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Any sound editor adds little gap on the beginning and on the end of sound loop when I convert it to mp3. Deleting gap is useless, after reload it’s still there…

Is there any way to solve this?

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    Welcome to the Audio-Video Production Stack Exchange site. Could you please provide us with more details regarding what you are trying to accomplish, which software you have tried, and which operating system you are running? The more complete your question, the better the answers you will receive. – Friend Of George Dec 14 '11 at 16:37
  • Thank you Friend of George. It's not a software/Os issue. Anyway i'm working now with SoundForge or Audacity in Windows 7. – Piluso Dec 14 '11 at 17:07
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    All the audio players and editors available on earth. – Piluso Dec 15 '11 at 14:26
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    sound.stackexchange.com/questions/8916/mp3-gapless-looping-help – georgi Feb 4 '14 at 2:11
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    And now this should be closed – Stavrosound Feb 4 '14 at 5:20
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There is no way to solve that, and it's because of MP3. This actually isn't the fault of your tools or your technique; this is because MP3 compression necessarily introduces gaps at the beginning of encoded recordings.

It's possible to avoid this problem with compressed audio in general, but you have to use another format:

(from the linked wikipedia article)

More recent compressed audio formats (such as Ogg Vorbis) have been designed to address this problem, and can therefore produce gapless audio if played back correctly.

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  • I know isn't my fault! And i know about all the available formats. I just want to know if it's possible with MP3. Thanks! – Piluso Dec 15 '11 at 14:32
  • That's precisely what I mean. You have to use a different format. This problem will always exist with MP3, because it's part of how it works. – Warrior Bob Dec 15 '11 at 17:17
  • So the answer to my question is... "no"? – Piluso Dec 15 '11 at 17:55
  • That is correct. Not possible. Can't be done. Built into how MP3 works. As @FriendOfGeorge says, the most you can do is fake your way around it with certain players. I've edited my answer to hopefully make it a bit clearer. – Warrior Bob Dec 15 '11 at 18:07
  • Just to be clear, this is possible, but not in a very native sense. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback – Brad Jan 14 '12 at 6:26
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No. There is no way to solve this problem on all players with the MP3 format or any other format for that matter. As @Warrior Bob has stated:

MP3 compression necessarily introduces gaps at the beginning of encoded recordings.

Even if you get the silence completely removed it still may have a gap between tracks depending on the player you are using.

To test this, I imported 2 mp3 songs into Reaper. On the original CD, the first song runs directly into the second. I removed the gap at the end of the first song and made sure there was no gap at the beginning of the second. I rendered both files to MP3 and re-imported. The gap was still gone. I played both files in succession using Media Monkey. There was no gap. I put the edited MP3s on my Sansa Fuze mp3 player and played them. There was a gap between songs of about half a second. This is a known issue with the Fuze and probably with many other players.

Even with correctly encoded MP3s, your playback is only as good as the player.

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  • +1 for pointing out that certain players can work around the issue (at least, for their own playback). – Warrior Bob Dec 15 '11 at 17:18
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Look what I found. It seems like it is possible with a couple of steps:

http://www.compuphase.com/mp3/mp3loops.htm

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Actually, as a developer of audio playback and editing software, i can tell you that this is definitely possible.

the only real limiting factor is the duration of the mp3 file you are wanting to loop.

when a piece of software chooses to play audio from an mp3 file (or any other file) there are several approaches that can be taken - you either send the audio to the sound card in it's compressed state (the easiest way), or you decompress it into PCM samples in RAM, and then send those samples to the sound card. when you send audio to a sound card in an uncompressed format, regardless of what operating system you are using, you have the option of specifying a sample to start and end a loop on.

so to answer your question - no I can not tell you what off the shelf packages can do this, as i have not investigated. however i do know that adobe audition (formally cool edit pro) by default reads mp3 files into ram and decompresses them before you even get a chance to play or edit these files, and yes, it can loop.

if you can be more specific about your requirements, (ie what o/s) and what exactly you want to do, i can research it more fully and let you know what software is available off the shelf to do this.

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You should be able to remove all silence in the file itself with Audacity or something like GapKiller - is it perhaps your playback application that is adding the gap? I know some do.

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  • Deleting gap is useless, after reload it’s still there… – Piluso Dec 15 '11 at 14:27
  • That's why I asked - is it your player? – Rory Alsop♦ Dec 15 '11 at 21:01
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    This answer is actually incorrect, see answer from @WarriorBob – JayP Dec 16 '11 at 11:06

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