Gapless CD

[Roberden]

I have tried several times to record a gapless CD and every single time I get about a 10 second (noiseless) gap between tracks 1 and 2. The rest od the tracks are recorded seamlessly without a gap.

Any thoughts?

[Spoon-]

Re: Gapless CD

If there is this gap in the original tracks then it will be preserved, there are DSP effects 'Trim Silence' or you can use an audio editor.

[Roberden]

Re: Gapless CD

Thanks Spoon - Will try and report.

BTW - I am on W7 and no problems at all (like other reported earlier (R13.3).

[Roberden]

Re: Gapless CD

Spoon - here are my 'findings'.

I am using Batch Converter/dBPoweramp/CD Writer to make a CD from FLAC file tracks. The tracks are from a live performance album where each track end in crowd noise and the next one begins with a continuation of the crowd noise (without a silence gap).

Now when I burn the CD, a silence gap of about 5 seconds (measured it this time) get placed between track 1 and 2. ONLY between track 1 and 2. THe rest of the CD is gapless.

So to test it, I burned the next copy leaving track 1 out of the CD. In other words, track 2 became track 1 in the new burned CD. Well, the same thing again. A silence gap was placed between track 1 and 2. In the first burn, when these two tracks were 2 and 3 it burned seamlessly without a gap (so I know there is no silence in the FLAC).

I repeated this a couple times with other tracks that burned without a silence gap (as track other than track 1) , putting them as track 1. Everytime a silence gap was induced prior to track 2.

Anything else I should test (other than the trim silence DSP)?

[Spoon-]

Re: Gapless CD

You can have a look at the actual wave files before burning, normally they are stored in:

%appdata%\dbpoweramp

under CD Writer

[Roberden]

Re: Gapless CD

Well, I did as you suggested.Prior to burning I checked the audio size of the first (and other) tracks and they are the same length as indicated by the FLAC properties. I played the .wav files and there is no silence gap at the end. Also track 2 has no silence at the beginning (recall the problem is between track 1 and 2, regardless of which tracks I replace them with - rest of burn is gapless).

Well, then I let CD Writer burn a CD and again there is a gap. WHAT I notice this time however is that the gap is in fact part of track 1 being truncated. For example, track 1 is 1:16 long (FLAC and WAV length) yet when it gets burned the track stops (silence begins) at 1:08 and track 2 starts right at 1:16. SO, a gap is not being added, it is track 1 being truncated and those seconds being silenced.

Just to test, I used EAC to rip the original CD. Then I burned the CD using EAC with the CUE sheet it had generated. I got a perfect copy, no gaps like the original. Then I burned the FLAC files using CD Writer - got the truncated/gap in the burned CD.

Also to test further, I ripped the Beatles LOVE album (original has no gaps) to FLAC. Burned it using CD Writer and got the gap between tracks 1 and 2 again.

I am fairly certain this is not a Win7 (my platform) problem so consider me baffled

[Roberden]

Re: Gapless CD

OK, problem solved. Went back to double check if I still had CD Writer set for XP compatibility (I had set it before some months ago when I switched to W7). It happened to be set for VISTA compatibility. Setting it back to XP solved the problem.

Thanks Spoon.