lame adds silence to the beginning and end of mp3s

[leonid_makarovsky]

I'm encoding mp3s using ExactAudioCopy and Lame as external tool. The command I feed lame with is the following:

--vbr-new -V %h2%h%l3%l %c-p%c -b 32 -B 320 -F %s %d

Which translates as:

lame.exe --vbr-new -V 3 -b 32 -B 320 -F trackSource.wav trackDest.mp3

What I noticed just recently that the resulting mp3 is 194 milliseconds longer and about 97 milliseconds of silence is added to the beginning and end of the track.

Anyone knows how to get rid of those and how to encode with the precise length? Thanks.

--Leonid

[drcl]

http://lame.sourceforge.net/tech-FAQ.txt

if you are asking about this problem because of live recordings then you should investigate the --nogap options

http://www.multimediasoft.com/asrecnet/help/asrecnet_000041.htm

i dont have time to try it out, i read something about it being now depricated.

hope this helps though

[Slogra]

Mp3 is not a gapless format; it will add silence to the songs. However lame added a length "tag" to fix this problem.
So you need a player that can read this length tag, like Foobar 2000.

btw Why don't you JUST use the preset, like --vbr-new -V 3? That's why presets are invented.
-b 32 will only make the quality worse. And -F only makes sense if you AREN'T using 32kb/s frames.

[GodofaGap]

For Lame3.97 -b 32 and -B 320 won't even do anything because it has no framesize boundaries in the presets.

But yes, strictly speaking (without hacks) mp3's can't have a sample precise lenght.

[Slogra]

What do you mean by framesize boundaries? Does this mean that you can't override the presets anymore?

[GodofaGap]

You can override presets, but V3 already has the maximum framesize range. Adding -b 32 -B 320 is superfluous.

[leonid_makarovsky]

Mp3 is not a gapless format; it will add silence to the songs. However lame added a length "tag" to fix this problem.
So you need a player that can read this length tag

Thanks a lot for your responses, guys. I use Winamp. Can I tweek it so that it skips extra silence? I found the way to skip silence by just setting up silence threshold. However, it would be much nicer if it was skipping the whatever extra lame is adding. I believe iTunes player have something like crossfade functionality. Thanks.

--Leonid

[Slogra]

You need a mp3 decoder for winamp that can read the Lame tag. I don't use Winamp myself, so i'm not sure which plugin you need. Try the shibatch mpg123 plugin or the MAD mp3 plugin. Or it could be that the newest version of Winamp has an updated mp3 decoder that can read the mp3 with the correct length.

[gameplaya15143]

in_mpg123 is the one that supports gapless tags and replay gain. in_mad does not. AFAIK in_mp3 still doesn't have support either.

[Inventive Software]

I've had the same problem, and put it down to EAC or lame adding flags. As long as they don't have flags, you're alright.

[leonid_makarovsky]

I've had the same problem, and put it down to EAC or lame adding flags. As long as they don't have flags, you're alright.

And how do you NOT put the flag?

--Leonid