How to Fix Time Gaps in WAVs Exported to MP3s

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

Hello.

I have ripped a CD into WAV files and then imported all the tracks into Audacity. I then used the “export multiple” option to export all of them into separate mp3 files.

Some of these tracks transition into each other, and therefore have no gaps of silence between the end of the one track and beginning of another track, so that they may transition seamlessly.

My problem is that the exported tracks do have small gaps of silence (like, 0.05 seconds of silence). This causes an audible, yet brief, “skip” sound between the two tracks when played one after another. Plus, if I want to edit them together, I have to manually clip out these gaps of silence so that I can’t hear the skip, rather than simply place one track after another and call it a day.

Is there a way to fix this problem, so that WAV files exported into mp3 files through Audacity don’t have small gaps of silence at the beginning and ends of each track when they shouldn’t? And if not, is there a better way of converting WAV files into mp3 files that you can suggest?


I am using Audacity version 2.2.1, LAME version 3.99.1, and Windows 8.1.
Thank you for your time.

2

Is there a way to fix this problem, so that WAV files exported into mp3 files through Audacity don’t have small gaps of silence at the beginning and ends of each track when they shouldn’t?

No… It’s a characteristic of MP3. See the [u]LAME FAQ[/u].

Some player software can “work around” it. Google “MP3 gapless”.

Or try AAC instead. (I believe you’ll have to install the optional FFmpeg Import/Export Library if you haven’t done so already.) Just about anything that can play MP3 can play AAC and from what I understand AAC handles gaps better, but I have not tested it.

3

Dang. What a bummer.

My phone doesn’t play AAC files (which is garbage, but I’m not buying a new one), so I’ll work around it some way. Thanks for the response.

4

I would like to report that converting them to AAC files hasn’t fixed the problem. The gaps are roughly the same length.

Also, I installed the FFmpeg stuff, and the AAC files I have created sound much worse in quality compared to the WAV files. As in, I can’t really hear any difference between my MP3 files and WAV files, but I can hear a massive difference between these AAC files and the original WAV files.