Downloaded FLAC with silence at beginning?

2014-12-08 19:26:40

I downloaded an album today in FLAC and wanted to see if the file was truly lossless or if it was transcoded. When I made a spectrograph of one of the tracks, it appears to be lossless. However, each track in the album contains a slight silence at the beginning of each track--ranging from 0.5-0.8 seconds. I know that mp3s contain silences like these. This is making me suspect that it may be a transcode, but the spectrograph disagrees. Here is a copy of the spectrograph. Any thoughts?

Downloaded FLAC with silence at beginning?

Reply #1 – 2014-12-08 19:45:46

Silence in the beginning of songs is not uncommon. If the songs are meant to play gapless there may be a problem. Something like a single file treated by the CUEsplitter of death.

Downloaded FLAC with silence at beginning?

Reply #2 – 2014-12-09 00:53:59

Assuming this was ripped from CD... CDs are almost always mastered with the track boundary slightly before the actual start of the audio, partly because CD players aren't guaranteed to seek with perfect precision. The alignment of the audio relative to the track boundary can also vary slightly from pressing to pressing as a result of how the glass master discs were prepared. This is why AccurateRip reports sometimes mention matching checksums exist at a non-zero offset. Nothing to worry about.

Downloaded FLAC with silence at beginning?

Reply #3 – 2014-12-09 22:05:51

So this is normal behavior? Excellent. Thank you all for your help.