Dear Santa,

I've tried all the hacks that have been put out so far, but *still* I get gaps in my winamp playback (and also often weird behaviour).

I bet I'm not the only one that listens to mixed recordings where such gaps are as annoying as someone scratching their nails down a blackboard.

I've been a good boy, I tried all the hacks, some of them work on some computers (but not mine, on win2000), please please please, Santa, could you make winamp pre-buffer the next song *INSIDE* the player instead of using a hacked output module.

I'm almost to the point of having one winamp setup to *play* the files, then stream them out to another winamp which listens to the stream then outputs the gapless version. Why is this so hard? Do the folks at NULLSOFT really hate DJ mixes? Have I been bad? Do I really need to buy a more powerful PC (and suffer re-encoding quality loss) to setup a silly self streaming workaround?

Why is this not a standard feature? It is on almost all CD players, what has mp3 done wrong?

Thanks in advance Santa.

there have been a stupid amount of posts about no gaps. use the search function, that's what it's there for.

I know you don't want "hacked output modules", but here's the Dudsoft Gapless Output plugin...

I can't remember if anyone said that Winamp 3 will implement a gapless feature/crossfader or not...

And here's another:
Crudsoft Gapless Output Plug-in, by Matthew Lloyd and Nathan Ford: http://www.geocities.com/outgapless/

And yes, Winamp 3 will have a built-in crossfader.

I've heard many mentions on the forums of Winamp3. Is there a posting on the website somewhere of all the proposed features for Winamp3?

thanks. [;

first, a big smelly fart to the ignorant one that suggested i try the search function. i've tried it, and i've tried all the solutions you posted. in your tone of voice, 'next time read my bleedin post'. why do such smelly people always inhabit message boards?

dudsoft, crudsoft, etc. do these names not tell you something. it is a hack. and most of the time these hacks mess up the playback, either clipping short the last track of your playlist (by the buffer amount) or screwing with the playback counter, or other unstabilities.

and as i said, i've tried all the hacks on my system and none of them worked. anyone else had these work on win2000?

anyway, i sincerely hope this feature gets into winamp3. if not before. i enjoy updating my winamp every week, i just keep doing it in the hope this feature gets in.

to clarify, by not work, i don't mean that they give me hack side effects, i mean they just don't remove the gaps.

one more thought..
 

btw, crossfading just doesnt cut it. i want seamless transitions between tracks, just like on my cd player. crossfading would be as painful as a gap in a dj mix.

anyway, i think i found my solution, i think i need to downgrade back to an early version of winamp to get the gapless output to work. will post if that works.


gapless = 0 sec wait between tracks
crossfader = overlaying of two tracks



[Edited by fr33 on 12-19-2000 at 12:26 PM]

The closest you can get to gapless playback in 2x
 

Get Sqrsoft Advanced crossfading(I now crossfading is annoying but bear with me).

now in its configuration set:
Mixing buffer length to about 1500 (expirement)
set the fade in and fade out times to 0%

set any other fading times to 0% also


Sorry I know it's just another workaround but winamp 3.0 should be able to solve this problem.


P.S. make your mixing buffer as small as possible without skipping.

Well, people often make posts claiming that they've tried everything, but it turns out they really haven't, so since you didn't specify exactly which things you'd tried, we figured we'd make some suggestions to be sure.

If you're looking for Winamp's old gapless output plug-in, you shouldn't need to downgrade your entire Winamp to get it. Just download and install this:
Gapless Output plug-in v0.6 (experimental), by Nullsoft: http://www.dailymp3.com/files/out_cw.zip

Thanks for posting the old gapless output. That one seems to have done the trick, although the complaint of a wonky timer is still there. There's still an incey gap in there, but I'll admit, that might be from the ripping process, not the player.

I wonder why this plugin got removed from the winamp page. I had used this one before successfully, but new machine, new software later, and none of the new ones on the winamp site work at all. I do seem to remember winamp getting flakey after using this old gapless output for a couple of hours.

I'm still sticking with my request though, it irks me a little that so much effort goes on cosmetic features like skinning when there is core functionality that need improvements.

It would be nice if winamp supported gapless output as a standard feature. Extra points if there is an option to skip the first blank space/trailing space on a track.

So, thanks for saving me from resorting to copy +..., but my wishlist request remains on my chimney.

I have never had any problems with gaps on my mp3 playing. There is about a 1/2 second delay b/t songs while playing, but that has been on all media through time (cassettes, CDs, records, and I believe that 8-tracks had them too). I am used to it, and I would feel odd without it.

--dibble

I take it you don't listen to techno mix CDs/tapes/records/etc.

I have a few techno/trance CDs, but they came right from the store. I could see how the gaps might be a problem if you were a DJ using mp3s though. People are getting into the music then all of a sudden, a pause.

--dibble

I too hate adding features in the form of add-on software when it comes to core functionality.

This is exemplified by my spartan windows sys-tray.

I've noticed the gap problem in winamp forever (since my first time trying psychotrance1 rips) and isn't it conceptually simply a matter of prebuffering a second or two of audio? It requires winamp to make it's decisions ahead of time regarding selecting random tracks; that decision will simply be made earlier in the tree, no problem.

It does seem to be overkill to use all those crossfade algorithms to simply emulate a 2 second discman-style shock protection buffer.....

Hey Dibble,

My "mixed" CDs of electronic music also come "from the store" as you say....

there's no home spun magic to it; the lack of gap is an index-related feature. modern CD decks never have the index browsing feature but it's still in there. gaps are put there by that, not by actually recording silence. you can sort of test this on some CDs, you'll notice the timer will show negative 2 or 3 seconds sometimes while transitioning from one song to the next.

Depending on the CD the mix down engineer may also leave a few seconds of actual air at the beginning or end of tracks (stuff by the Naxos label(german) often features that style, up to 8 seconds of air at the end of some tracks)

I'd like to reply to Piesupreme:

this is a wish list forum. Fr33 (and I) WISH the feature we want was BUILT IN to winamp. That's our wish. We didn't come here asking to be taught how to use search functions or install plugins. Please consider also the other's user's frustration factor before answering in such a tone in the future.

Finally, even assuming your post answered all points in question, being short won't help anyone learn your point any faster than wording your posts more diplomatically

bump

Apollo
 

Check Apollo! Without gaps and a advanced (very) playlist.

http://apollo.audiogalaxy.com

I'd just like to point out another reason for gapless output. I have several live CDs, with applause, cheering etc. between tracks, and a few studio ones where one track blends slowly into another. This effect is totally ruined when your MP3s have gaps inserted between them. It's OK when you play direct from CD (on my system at least), presumably Winamp doesn't use its own DLLs for that, but as soon as you rip your CD you get these irritating gaps.

And no, before anybody asks, it's not a problem with my ripper...

Warning: long post ahead!!!
 

To all people complaining about the gaps, here's a part of the readme of out_gapless.dll:

"Why do I still get small clicks between my MP3s ripped from CD?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This is a shortcoming in the MP3 specification. If you take a WAV file and compress it to MP3, then decompress it, you'll find there's about 1000 samples of silence that appear from nowhere at the start and end of the track, and that the first and last few audio samples are distorted. out_gapless.dll doesn't know anything about this problem so when playing back MP3s you'll still get very small clicks between tracks.
It would in theory be possible to eliminate these clicks, perhaps by detecting the silence and deleting it, or by smoothly crossfading between the end of one track and the beginning of the next. If somebody wants to do this themselves they should e-mail me to get the source code. I don't want to because I use MONKEY'S AUDIO (which rocks if you have the disk space!) so don't bother e-mail nagging me about it."

If you don't want gaps because of MP3 you could use OggVorbis which is the same size as MP3: http://www.vorbis.com
OggVorbis (.OGG files) is open-source, better quality *but* not recognized by all MP3 organizing software and the tags are non-editable (yet!). So OGG vs MP3 is like Linux vs Windows.
And the Monkey's Audio mentioned in the quote of the readme can be found on http://www.monkeysaudio.com
Monkey's Audio is lossless, not a single byte is lost after compression. Therefore it is 5 times bigger than MP3 *and* it's natively compatible with ID3v1.1 tags, ID3v2 tags are in beta.

To DeanToth:
gaps *are* created by recording silence. On the "Oops! I Did It Again" album of Britney Spears one hears fake teen talk between track 3 and 4, track 6 and 7 and track 12 and 13. During this talk you can see the timer counting down until the start of the next track! Also on the "Baby One More Time" album there are 2 seconds of silence between all songs. Check a program like Audiograbber (www.audiograbber.com*********). This CD-ripping program will rip track 1 for example from the start of track 1 until the start of track 2. This *includes silence*. So if you insert your CD with those "negative times" you'll see that every track is 2 or 3 seconds longer than you are used to on your CD player. So with the oops i did it again album that means that the teen talk is appended to track 3, 6 and 12 while a normal CD player will show that it is playing track 4, 7 and 13.

Cheers,
Spaceknarf

With regards to the gaps in the recording/encoding, i disagree.

I've pasted together mp3's by concatenating the files, and when you play that mp3, there is no gap. This might not be the case for all recordings.

Also, if you stream the mp3s using shoutcast, and listen to the stream, there are also no gaps. (because of the listen buffer I assume)

But I do think a feature that kills silence before the begining of the track would be good too.

It's just so simple!

I just want working gapless CD play built-in!

Not bothered about gapless support for MP3, though it would be nice, but really if people just make one big MP3 track or provide a means of merging MP3s, then that fixes that problem. CD play is the most important and annoying problem as WinAmp appears to play CDs one track at a time and pause at the end of each track, which it should not!

If I can play CDs with no gaps, I can then use WinAmp for both MP3s and CDs (currently I use NotifyCD for CD play).

I've also tried all the hacks and messed around with settings people recommend, but the best I've ever got is where it plays gapless, but then just instead inserts a gap about 3 seconds into the next track!!!

Crossfading is certainly not the solution either. I don't need a CD of continuous music or a concert, fading out/in on every track! (yes, I've tried setting them to not fade out, but I get all sorts of problems when I do that).

It really does have to be gapless though. It's no good with solutions that reduce the gap time, it must be gone!

Surely the simplest method is, rather than have CDs route through the sampling (or whatever) software in WinAmp, can WinAmp not just simply fire the CD playback commands to the OS (and thus playback via 'cd-audio' mixer rather than the 'wave' mixer)? And surely then it just (like every other CD playback software) plays the CD as one continuous media rather than a track at a time. I'm even happy to not have EQ features, or any graphical displays, for CD playback (don't use them anyway, and you shouldn't need EQ if you've got a good setup).