Subject:Extra space at the begining and end of mp3 track

Posted by: pawelj

Date:2/23/2009 2:09:31 PM

When converting WAV to MP3, an extra silence is added to the begining and the end of the track. Is there a solution to this problem? It's in the SF6.0 andn still seems to be in 9.0. I can't believe it's been allowed to exist for so long.

Subject:RE: Extra space at the begining and end of mp3 track

Reply by: jumbuk

Date:2/23/2009 3:22:36 PM

We haven't had this question raised for a while!

The answer is: mp3 format requires the silence - it is not something that can be changed by SF.

If you are recording loops, use wav format, not mp3.

Now, why doesn't someone ask how to remove vocals from a track?

Subject:RE: Extra space at the begining and end of mp3 track

Reply by: Dave_B

Date:2/23/2009 4:51:04 PM

As a complete beginner, please forgive my ignorance, but I thought I had already been doing this. Since the original silence varies, I like to trim both ends of audio files (among other edits) before using in Vegas or on a CD so I know exactly how much silence is already there (none). It really seems to work even with MP3 so I'm sure I just didn't understand the question, but you got me curious.

Regarding the removal of vocals, as an old assembly programmer, I'm planning to make a million dollars creating an algorithm and program to automatically balance perceived volumes across multiple audio files. (Normalizing doesn't quite get it and I don't know enough to understand Wave Hammer). So I'll just add the vocal thing to my program and make 2 million :-)

Dave

Subject:RE: Extra space at the begining and end of mp

Reply by: rraud

Date:2/24/2009 10:43:04 AM

Someone beat you to it Dave, the Levelizer.. and it's free... there goes at least $1M of your anticipated income.Sorry

Regarding the silence of MP3s. When SF or Vegas opens an MP3, it converts it to the wave format, of course it still has the quality (or lack of ) of the original MP3. so one COULD trim it and burn a CD (DAO mode) in Vegas or CD-Arc without the silence space. However, If it is saved again as an MP3, it would be re-compressed (more data/quailty loss) and the inherent MP3 head/tail silence would return..
Sorry about the $1M....

Subject:RE: Extra space at the begining and end of mp

Reply by: musicvid10

Date:2/24/2009 12:43:14 PM

I recall a thread a while back where someone had found a command-line utility that would actually remove the opening gap on .mp3 files. A search should find it.

That being said, unless someone is trying to loop .mp3's, and I don't know why anyone would want to do that, I don't see why it would be worth the bother . . .

Subject:RE: Extra space at the begining and end of mp

Reply by: pawelj

Date:3/2/2009 12:05:03 PM

After posting I did find the answer, which of course is the mp3 encoding which involves splitting the original wave into 30 ms sectors. Apparently there needs to be an odd or even number of sectors (can't remember which) so when the original track is superimposed on the number of sectors you might end up of almost 30 ms of silence at the begining and the end of the track. Now, I don't know why they did not put all the silence at the end of the track, which would solve my problem.
Now the reason I would like to have no silence is because I want to trim the track to a cue point for my Pacemaker. An extra 30ms may not be much but it is enough to need a little nudge forward, something I was trying to avoid.

Thanks