Roxio Question

[mddd2]

When converting mp3 to an audio cd of a live concert I burn using DAO but I still get a pause or hiccup between tracks. Is there any way to eliminate this?

[CDRecorder]

If you're hearing a pause between tracks, it could be because your software is inserting the pause.

If something actually sounds wrong with the disc, try using another player or another brand of disc. Some players don't like certain types of discs.

[Inertia]

First, make sure when your MP3 track are laid out in the compilation and you right click on "Transition Effects" that "Gap" is enabled and "Length of Gap" is 00:00:00. If this isn't the problem, go to the next section.

Some MP3 files may be have been created in a less than perfect way with audible artifacts at the end causing this type of problem. The most straightforward way to find out why you are getting the "audio hiccups" is to first convert the MP3 files to WAV files before burning. After all of the MP3 files are converted, listen to the WAV files preferably using an audio editor for playback. If you hear any "hiccups" or unwanted pauses at the end of a track, use the editor to remove the offending part. Once all tracks are tested and edited as required, burn the audio CD-R from the WAV track files using DAO with the "Length of Gap" set to 0.

[minix]

well, it's not a Roxio question.
It happens with any burning software.

The MP3 format will insert silence at the beginning and end of MP3 tracks.
You have to edit those silences manually.

I don't think Roxio can burn audio tracks that are not multiple of a CD-DA sector (588 samples) without adding silence at the end of tracks to fill the sector.
You will have to use Feurio (I hope your drive is supported) and "Do not insert pauses between tracks - round track markers" setting to burn the WAVs you edited with really no silence.

Feurio is also great to edit the silences easily. Open the Track Editor and use "Set start/end position" to select where the track really begins and ends.

[Inertia]

This is a Feurio pop-up when "Do not insert pauses between tracks - round track markers" is selected using MP3 files for the source:

Remark: MP3-files without pause

You want Feurio! to burn the mp3-files: "h:\Songs MP3\Ripped\Philip Glass - Serra Pelada.mp3" and "h:\Songs MP3\Ripped\Philip Glass - The Title.mp3" without a pause between them. However, if these two files are part of a live recording or another sort of continuous data in two parts, you will most probably here a short pause or some "disturbance" nevertheless.

This is caused by the MP3-format:
The mp3-format is a kind of compression with some loss of data, i.e. not the whole samples are stored, but - expressed in a simple way - some kind of "frequency curves", i.e. the mp3-encoder analyses a certain range of data and then stores the "frequency curves" for this range.
If now e.g. a live recording is stored in parts - one part in the first file, the following part in the second file - and compressed to the mp3-format, the encoding process is resetted for the second file - so the frequence curves (the end of the first file and the beginning of the second) don't match exactly.
In addition most mp3-files are "frame orientated", i.e. the encoder sometimes adds empty samples to the end of a file to get a whole frame at the end.

To put it together: Unfortunately it is not possible to always reconstruct the original data 100%-ly out of two mp3-files, that contain parts of continuous data.
If you want to work with continouos data, you must save all tracks into ONE mp3-file or use the wave-format.

When I converted the MP3 files to WAV files first and used the "Do not insert pauses between tracks - round track markers" setting, the message did not appear. However, I could still hear momentary silence between tracks even with that setting, undoubtedly because the source was the MP3 files.

The results with EZCD burning from WAV files produced a barely noticeable silence glitch between continuous tracks, but the results were pretty good.

[minix]

When I converted the MP3 files to WAV files first and used the "Do not insert pauses between tracks - round track markers" setting, the message did not appear.

Of course. Feurio has some friendly details (only sometimes ) and when it sees that you're trying to burn MP3s without pauses, then it tells you that is impossible.
With WAV files that problem doesn't exist, so it doesn't tell you anything because it's not so smart to analyze the WAV files for silences at beginning and end.

However, I could still hear momentary silence between tracks even with that setting, undoubtedly because the source was the MP3 files.

Exactly. The only option is to remove manually those silences, as I said before.
Open Track Editor and use "Set start position" and "Set end position", if your choice to do it is Feurio.

It's a pity that "Remove silence at the end of *.cda tracks" in Nero doesn't work (that setting does nothing, AFAIK, and the help says nothing about it). Let's see if Feurio 2 has something to delete those silences automatically (it can do it when ripping like a lot of programs).

I'm seeing that there's a visualization bug in the Track Editor. The blue bar separating tracks changes its position a bit when you move along the track, and the end changes depending on position. Well, I don't know how to explain it, but it doesn't happen with WAV files.
So, if you're going to use Feurio to remove the silences (I find it quite fast) better decompress to WAV before.

The results with EZCD burning from WAV files produced a barely noticeable silence glitch between continuous tracks, but the results were pretty good.

Yes.
I've been checking one MP3 track now, and the silence at the beginning is around 25 miliseconds and much less at the end.

If you do the work to delete that silence, and use a typical program like EasyCD, you'll lose a bit of the job, because silence will be added at the end to fill the CD-DA sector.
Feurio has 2 choices:
- Minimal pauses, which does the same as EasyCD (fill the sector with silence).
- Do not insert pauses betweeen tracks, wich fills the sector with the beginning of the following track (you'll lose slight precision but it's the only way to have seamless playing).

The added silence to fill the sector won't be bigger than 587 samples of course, which is around 13 miliseconds.

This problem doesn't happen with WAV files ripped from CD, because those tracks will be multiple of a CD-DA sector, obviously. This is only a issue with MP3 tracks or WAV non multiple of CD-DA sector (588 samples).

By the way, Nero is the only program I know that removes the portion of last sector instead of filling with silence. So, there's a possibility that Nero only removes the silence at the end of the MP3 track, but there's the option that Nero removes a little bit of the music (without warning )

[Inertia]

Thanks for your input, minix.

All in all, using separate MP3 track files as a source for CDDA recording of live concerts or tracks with continuous content is a bad idea. It may be possible to cobble something together that sounds good, but there is a lot of effort involved. Separate MP3 tracks with this type of content should be a last resort for a source. In addition to having losses, the converted WAV tracks require labor intensive mending.

It seems a bit like putting Humpty Dumpty back together again, and an abstracted version of Humpty Dumpty at that.