[Velvet]

Listening to concept albums with Winamp makes it annoying, when there are gabs between tracks. I searched for some solutions on google and found a bunch of plug-ins and programs. The first Winamp plug-in didn't work. Could it be the 96Khz playback I'm getting through my Chaintech? The plug-in is made to work with 48Khz or something?

So, if anyone has a simple answer to this I would be glad to hear it. I have ripped my CDs with LAME using al-preset-standard. I've been using Winamp, but will change to Foobar if the gapless playback will work better with it.

 

[Helter Skelter]

Only the very latest versions of the LAME encoder support gapless playback (mp3 as a format does not). If whatever you used to rip the CDs was using an older version (like CDex, for example), then your tracks just don't support gapless, plain and simple.

A solution that wouldn't require switching to foobar would be to re-rip your music to Ogg Vorbis or another format that natively supports gapless playback. If that's not a feasable option for whatever reason and/or your mp3s have the gapless tag set by the newest versions of LAME, then just keep experimenting with plugins or give foobar a try.

 

[sgrossklass]

I'm using the gapless option in the ASIO plugin for Winamp, and that's just about as gapless as it gets. If that doesn't cut it, nothing else will.

 

[Soundstorm]

Winamp sucks for gapless playback, it's the limitation of the player/architechture itself. It always closes after the end of a song and reopens the output. All those "gapless" hacks in Winamp output plugins are NOT true gapless playback.

Foobar by design is true gapless playback, it never reopens the output. Foobar is superior to Winamp in so many aspects, it's not even funny.

 

[Velvet]

So Foobar has the gapless playback and no plug-ins are needed?

Would it work with my LAME(Exact Audio Copy) ripped mp3s?

Thanks for the answers so far.

 

[philly4]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soundstorm Winamp sucks for gapless playback, it's the limitation of the player/architechture itself. It always closes after the end of a song and reopens the output. All those "gapless" hacks in Winamp output plugins are NOT true gapless playback. Foobar by design is true gapless playback, it never reopens the output. Foobar is superior to Winamp in so many aspects, it's not even funny.

Winamp supports gapless “out of the box”. No hack needed, as long as the file format you are playing supports gapless; FLAC, ogg vorbis etc. (I believe you do need to change a setting from default in DS output plugin if you are using it, but it works great) Winamp does not support gapless mp3 "out of the box" because the mp3 format does not support gapless play by its design. Recent versions of LAME have added gapless support by writing special tags to mp3's but this is a little bit of a hack itself and AFAIK Foobar has the only decoder that can read and utilize these tags for gapless play.

Who cares if the output is closed/opened a thousand times if you can't hear the difference.

Edit: Foobar can try to play mp3's without special LAME gapless tags gaplessly, and it seems to work pretty well, but it's as much of a hack as anything else.

 

[Kram Sacul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Soundstorm Foobar by design is true gapless playback, it never reopens the output. Foobar is superior to Winamp in so many aspects, it's not even funny.

Except it looks like garbage and is user unfriendly.

 

[Cyclone]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul Except it looks like garbage and is user unfriendly.

Ya, foobar is a beast that needs to be trained and groomed. And if you dont know how to handle it, it will bite you in the ass. Other than that its a great program.

PS: I use foobar.

 

[Helter Skelter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul Except it looks like garbage and is user unfriendly.

Not entirely true. It merely requires a decent amount of research and configuration of plugins to get it pretty and friendly. I went from knowing next to nothing about foobar to getting things just how I like them in about a week. This was the result (click for larger):



Yes, it takes some effort and there's a learning curve, but it really is worth it.

 

[Jigglybootch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul Except it looks like garbage and is user unfriendly.

It certainly doesn't look very nice, but user unfriendly? That's a bit of a stretch.

And Helter Skelter, that's quite a spiffy setup you've got there.

 

[Seijang]

ugh, the only reason I don't use foobar is because it's so freaking ugly..

I have countless skins for my winamp, and I kind of blend it in with the theme of my backgrounds/windows skins..

 

[Kram Sacul]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Helter Skelter

Playlist Hell. Winamp is basically just the play buttons with some other useful information displayed, and it has color and graphics.

 

[Helter Skelter]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul Playlist Hell. Winamp is basically just the play buttons with some other useful information displayed, and it has color and graphics.

So configure it differently. That's the beauty of it. You can make it look and function just about however you want. Hell, there's even plugins for using Winamp skins and plugins.

 

[RotAtoR]

Yes, foobar was designed to be playlist based, but it doesn't have to be. With plugins it is possible to do things like things this:

(taken from a Hydrogenaudio thread)

and this

(taken from a Neowin thread)

 

[Jigglybootch]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kram Sacul Playlist Hell. Winamp is basically just the play buttons with some other useful information displayed, and it has color and graphics.

The default skin for foobar is pretty much the same as Winamp. You load songs, press play, and you're good to go. What's so hard about that?