Blanks in MP3s

2003-10-26 23:10:55

I've ripped and burned most of my CD's to MP3s.  When I play them in my new Alpine (car) MP3 player the sound is very good but on some songs I have blank spaces. The music just stops for a fraction of a second and resumes. No music is lost. Is there a way to eliminate these blank spaces? What causes them??

Blanks in MP3s

Reply #1 – 2003-10-26 23:30:00

(At least) 2 possibilities:

1. The radio has problems reading the discs, performs error correction and the decoder doesn't get enough data. Try different media and/or lower burning speed.

2. (More likely: ) Your car radio can't handle the mp3s correctly, e.g. it doesn't support 320kbps frames. Using the forum search you'll find more information about standalone/hardware players having troubles with some mp3s. [edit]Oops ... I just found a related thread by accident: Here.[/edit]

You can either return the radio as defective - mp3 standard allows 320kbps frames; if it can't handle them calling it an mp3-player is wrong - so you bought something that is not what it pretends to be. If you want/need to keep the radio you could try other encoding options. (What encoder/settings do you use BTW?)

If you use lame you could try --alt-preset cbr xxx (e.g. --alt-preset cbr 256); lower bitrate until no errors occur. (It could be something else than (maximum) bitrate of course. Or try --alt-preset xxx -B yyy, e.g. --alt-preset 192 -B 256 (yyy = max. bitrate).