Is there any trick to make gapless MP3s for hardware player? I want to avoid having just one big file... but when there is no other solution, is there any possibility to make kind of cue-sheet compatible with hardware (portable) players to see (and jump to) the tracks inside?
Unless you have a player that supports special gapless features like 1 big file + cue sheet (I don't know if this exists), 1 big file is the only possibility for real gapless playback.
You could try using mp3directcut to split 1 big file into several small ones; This will make the gaps at least smaller compared to seperately encoded tracks. If there are clicks (or similar) between the tracks you want to get rid of, you could use mp3directcut to apply (short) fadout + fadein.
tigre:
Thanx... that's exactly what I wanted to avoid... It seems the only "solution" is using Audio CDs in this case.
Well, I've just tried with a live recording:
I encoded two tracks to 1 mp3 file, split it with mp3directcut, decoded both resulting mp3s to wav and joined them with CEP. The resulting wav had a remaining gap of ~ 200 0 samples followed by ~ 200 fade-in like samples. This 1/100 sec. "sound degradation" results in a slightly noticable "tic" which is easy to notice if you know where it is. I'd say someone who don't know about the problem wouldn't notice it (in a typical "portable listening" situation) and if (s)he does, it's far from annoying (especially if it happens while the audience applauds). I think chosing the "cut points" properly (maybe someone else here can tell how to - I don't know) can result in even better results than my quick test.
So far so good - One (possible) problem remains: The portable players I know (old and/or cheap ones) introduce additional gaps between songs, so I hope you have a decent one.
Using mp3directcut creates files that have no header (and no tags). This makes player show wrong time information (if you use VBR). It can be corrected AFAIK (VBRfix ...) but it's possible that this makes the Gaps longer again on your portable player (IIRC VBR headers are some kind of "abused" frames).
the player definitely does make a difference. everybody loves iriver (http://www.iriver.com/product/info.asp?p_name=iFP-195TC), and for good reason. i have the ifp-180t, and with a full load of --alt-preset standard mp3's, the gap is very short. at least shorter than any of the other portables i've used before (rio, etronix).
for what it's worth
Okay... My problem persists, but thanx, anyway. Maybe using Audio CD would be the definitely best solution... but I just didn't want to have so much disks with me