[onelasttime9]

Can some explain how to rip my CD's to gapless mp3's using LAME? (sorry, I'm a novice at this)

 

[cerbie]

1. Set up your ripper, preferably EAC in Windows. Several online guides for this exist that are pretty good.

2. Use LAME 3.90.3, 3.96.1, or maybe even one of the 3.97 betas (I'm sticking with 3.96.1 for now--great speed and quality), with one of the EAC settings strings from HA's EAC settings sticky in the MP3 forum.

3. Listen with a Winamp plugin that will do gapless (mpg123?), Foobar2000, or a *n*x player that will do it (since FB2K runs under WINE just fine, I haven't looked into it much

).

 

[halcyon]

Some basic concepts.

Lame is an encoder. It does not rip. It encodes wave files, once they have been ripped by another utility (like EAC = Exact Audio Copy).

If you rip a mixed cd (with track markers) or gapless classical CD (with track markers) to separate multiple wave files, you have already introduced gaps.

If you want to get rid of those gaps, your playback software (or hardware) must support gapless playback. Many software players do support gapless playback (i.e. playing back tracks 'gapless' even if they came from 'gappy' cd sources). However, most hardware players do NOT support gapless playback.

If you want to retain the gapless feature of your source files, you should rip your CD as one big single wave file (say from EAC) and encode that as one big mp3 file in LAME.

After that, ALL player, will play it as is - just as you were listening to the cd, without gaps (now assuming the original cd was authored without gaps).

Make sense?

 

[onelasttime9]

Thanks. I was going to get an iRiver H120 and then use the Roakcbox firware. Don't I need to use LAME so that the mp3's will play gapless (or would it just be easier to rip into Ogg Vorbis?).

 

[wanderman]

Quote:

Originally Posted by onelasttime9 Thanks. I was going to get an iRiver H120 and then use the Roakcbox firware. Don't I need to use LAME so that the mp3's will play gapless (or would it just be easier to rip into Ogg Vorbis?).

if you rip your lame files with the no gap option they will play gaplessly on most soruces. Other wise the rockbox firmware will just look for nil frames at the end of the file and skip to the next one. Ogg vorbis is perfectly gapless but can be killer to battery life.

 

[fjf]

Maybe someone is kind enough to explain why gapless seems so important to some people. The small gap between tracks never bothered me, and I do not understand why it should.

 

[LFC_SL]

I suppose its listening to tracks how the artist intended, as frequently found in classical music

 

[RotAtoR]

Quote:

Originally Posted by wanderman if you rip your lame files with the no gap option they will play gaplessly on most soruces. Other wise the rockbox firmware will just look for nil frames at the end of the file and skip to the next one.

It's still being worked on, but the rockbox firmware will actually read the encoder padding and encoder delay fields that newer version of lame add to the header of the mp3 file. With these fields and a decoder that knows how to interpret them, you can actually get true gapless playback of mp3 files. Foobar is the only software player that I am aware of that actually does this.

 

[blessingx]

Just a reminder MP3 isn't natively gapless and recent attempts like LAME to create a solution won't work on the vast majority of players.

fjf, I'm with you but if I listened to more electronica, etc. albums where the problem is more pronounced I might feel differently.

 

[onelasttime9]

Quote:

Originally Posted by fjf Maybe someone is kind enough to explain why gapless seems so important to some people. The small gap between tracks never bothered me, and I do not understand why it should.

You probably do not listen to much music where songs are meant to "bleed" into other songs.

 

[onelasttime9]

Okay, I ripped to WAV using EAC. How do I know use LAME to encode the files into mp3?

 

[gshan]

Quote:

Originally Posted by onelasttime9 Okay, I ripped to WAV using EAC. How do I know use LAME to encode the files into mp3?

LAME is just the encoder, you'll need software that incorporates LAME to encode. A list of software here: http://lame.sourceforge.net/links.html

It's good to mention that EAC can also do the conversion to .MP3 after ripping. That should be the easiest way.

 

[onelasttime9]

Quote:

Originally Posted by gshan It's good to mention that EAC can also do the conversion to .MP3 after ripping. That should be the easiest way.

How?

 

[onelasttime9]

Nevermind. I found a way to encode using LAME. Thanks for the help!