# Those gaps in playback (help needed)



## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

So, I bought an album off GooglePlay, and to my horror noticed that what was supposed to be gapless playback of a one-movement symphony divided between tracks was actually not so. I looked at one of the tracks, and sure enough, it had about third of a second of silence at the end of the track that shouldn't have been there.

What to do when this happens? I don't want my measly money back, I just want gapless playback for the music I bought.

If I had a Mac there would be a software I can use, but I have Windows. I did try mpTrim, and it was otherwise perfect, but the free version can't deal with file sizes large enough. I don't want to pay 20 euros for something that isn't my fault and I shouldn't have to deal with in the first place. For that amount, I could just buy the album on CD instead and hope I don't run into others like that on GooglePlay.

The problem with most software as far as I know is this: when you edit the audio file and want to save your work as an mp3 file, the software compresses the file AGAIN to turn it back into an mp3 file, reducing the audio quality in the process. mpTrim isn't like that, but it's a rare exception as far as I know.

Any advice other than "you're being cheap"?


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

So, I stopped being cheap and got the software.

HOWEVER.

The test piece I initially fixed produced perfect results, but now that I can fix all the tracks/pieces, I'm getting rather mixed results, and even those that produce good results aren't 100% flawless.

Does anyone know if there's more to gapless playback than removing the silent frames at the end of the mp3 file? I noticed that the software reports these "fixed" files as having "abrupt endings", while if I examine a file that has gapless playback naturally, it reports it as "natural ending".

I'd ask the guy who made the software, but customer service wasn't part of the price of the software.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

Generally, gapless MP3s shouldn't have gaps in the file. If it does, it's ripped incorrectly. Any software to correct that is going to be a kludge. You probably have to experiment to find the right setting, but I would just return the bad rips for a refund rather than buy software to deal with them.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

I'd definitely do that if I could buy that album digitally elsewhere, but I'm pretty much stuck with GooglePlay for my digital music needs due to Amazon selling their digital wares to very select countries only.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

If you can download them, you can open them in an audio program, snip out the gaps and save them out again.


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

I can already do that manually frame by frame if I want to in mpTrim... I'm just puzzled why it doesn't produce flawless results.


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## bigshot (Nov 22, 2011)

The gaps are probably random lengths


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## Chordalrock (Jan 21, 2014)

bigshot said:


> The gaps are probably random lengths


They could be parts of frames left over, but the software has "remove incomplete frames at the end" as its default setting, so not sure if it's a bug or what. When I manage to summon up the motivation, I need to test it more by manually removing the last frame that's left after doing automatic removal. Thanks for the ideas.


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