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Re: WMA Lossless 24/96 ripping from a CD, but not gapless? hmm...
Deano,
Thanks for the kudos - I beleive some players use a gap-delete method, by which it reads ahead on the stream and looks for "silence" at the end of the song, and deletes this and immediately plays the next track. Problem is, this is buggy - some tracks have intended silence at the end of the stream. This is generally the case for about 80% of all MP3 files, so gap-delete is only useful for MP3-ed Pink Floyd like tracks, or dance mixes... and even then its not that great. Generally those who listen to such music (not trying to generalise too much here) use alternate methods of compression to get gapless playback, or LAME MP3 .LAME, like I said, adds a new header with the exact time in which the song ends - which may include silence if it is supposed to be there. Only if you have the LAME codec installed and as your primary MP3 decoder, it can read this. Like I said though, this is MP3, and as far as I know, there is no lossless "MP3" format. Closest to MP3 would probably be WMA, and that DOES have its lossless format.
MP3/WMA aside, I did try using FLAC, but that (as simple as it is to use) doesn't allow you to upmix into 24bit, like WMA does. Again, you ask what is the point - it won't make it sound better - and I agree, but my ears don't. So, if there is any way I can upmix other formats from 16/44 to 24/96, maybe I can test playback with that codec and see if its just WMA acting up. Again though, as people have proposed, I think its just the read time on the file that adds the gap. Note that a 13 minute track from Pink Floyd (Shine On You Crazy Diamond) is about 240MB... Rather large. This, changing to a 5 minute track or so adds a gap. Obviously. Then again, a 10 second test clip changing to another 10 second test clip adds exactly the same amount of gap.
That maybe opens up the possibility that the decoder is preparing to load, and this just takes a second (literally). Rather annoying though. Anyone know of a very quick codec that is still nippy at 24/96, AND is lossless?!
Cheers for input so far everyone.
Paul
Deano,
Thanks for the kudos - I beleive some players use a gap-delete method, by which it reads ahead on the stream and looks for "silence" at the end of the song, and deletes this and immediately plays the next track. Problem is, this is buggy - some tracks have intended silence at the end of the stream. This is generally the case for about 80% of all MP3 files, so gap-delete is only useful for MP3-ed Pink Floyd like tracks, or dance mixes... and even then its not that great. Generally those who listen to such music (not trying to generalise too much here) use alternate methods of compression to get gapless playback, or LAME MP3 .LAME, like I said, adds a new header with the exact time in which the song ends - which may include silence if it is supposed to be there. Only if you have the LAME codec installed and as your primary MP3 decoder, it can read this. Like I said though, this is MP3, and as far as I know, there is no lossless "MP3" format. Closest to MP3 would probably be WMA, and that DOES have its lossless format.
MP3/WMA aside, I did try using FLAC, but that (as simple as it is to use) doesn't allow you to upmix into 24bit, like WMA does. Again, you ask what is the point - it won't make it sound better - and I agree, but my ears don't. So, if there is any way I can upmix other formats from 16/44 to 24/96, maybe I can test playback with that codec and see if its just WMA acting up. Again though, as people have proposed, I think its just the read time on the file that adds the gap. Note that a 13 minute track from Pink Floyd (Shine On You Crazy Diamond) is about 240MB... Rather large. This, changing to a 5 minute track or so adds a gap. Obviously. Then again, a 10 second test clip changing to another 10 second test clip adds exactly the same amount of gap.
That maybe opens up the possibility that the decoder is preparing to load, and this just takes a second (literally). Rather annoying though. Anyone know of a very quick codec that is still nippy at 24/96, AND is lossless?!
Cheers for input so far everyone.
Paul
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