". The entire CD will be ripped into one file and a cue sheet containing all the information about the CD and the tracks it contained will also be created. The information in the cue sheet will be exactly the same as the information EAC has about the CD when it rips it, including the CD Title, Artist, and the individual track names. So be sure to download this information from cddb, freedb or other CD-Track List sites first, and then edit it the way you want it, before you extract.
Yes. Make sure you post the cue sheet along with the mp3 file. There are several CD burining programs that can use a cue sheet to burn a single wave file with all track splits, gaps, and CD-Text names (if your burner supports CD-Text). You can find out more about CD burning programs which support cue sheets at:
Use EAC again. Just put the cue sheet and the mp3 file (it may have to be converted to a decompressed wave file first) into the same directory on your hard drive. Then select the EAC menu "Tools | Write CD-R...". A dialog will appear that shows you the layout of a blank CD. Select menu "Load Cue Sheet" and locate the cue sheet on your hard drive. EAC will read this information and insert all the track locations and gaps for you automatically. If your CD supports CD-Text, all of the CD track information will also be burned onto the CD when you create it.
Now you can just choose EAC menu "CD-R | Write CD" and the audio CD will be created by EAC with all of the track locations. When you play the CD in an audio player, the tracks will be there, along with CD-Text information, if your player supports it.
Well you should, especially for audio extraction :) But there are other CD-Audio burning programs that will also use cue sheets just like EAC. Some do not support cue sheets, however, so you might want to consider using one that does - just for this situation. CDRWin, Feurio and Nero are all supposed to be able to use cue sheets for creating audio CDs. See the link for more information about CD burning programs that support cue sheets.
Almost ALL CD audio burning programs WILL let you split a single file into separate tracks though. And the timing information you need to do this is in the cue sheet you downloaded. So even if you refuse to use anything other than your normal burning program that does not support cue sheets you can always add the track splits manually from the timing information provided in the cue sheet. That's a lot of work, but no worse than the effort needed to deal with the mp3 gaps in single files!
There are also programs that can take a large mp3 file and split it into pieces. One such program is called musiCutter. It is free and can chop a large mp3 file into smaller ones based on the cue sheet information. Then you can burn these mp3 files as audio CD, like always. You can get it from:
A single large mp3 file has no track information. Fortunately there is a solution to this if you use WinAMP. There is a plug-in available that can use the cue sheet to display the original track information so that you can see what track is playing based on the current position in the file. You can also quickly make manual track selections. The plug-in is called mp3cue. It is free and you can download it from:
Install the plug in, restart WinAMP, then put the mp3 file and the cue sheet in the same directory on your hard drive. Open the mp3 file in WinAMP and the plug-in will automatically detect the cue sheet and display track information in a separate track list window. As the large file plays, the individual tracks will be shown. You can use the track list to navigate to different positions in the file too.
They can still play the mp3 file. There just isn't any track information. There are also programs that can take a large mp3 file and split it into pieces. One such program is called musiCutter. It is free and can chop a large mp3 file into smaller ones based on the cue sheet information. You can get it from:
It is not really difficult and takes no more time than posting the individual tracks. The problem is that if the file ends up incomplete on someone's server, you will need to repost the whole thing unless you and the person missing the segments knows how to deal with them. The a.b.s.m.classical FAQ has a section dealing with segment reposts at:
http://www.geocities.com/altbinariessoundsmusicclassical/segmentrepost.html
Another solution is to post the large file as individual pieces that can be reassembled by the person who downloads it into the original file. One common format is RAR. RAR compression takes files, compresses them, then splits them into smaller pieces. These pieces (files) can be posted just like individual tracks. There are also a number of programs that can split a large file into many smaller pieces, then reassemble it after it has been downloaded. This is a very common technique in multimedia binary groups where large files are posted. One such program is called MasterSplitter. You can get a copy of it from:
Whatever format is used, the original large file will be broken into smaller pieces so you can usually just repost these, if needed, just like tracks. You can always just do segment reposts for the smaller pieces too.
The real challenge will be that the downloader needs to have some way to reassmble the files. So you will may have to provide them with the reassmbly program or be able to post a link to it. And you might have to explain how to use it.
