burning totally gapless CD's in Windows

silverside

I am trying to burn a mix cd (from mp3's) so that it plays without any gaps at all.

I am using WinXP Pro SP2, a pioneer 107 DVD burner, TDK 40x 80 min CDR's.
I am using DAO and setting the gap between tracks to 0 seconds.

Problem:
When I burn CD's using either Nero or foobar2000, the discs won't skip to anywhere except track 1. When I burn in Roxio easy CD creator, there are small (about half a second) gaps between tracks.

When I set a gap of 2 seconds, CDs burn and play fine. I have also used Verbatim CDR's with similar results.

Has anyone here burned totally gapless music cd's from separate MP3 tracks? If so what is your setup? I am prepared to buy a second CD burner if that would fix the problem.

Thanks.

snappieT

The key is to (in Nero, anyway) select "Track at once" rather than "disk at once"

In this way, Nero kinda tre................... never mind. It'll work

fade2black

usually you can do it with nero....properties from each track...change it to 0 seconds....I know you said you did that but it worked for me

fade2black

Yeah, his is a better answer...go with that

silverside

Hmmm...

I am trying that now. However Nero won't let me combine 'Track at once' and '0 second gaps'.

I'm using 'Nero Express 6' BTW

Can you explain exactly how you are doing it?

Thanks

silverside

fade2black, what burner do you use? I did try what you said but it doesn't work

fade2black

The burner shouldnt really make a difference silverside. Have you changed the properties of each individual track?

silverside

yep.

fade2black

And what....does it burn as one big track?

silverside

no it burns ok. When I put it in my cd player it plays ok from the beginning, and I guess would play right through if I didnt press anything. However if I try to skip forward by track, it stops playing.
I think what is happening is that the track ends are somehow getting out of sync with where they are supposed to be. I tried burning at only 8 X but that didnt solve the problem either.

(There are actually 10 or 11 tracks, just that my CD player won't jump to track N - It's a new CD player as well, so that shouldnt be at fault).

Khannie

Will it jump to track N if you play it in the computer? (just totally ruling out the cd player here)

Chalk

try setting the gap to one frame rather than 0 seconds,
sometimes works better

mordeith

I had the same trouble with Nero. In the end I downlaod Burnatonce software (free) and it worked no problem. I used to have Roxio Easy CD creator with my previous burner and I have to say it worked a lot better than my current Nero software. The trick with Roxio was to uncheck the 2 second gap option and select "session at once". I burnt countless mix CDs that way.
IMO Nero is too finicky.

silverside

FYI: Tried burnatonce, didn't like it (too fiddly).
Then tried feurio which works ok (still a tiny gap, but I can live with it - probably because i am burning from .mp3's).
hope this helps someone else.

JDxtra

Could your .mp3 files simply have a tiny gap of silence at the begining or end?

Agent Smith

thats what i was thinking.....


iirc i used nero, played perfect.

Tony H

you could try iTunes theres an option in preferences to zero the gap between tracks you want to burn

silverside

[geeky stuff]
i think .mp3s by default have a tiny bit of padding of silence at the beginning and end, to align them on even numbers of somethings.
I couldnt be bothered loading them up into an editor to confirm this though or to remove them.
Even so, nero shouldnt burn cds that skip.
[/geeky stuff]

fitzdragon, will try itunes sometime, thanks for the tip.

silverside

Itunes is *so* easy to use. I'm delighted with it. If only it supported .flac files and didn't hijack my file associations, I would use it all the time.

Snowbat

silverside wrote:

[geeky stuff]

http://lame.sourceforge.net/tech-FAQ.txt
Sections 2 and 3.