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#1
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mp3 format
Hey. Is there anybody who can confirm or deny whether or not the mp3 format requires a little section (0.025 seconds or so) of silence at the end and start? When I use soundforge to edit mp3s, I'm unable to cut out those sections of silence. Is there any audio editor that allows more accurate and precise editing of mp3s than sounforge? Samplitude perhaps? kind regards, Niek |
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#3
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dadiOH wrote: wrote: Hey. Is there anybody who can confirm or deny whether or not the mp3 format requires a little section (0.025 seconds or so) of silence at the end and start? When I use soundforge to edit mp3s, I'm unable to cut out those sections of silence. MP3s consist of "frames", each frame being 0.02 second IIRC. If you are editing with SoundForge (or any wave editor) the MP3 has been decoded. Presumably, when your edited wave is re-encoded to MP3 it is encoded so that the last frame is complete; if you chopped the wave so that the last frame had to be "reconstituted" then it would have to be filled with silence. But when soundforge opens an mp3, it doesn't have to encode it right (only decode it to wav)? Only when I safe it with soundforge, so I ought to be able to inspect mp3s with soundforge to check whether or not there is still a tiny section of silence at the end or start left at a highly magnified level of zoom. _____________ Is there any audio editor that allows more accurate and precise editing of mp3s than sounforge? Samplitude perhaps? For what you want to do, MP3Trim would be better. You can only trim on frame boundaries but at least the file doesn't have to be decoded/re-encoded. I tried that. I trimmed 1 and even more frames from a few mp3s that ought to blend into each other seamlessly, played them in winamp and there was still a gap between them. In soundforge the silence at the end and start remained visible, so presumably the silence at the end and start of an mp3 are something inherent in the mp3 format. http://www.mptrim.com/ -- dadiOH ____________________________ dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico |
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#4
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name wrote:
dadiOH wrote: wrote: Hey. Is there anybody who can confirm or deny whether or not the mp3 format requires a little section (0.025 seconds or so) of silence at the end and start? When I use soundforge to edit mp3s, I'm unable to cut out those sections of silence. MP3s consist of "frames", each frame being 0.02 second IIRC. If you are editing with SoundForge (or any wave editor) the MP3 has been decoded. Presumably, when your edited wave is re-encoded to MP3 it is encoded so that the last frame is complete; if you chopped the wave so that the last frame had to be "reconstituted" then it would have to be filled with silence. But when soundforge opens an mp3, it doesn't have to encode it right (only decode it to wav)? Only when I safe it with soundforge, so I ought to be able to inspect mp3s with soundforge to check whether or not there is still a tiny section of silence at the end or start left at a highly magnified level of zoom. Yeah but if there is (1/2 of the last frame, say) and you remove it then when the wave is reencoded the incomplete frame would be "completed" with silence and you are right back where you started. Does 0.02 (1/50) of a second make that much difference to you? If so, you might want to switch to lossless but compressed wave such as FLAC, SHN, APE, etc. -- dadiOH ____________________________ dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ....a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico |
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#5
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"name" wrote in message oups.com... dadiOH wrote: For what you want to do, MP3Trim would be better. You can only trim on frame boundaries but at least the file doesn't have to be decoded/re-encoded. I tried that. I trimmed 1 and even more frames from a few mp3s that ought to blend into each other seamlessly, played them in winamp and there was still a gap between them. In soundforge the silence at the end and start remained visible, so presumably the silence at the end and start of an mp3 are something inherent in the mp3 format. ============ Test by merging trimmed files, and listen if the gaps are still there. --- WinAmp: Increase your "Buffer-ahead on track change" in waveOut (or DirectSound, whichever you use) output plug-in. Don NP: "Another Brick in the Wall Pt 1-The Happiest Days of Our Lives-Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2" - Pink Floyd |
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#6
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dadiOH wrote: name wrote: dadiOH wrote: wrote: Hey. Is there anybody who can confirm or deny whether or not the mp3 format requires a little section (0.025 seconds or so) of silence at the end and start? When I use soundforge to edit mp3s, I'm unable to cut out those sections of silence. MP3s consist of "frames", each frame being 0.02 second IIRC. If you are editing with SoundForge (or any wave editor) the MP3 has been decoded. Presumably, when your edited wave is re-encoded to MP3 it is encoded so that the last frame is complete; if you chopped the wave so that the last frame had to be "reconstituted" then it would have to be filled with silence. But when soundforge opens an mp3, it doesn't have to encode it right (only decode it to wav)? Only when I safe it with soundforge, so I ought to be able to inspect mp3s with soundforge to check whether or not there is still a tiny section of silence at the end or start left at a highly magnified level of zoom. Yeah but if there is (1/2 of the last frame, say) and you remove it then when the wave is reencoded the incomplete frame would be "completed" with silence and you are right back where you started. Ah, ok, that might explain it. Does 0.02 (1/50) of a second make that much difference to you? If so, you might want to switch to lossless but compressed wave such as FLAC, SHN, APE, etc. Well, I'm just trying to find out if there is some way to play mp3s (with some software or hardware player) without a gap between consecutive tracks. Some music is intended to play without any gap whatsoever since the tracks blend into each other seamlessly. If there is any gap, however small, it's annoying. -- dadiOH ____________________________ dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico |
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#7
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Don M. wrote: "name" wrote in message oups.com... dadiOH wrote: For what you want to do, MP3Trim would be better. You can only trim on frame boundaries but at least the file doesn't have to be decoded/re-encoded. I tried that. I trimmed 1 and even more frames from a few mp3s that ought to blend into each other seamlessly, played them in winamp and there was still a gap between them. In soundforge the silence at the end and start remained visible, so presumably the silence at the end and start of an mp3 are something inherent in the mp3 format. ============ Test by merging trimmed files, and listen if the gaps are still there. I tested it two times by removing 1 as well as 2 frames from the start and end of two mp3s that ought to blend into each other seamlessly and merged them with mp3directcut. There still remains some discontinuity. --- WinAmp: Increase your "Buffer-ahead on track change" in waveOut (or DirectSound, whichever you use) output plug-in. Don NP: "Another Brick in the Wall Pt 1-The Happiest Days of Our Lives-Another Brick in the Wall Pt 2" - Pink Floyd |
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#8
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"name" wrote:
Well, I'm just trying to find out if there is some way to play mp3s (with some software or hardware player) without a gap between consecutive tracks. Some music is intended to play without any gap whatsoever since the tracks blend into each other seamlessly. If there is any gap, however small, it's annoying. If you're playing your mp3s with Winamp, you can use a plugin to remove the gap between tracks. I use MP3Splice - see the Winamp Plugins page for more details. If you are encoding MP3s yourself using lame, see http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GaplessHowTo for useful information on how to achieve this. |
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#9
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Tom Cole wrote: "name" wrote: Well, I'm just trying to find out if there is some way to play mp3s (with some software or hardware player) without a gap between consecutive tracks. Some music is intended to play without any gap whatsoever since the tracks blend into each other seamlessly. If there is any gap, however small, it's annoying. If you're playing your mp3s with Winamp, you can use a plugin to remove the gap between tracks. I use MP3Splice - see the Winamp Plugins page for more details. I tried a gapless playback plugin for winamp and it does reduce the gap somewhat but doesn't eliminate it completely. If you are encoding MP3s yourself using lame, see http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GaplessHowTo for useful information on how to achieve this. But the very fact that mp3s employ frames implies that most mp3s contain a minute section of silence at the end (or start), unless in the rare instances that the time of the track (and wav files can have arbitrary length) is a manifold of the duration of a frame. Hence, when you merge together two mp3s, it's likely to contain a slight gap between them. |
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#10
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"dadiOH" wrote in message news:hST5e.6377$9i7.1678@trnddc04... name wrote: dadiOH wrote: wrote: Hey. Is there anybody who can confirm or deny whether or not the mp3 format requires a little section (0.025 seconds or so) of silence at the end and start? When I use soundforge to edit mp3s, I'm unable to cut out those sections of silence. MP3s consist of "frames", each frame being 0.02 second IIRC. If you are editing with SoundForge (or any wave editor) the MP3 has been decoded. Presumably, when your edited wave is re-encoded to MP3 it is encoded so that the last frame is complete; if you chopped the wave so that the last frame had to be "reconstituted" then it would have to be filled with silence. But when soundforge opens an mp3, it doesn't have to encode it right (only decode it to wav)? Only when I safe it with soundforge, so I ought to be able to inspect mp3s with soundforge to check whether or not there is still a tiny section of silence at the end or start left at a highly magnified level of zoom. Yeah but if there is (1/2 of the last frame, say) and you remove it then when the wave is reencoded the incomplete frame would be "completed" with silence and you are right back where you started. An uninformed question: If one were to merge the mp3s (for the sake of simplicity, say 2 mp3s), would the merge also merge the frames of silence between the two? And if so, is it possible that the merge would produce a complete frame of silence, enabling one to remove the "now complete frame", or at least provide the ability to reduce the length of silence between the two songs? Hark Does 0.02 (1/50) of a second make that much difference to you? If so, you might want to switch to lossless but compressed wave such as FLAC, SHN, APE, etc. -- dadiOH ____________________________ dadiOH's dandies v3.06... ...a help file of info about MP3s, recording from LP/cassette and tips & tricks on this and that. Get it at http://mysite.verizon.net/xico |
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#11
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Harkhof said...
If one were to merge the mp3s (for the sake of simplicity, say 2 mp3s), would the merge also merge the frames of silence between the two? And if so, is it possible that the merge would produce a complete frame of silence, enabling one to remove the "now complete frame", or at least provide the ability to reduce the length of silence between the two songs? No. Merging two will not combine the contents of any blocks, just line up the last of one with the first of another. If you merge the two the silence at the end of the first remains and any silence at the beginning of the second is then added. This thread is going over something that has been tried and re-tried over and again for as long as there have been mp3s and there really is no re- invention of the wheel waiting in the wings. Lame has tried with limited success to address the problem of the tiny bit of silence between tracks with gapless encoding, but you have to be the ripper/encoder to take advantage of this. Others have tried to address the problem by ripping the CD to one big mp3 file and then cutting it with a utility and including a cue sheet for re-joining it seamlessly. See the paragraph titled "How I do it" for more detail: http://www.cappycue.com/split.html This works, but again you have to be the ripper/encoder to take advantage of this or you have to be lucky enough, if you are downloading the files in question, to get them from someone who cared enough about the sound to go to the extra bit of trouble involved. You aren't going to "solve" it with files anyone ripped/encoded via normal methods by using fading, concatenation, merging, trimming, or any other method. The millisecond of silence is simply inherent to the format. The choices are pretty much: get over it, get used to it, or get some other way to listen to the CD. -- CQ |
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#12
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"name" wrote in news:1113072420.608391.272990
@z14g2000cwz.googlegroups.com: Well, I'm just trying to find out if there is some way to play mp3s (with some software or hardware player) without a gap between consecutive tracks. Try foobar2k http://www.foobar2000.org/ -- fred |
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#13
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Does 0.02 (1/50) of a second make that much difference to you? If so, you might want to switch to lossless but compressed wave such as FLAC, SHN, APE, etc. Well, I'm just trying to find out if there is some way to play mp3s (with some software or hardware player) without a gap between consecutive tracks. Some music is intended to play without any gap whatsoever since the tracks blend into each other seamlessly. If there is any gap, however small, it's annoying. If that's your primary concern - and you don't mind buying a new hardware player - buy a Rio Karma. About 130 UKP on eBay. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.d...sPageName=WDVW Famous for the excellence of it's gapless MP3 playback. Here's an article with nice drawings demonstrating the fact: http://www.pretentiousname.com/mp3players/ I have a Karma, and gapless sounds perfect to me (although it's not a feature I find important personally). A great player generally. Sean |
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#14
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"name" wrote:
Tom Cole wrote: "name" wrote: Well, I'm just trying to find out if there is some way to play mp3s (with some software or hardware player) without a gap between consecutive tracks. Some music is intended to play without any gap whatsoever since the tracks blend into each other seamlessly. If there is any gap, however small, it's annoying. If you're playing your mp3s with Winamp, you can use a plugin to remove the gap between tracks. I use MP3Splice - see the Winamp Plugins page for more details. I tried a gapless playback plugin for winamp and it does reduce the gap somewhat but doesn't eliminate it completely. Try, MP3Splice. It works perfectly for me in WinAmp, even with MP3s which have not been specifically encoded to be gapless. If you are encoding MP3s yourself using lame, see http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/GaplessHowTo for useful information on how to achieve this. But the very fact that mp3s employ frames implies that most mp3s contain a minute section of silence at the end (or start), unless in the rare instances that the time of the track (and wav files can have arbitrary length) is a manifold of the duration of a frame. Hence, when you merge together two mp3s, it's likely to contain a slight gap between them. I am not familiar with all the technical details of MP3, but if you try any of the methods given in the URL above, you will achieve gapless playback. I use Method 3. I have an Archos Jukebox Recorder with 40Gb HD, and when I rip my CDs with EAC and convert using the specially patched Lame encoder obtainable from http://www.geocities.com/nyaochi2000/lame/cuesheet/ the MP3s are truly gapless on my Archos. |
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#15
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"CQ" wrote in message news:1113136445.53aac4e2184bfd87eef1a9bc46d0dff9@t eranews... Harkhof said... If one were to merge the mp3s (for the sake of simplicity, say 2 mp3s), would the merge also merge the frames of silence between the two? And if so, is it possible that the merge would produce a complete frame of silence, enabling one to remove the "now complete frame", or at least provide the ability to reduce the length of silence between the two songs? No. Merging two will not combine the contents of any blocks, just line up the last of one with the first of another. If you merge the two the silence at the end of the first remains and any silence at the beginning of the second is then added. This thread is going over something that has been tried and re-tried over and again for as long as there have been mp3s and there really is no re- invention of the wheel waiting in the wings. Lame has tried with limited success to address the problem of the tiny bit of silence between tracks with gapless encoding, but you have to be the ripper/encoder to take advantage of this. Others have tried to address the problem by ripping the CD to one big mp3 file and then cutting it with a utility and including a cue sheet for re-joining it seamlessly. See the paragraph titled "How I do it" for more detail: http://www.cappycue.com/split.html This works, but again you have to be the ripper/encoder to take advantage of this or you have to be lucky enough, if you are downloading the files in question, to get them from someone who cared enough about the sound to go to the extra bit of trouble involved. You aren't going to "solve" it with files anyone ripped/encoded via normal methods by using fading, concatenation, merging, trimming, or any other method. The millisecond of silence is simply inherent to the format. The choices are pretty much: get over it, get used to it, or get some other way to listen to the CD. Thanks for the comprehensive reply, CQ. Fortunately, for me, this is a theoretical question. And, as I never download, but only buy the CD and rip myself, this should never be the issue that it is for some. Thanks for posting the link. I found it very informative and, through the link and this post, learned more about the format. Hark |
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#16
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On Mon, 11 Apr 2005 07:42:09 -0500, Harkhof said...
Thanks for posting the link. I found it very informative and, through the link and this post, learned more about the format. You are welcome. Nice to hear they were useful for you. -- CQ |
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