Ripping OST without pauses

Banzai_Joe

Banzai_Joe

Banzai_Joe

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Midlands, UK
Hi all,

so i'm digitising all my CD's (again) and i have quite a few OST's from movies. However whenever i rip them using WMP and play them back there is always that slight gap between tracks, yet when playing the CD it's continuous, which is what i want.

Is there better software for ripping CD's out there without track spacing?
Also i'd like the best possible quality short of using FLAC as the file sizes tend to be much bigger don't they?

The music will be played over my home network either via DLNA device where the music will be piped out through my Onkyo AV system (currently 5.1), or via PC.

Advice appreciated, thanks. :)
 
its the playback device that adds the spacing, i think.

i have issues too playing back mix CDs where you obviously dont want pauses. WMP allows you to stop any gaps but none of my playback devices seem to allow this.

flac is bigger than mp3 but smaller than wav. try 320kbps for the best mp3 setting.
 
Thanks mate. Yeah i tend to go for the highest bitrate i can get away with.
What i want to avoid it having 2 or mor formats of all my music, just to suit specific devices. ie. mp3 for iPhone and FLAC or WAV for really good playback on home audio like my Onkyo.
Currently that has 5.1 speakers, but i can hang 2 more off and isolate them for music playback (i think i can anyway).
 
what onkyo do you have?

i have to admit i have mp3 and also wav for some of my music. most is mp3 though. it is annoying when certain devices dont use certain formats though.

off topic but i hate the way that when i use my onkyo for dlna streaming that every time i want to change a setting i have to back to the front screen on the dlna menu.
 
My onkyo is one of the all-in-one boxes with 5.1 setup included. It's excellent for what i use it for.
So, not sure if it has some of the features that yours may have.
Cost me £300, very happy with it, but only every used it for watching vids etc, not really used it for playing back quality music.
 
Banzai_Joe said:
My onkyo is one of the all-in-one boxes with 5.1 setup included. It's excellent for what i use it for.
So, not sure if it has some of the features that yours may have.
Cost me £300, very happy with it, but only every used it for watching vids etc, not really used it for playing back quality music.
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to be honest with one of those all in ones i wouldnt bother with flac or wav. mp3 will be fine as those speakers will not show the benefits of uncompressed audio.
 
realBabelfish said:
what format does it rip to? a single mp3/wav file with a cue file or something?
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You can set it up as you wish. Either all tracks individually with/without cue sheet or as compressed/uncompressed or single track compressed/uncompressed with cue sheet. Compressed format is configurable (although some are more difficult than others to configure). There are guides out there to help you configure whatever you want.
 
arad85 said:
You can set it up as you wish. Either all tracks individually with/without cue sheet or as compressed/uncompressed or single track compressed/uncompressed with cue sheet. Compressed format is configurable (although some are more difficult than others to configure). There are guides out there to help you configure whatever you want.
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cheers mate, i will look into this.

i have stacks of old mix cds i made years ago when i was still djing and its kills the fun when you here 1 sec of silence between tracks.
 
realBabelfish said:
to be honest with one of those all in ones i wouldnt bother with flac or wav. mp3 will be fine as those speakers will not show the benefits of uncompressed audio.
Click to expand...

Like i said though, i've got some JPW speakers which sound fantastic on an old Kenwood amp. I could connect them and just use those for audio, as long as i can configure the AVR correctly.
 
I would guess that the gap is being added by your playback device/hifi, I have all my music on a NAS running twonky and I used to use ReadyDLNA and both cuased this to happen. After a bit of checking online I found it was the hifi but thankfully a firmware update sorted this. If there is no firmware fix then just rip the album as 1 long track, most ripping software such as dbpoweramp has an option for this.

Dave
 
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Right, since moving house 3 times, i can't find half of my CD's. I take it i can just use some software to join existing digital tracks together into one?
 
Most decent playback software will allow you to playback the album gapless. Personally I use and highly recommend iTunes. iTunes allows you to select an album and tag it as 'Gapless'. As the name suggests this will force iTunes to play the tracks sequentially without gaps, as if they were one physical track yet still keeps each track as a seperate music file (.M4A, MP3 etc)

If you're ripping your CDs may I suggest the following:
  1. Rip using EAC to WAV (Ensures 1:1 copies of tracks)
  2. Download iTunes 10.6 (latest) and under preferences TICK "Copy to iTunes when importing" and "keep iTunes folder organised." The latter ensures any changes you make within iTunes such as track details, album artwork etc are replicated in explorer and the actual files ID3 tags, not just the iTunes database file.
  3. Convert the WAVS to Apple Lossless, which is now an open source codec.
  4. Type the tags in manually from the CD booklet, this ensures accuracy. I find the metadata grabbed from databases can be a bit iffy, especially when it comes to composers etc.
  5. Grab artwork from Album Art Exchange. The built-in artwork grabber in iTunes is limited to 600x600 res where as this site can provide up to 1500x1500 from master rather than user scans. Example 1, Example 2

The above is how I do it. It's not quick, it's not to everyones taste but it ensures accuracy and saves hassle in the long-term. You'd be silly to rip straight to a lossy format, especially with how relatively cheap storage is. The beauty of iTunes 10.6 is it will automatically resample the lossless audio when syncing to any iPod, iPhone etc to either 128Kbit, 192kbit or 256kbit :).
 
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Thanks Meatball, good info, however that only covers playback via itunes....on a pc.
If i'm using my DLNA device (LG BD player) i guess i'll still suffer the gaps.
Would an iphone play the tracks gapless, like latest itunes i wonder?
 
Meatball said:
May I ask why? :).
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Because it tries to do everything and hides it all away under the hood. I also don't like/use iPods for the same reason (I use a Cowon D2 as a music player).

I'm much happier with a simple directory structure with properly tagged files (I tend to use single FLAC files with cue sheets for most things). Easier to point different playback sources at - I use a couple of xbmc based systems (main playback systems) and foobar on a PC - they just read the data in the files and handle everything seamlessly. Transferring to the Cowon is just a matter of copying files (I have mp3's of all albums separately, although it does play FLACs directly).
 
Meatball said:
May I ask why? :).
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Because thats what everyone on the internet says so it must be true! There was a time when it was pretty dire but recent releases have been pretty decent. The only reason I don't use it to manage my main database of music is that I have it all in WMA lossless as I use Windows 7 Media Centre around the house and it gets on better with WMA lossless than any other lossless format. I use iTunes to manage a copy database in MP3 320kbps which is used for mobile devices.

I Would definately echo your advice not to rip to a lossy format having done it myself and then been forced to re-rip it's a pain.
 
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