WAV to MP3 Convertor

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Mathachew

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Hello good chaps! Here's my situation: Every time I get a new music CD (yes, I actually buy my CDs), I back it up onto my computer. I use WinDAC32 to rip and AudioCatalyst to convert. Well, for the past 2 - 3 years, I've become very agitated because when I would burn a CD with, say, live music, it would go from one track to another, but there would a slight gap, not the 2-3 second gap caused by CD burners, but a gap that is noticable to someone like me who runs the sound for my church. I did some trouble shooting to root out the problem. I thought it was Winamp's fault initially from when it converted the MP3 to a WAV, but it turned out that it was AudioCatalyst that would screw the track up when converting from WAV to MP3. I've downloaded several convertors and have had the same exact result. I've got almost 200 music cds on my computer, and every single one of them was ripped/encoded with the same programs, so every one of them is like this. I have Cool Edit Pro to help me cut out the unwanted gap, but it's so much trouble! Does anyone know what problem I'm talking about? If so, HELP! :) I just can't stand having all my music like that. Thanks!

P.s. - If you edit audio files, simply convert a WAV to MP3 and then zoom in on the audio track at the beginning to see what I'm talking about. It looks as if the MP3 convertor is making the track fade in. *sigh*
 
Well, it's been quite a while since I last used Audiocatalyst, but I'm quite certain that there are options to add silence or fade in/out. You might check that out if you haven't already.

I know that when I burn live discs, I go into the options for each track and select "crossfade" so that there are no gaps as the tracks change. This is much simpler than cutting the silence in an editing program. I'm not positive that this is the kind of suggestion you are looking for, but hopefully it helps in some way.
 
I have tried looking for the option for adding silence, fading in/out and didn't see anything. Maybe I didn't look hard enough, who knows? I'll try a test CD with cross fading to see what I get. Maybe that'll give me what I want. Thanks for your input though. Anyone else??? :)
 
Like I said, it's been awhile, so it could be some other program that I'm thinking of.

If cross-fading doesn't work out perfectly the first time, you might have to specify time intervals to tweak it just right. Not difficult, just a bit of trial and error trying to get the right number of seconds.
 
Let me make a few suggestions:

1) Use Exact Audio Copy to rip cd's to your hard drive
www.exactaudiocopy.de

2) Use the LAME mp3 codec version 3.90.3 to convert the .wav's (EAC can use the .exe and do this all in one step)
http://rarewares.hydrogenaudio.org/files/lame-3.90.3.zip

3) The MP3 format is not a gapless format. There will always be at least a small gap at the end of every track due to limitations of the format.

4) If you want gapless and smaller file sizes, try Musepack (MPC)
Encoder: http://www.saunalahti.fi/cse/mpc/encoders/mppenc-windows-1.14.zip
Decoder: http://www.saunalahti.fi/~cse/mppdec.zip
 
Alrighty, I'll check those proggies out. It's just that I don't get why the begging of each of my MP3's is like that. It happens to the first .025 of a second of every MP3. Doesn't sound like much, but you literally hear the gap and it just doesn't sound good. I don't see why Mp3s should have it because it's compressed, at least that is the impression I'm getting from your comments dreamliner77. I appreciate your input! Thanks a bunch!
 
Okay, just to let you know what happened with Exact Audio Copy:

I haven't tried ripping CDs from it yet, but I did try to use the encoder. It made the songs worse off than before, with about .075 seconds on the beginning and end of each MP3 it converted, using the LAME mp3 codec. It may have been .7 secs, I did it last night and can't remember which one it was. I guess I'll just have to edit them manually when I get to having to make a CD for someone. I appreciate your help. :)
 
In EAC just go to options and where it has fade put "0" for the in and out ..
 
I don't think this applies to the Compress WAV feature. I changed the values to 0 and still get the same results. I guess it's how all WAV to MP3 convertors are.
 
In EAC you may want to choose "Leave out Gaps" or "Append Gaps to end of track" (I think that's what it is EAC isn't on this computer)

And remember: MP3 is not gapless. There will (almost) always be a gap at the END of mp3's because frames are a definite size.
 
I did not know that much about MP3s. It doesn't take much to cut off the little that it screws up. Instead of going through my whole collection and editting them all, I'll just edit them when I get to burning them. I didn't see a feature like that in EAC, but I'm glad you told me about it, because now I can ditch WinDAC32 and use a legit program. Thanks!
 
grab cdex and rip to OGG.

You should not notice any gaps or anything at all, as i have not with my OGG files, and with the nero plugin that is freely available i can burn them to cd.
 
What's the comparison of OGG to MP3? For instance, a 5 miniute song at 128kbps would roughly be around 5mb. What is it in OGG format? I'll do some research on OGG because I've seen about it, but never looked into using it (because I thought I was completely happy with MP3). Thanks
 
ogg is meant more for lower bitrate encoding (~64-96 kbps)

I will mention it again: Take a look at MPC. At an average of 150-160 kbps it is virtually transparent (read: cd quality). Yeah it's bigger than a 128 mp3 but it's so delicously better
 
Originally posted by Mathachew
What's the comparison of OGG to MP3? For instance, a 5 miniute song at 128kbps would roughly be around 5mb. What is it in OGG format? I'll do some research on OGG because I've seen about it, but never looked into using it (because I thought I was completely happy with MP3). Thanks

a 6 MB MP3 at 128 KB/sec or a 5 MB file at 128 KB/sec in OGG, i prefer to rip at 192 KB/Sec, and my files are 7 MB, and then in MP3 the same quality it would be 8 MB, and there is a quality difference.
 
Hmm... never thought about recommending a different format...

I like SHN (Shorten). It's lossless, so the compression isn't near that of an MP3, but it's still smaller than a WAV.
 

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