Audacity Putting Silence at Imported MP3?

[KRyan]

Hello Everyone! I'm new to Audacity, though not new to audio. It's an amazing program, actually. I'm learning all the ins-and-outs and I noticed something wonky this morning. I opened a drum loop (in MP3 format) that I created in another program. But I noticed that a small bit of silence had appeared at the beginning, which of course, will cause a problem with a file that is supposed to loop. I double-checked the source file in Adobe Audition, and there is clearly no silence at the beginning. Plus it loops properly.

Is this a function of the LAME encoder/decoder, do you think? The loop was created in Audition, which saves MP3s as "MP3Pro."

Thanks!

Ryan

[KRyan]

Well apparently I'm newer to audio than I though;). It seems that it was Audition sticking in the silence when saved as an MP3Pro. Saved as wavs and problem solved. Huh.

Ryan

[steve]

MP3's always have a short bit of silence at the beginning, which is why they are not very suitable for loops.
Audition supports CEL format, which is a variation of MP3 that does not have this drawback.
Audacity supports Ogg format which also does not have this limitation.
Also non-lossy formats such as WAV, AIFF or FLAC are fine as well.

[KRyan]

Thanks Steve!

I guess you are never too old to learn new things!! Sheesh. I work with cels a lot, but my intent was to help someone using Audacity start using loops. I didn't think .cels would work in Audacity. But oggs sure will. Excellent thing to know. Wow.

Cheers!

Ryan