by Ternaugh » Wed Oct 31, 2007 12:58 am
What you're looking for is called gapless playback, and it's highly dependent upon the types of encoding and playback that you use. Standard MP3 files, for example, do not natively support gapless playback; instead, they allow for a little bit of padding of silence to the beginning of the file. And when you play back the file on a portable player, the unit needs to support gapless playback, too. Software that supports gapless playback includes iTunes (with Gapless turned on in the track properties) and Sony's SonicStage (in Atrac mode--not really recommended). Portable players that support gapless playback include the last couple generations of iPod (my new Classic automatically plays back gapless on the unit no matter what the setting was in iTunes, and does a good job of it) and Sony players that support Atrac encoding (which are the older units like their Network Walkmans and NetMD/Hi-MD MiniDiscs--new Sony players are WMA/MP3).
Now, there are a couple of options that you can use on programs. First, you can play with the crossfade capabilities of a software player. This can produce a fairly good result, but if you listen carefully, there will most likely be a click. This is a method compatible with MediaMonkey (with crossfade plugins), but it can be a little awkward to configure. Unfortunately, this method won't work on your portable player.
Second, you can chose to rip several tracks as one track (I've done this with an older version of Exact Audio Copy, for example). These have the advantage that they will play fine on your portable, but have the disadvantage that you may have to scan through a large file if you want to hear a later "track", and tagging won't be as accurate.
JoeG
What you're looking for is called gapless playback, and it's highly dependent upon the types of encoding and playback that you use. Standard MP3 files, for example, do not natively support gapless playback; instead, they allow for a little bit of padding of silence to the beginning of the file. And when you play back the file on a portable player, the unit needs to support gapless playback, too. Software that supports gapless playback includes iTunes (with Gapless turned on in the track properties) and Sony's SonicStage (in Atrac mode--not really recommended). Portable players that support gapless playback include the last couple generations of iPod (my new Classic automatically plays back gapless on the unit no matter what the setting was in iTunes, and does a good job of it) and Sony players that support Atrac encoding (which are the older units like their Network Walkmans and NetMD/Hi-MD MiniDiscs--new Sony players are WMA/MP3).
Now, there are a couple of options that you can use on programs. First, you can play with the crossfade capabilities of a software player. This can produce a fairly good result, but if you listen carefully, there will most likely be a click. This is a method compatible with MediaMonkey (with crossfade plugins), but it can be a little awkward to configure. Unfortunately, this method won't work on your portable player.
Second, you can chose to rip several tracks as one track (I've done this with an older version of Exact Audio Copy, for example). These have the advantage that they will play fine on your portable, but have the disadvantage that you may have to scan through a large file if you want to hear a later "track", and tagging won't be as accurate.
JoeG