Gapless fix debacle

2014-09-21 10:35:56

So I got this album from Amazon MP3, encoded with whoknowswhat. (If you get something that was encoded with LAME 3.97, it's usually a perfectly fine straight CD rip with gapless and all, but not so in this case.) It has one supposedly-gapless track transition which doesn't quite come out that way.

No problem, I thought, and proceeded as instructed here, using Foobar2000 1.2.9 (context menu w/ Shift, under Utilities) and Audacity.

Result, gap not fixed (neither in Foobar nor on my Rockboxed Clip+), and the decoded tracks actually have actually gained in length at the beginning by the specified delay of 576 samples (and total decoded length by 1152 samples)!

WTF? What am I doing wrong?

(JFTR, we are talking about the Fuzz s/t album and tracks 3 and 4. I got a true length of 10358208 samples for #3, which turned out to be a multiple of 588, and an encoder delay of 576 samples for #4. So I entered a delay of 576 for both, and a padding of 10358208 for #3.)

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #1 – 2014-09-21 11:10:49

Curious. Apparently Amazon won't let me buy MP3 music from them. I would have loved to take a look at this.

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #2 – 2014-09-21 13:56:08

Thanks for coming back to my little puzzler. You've got pm.

I guess that either I goofed (though I do pride myself of being able to use a calculator  ), or it's a stupid bug somewhere. I imagine that the code for this function may not have been touched in a looong time.

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #3 – 2014-09-21 16:33:41

I don't know what's wrong with the files but editing the header info directly seems to have no effect. The file length foobar2000 reports at least doesn't change at all.
But it's easy enough to fix. Just run them through the 'Utilities' -> 'Rebuild MP3 stream' command and after that the length edits work. The delay of 576 samples seems to be correct and track 3 length is indeed 10358208 samples. And according to freedb database track 4 is 15456756 samples.

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #4 – 2014-09-21 20:04:20

That did the trick, thanks! The other files that I had not edited before would apparently lose their VBR header upon rebuild, but "Fix VBR header" took care of that.

For obvious reasons it would be awfully great if one didn't have to jump through such hoops at all. It's not like they're giving this stuff away. I may have to consult customer support on this (no idea how helpful they are with such things though).

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #5 – 2014-09-21 21:12:26

(my mistake)

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #6 – 2014-09-22 01:23:02

Precisely why I still prefer to purchase a hard copy and rip it myself. Is there a particular reason you didn't want to simply order the cd? Usually it's a few dollars more if that and Amazon gives you auto rip as well.

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #7 – 2014-09-22 10:00:58

Quote from: Mach-X on 2014-09-22 01:23:02

Usually it's a few dollars more

Surprisingly often, it's cheaper to buy the CD than the mp3s, especially for older stuff from marketplace sellers. It's a funny world.

Cheers,
David.

Gapless fix debacle

Reply #8 – 2014-09-23 15:56:22

In this case the CD would have been an import costing almost twice as much (plus I wanted to have it Right Now). In some cases you can also get an MP3 version of CDs that are near unobtainium. This tends to be quite helpful for branching out to more exotic places like Chile or Japan.

But yes, I've seen a number of cases of the physical media being less expensive than the MP3s. Which may seem less outrageous to you if you've ever run out of space for new CDs (I have). Physical things have this unfortunate trait of weighing you down. I would infinitely prefer FLACs plus a PDF booklet though (which so far has been included in only a tiny fraction of cases). That's all I'd really need. Oh, and no big ripping glitches right in the middle of the best track (I've encountered that, too)...

I have to admit that there have been a few (like 2 or 3) cases where I first got the MP3 since I though the album less important, then (usually) found gapless playback issues, and then got the physical CD, being the perfectionist that I am. (Big savings there...) In some other cases I did the same because I eventually ended up thinking that the album was so good as to warrant a physical copy, but that's a different story.

BTW, how do you determine track length via freedb? I suppose you could subtract track offsets and multiply by 588, but maybe there is some more comfortable way.