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Topic: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks (Read 863 times) previous topic - next topic
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Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Hi!
I've got two files (lossless rip from a CD), of two consecutive tracks. They should be mastered gapless, but when I open the flac files via Audition and paste the second to the end of the first one, I see that this weird silence added to the start of the second track (see screenshot). It's small, around 60 samples, but it's there. It's not noticeable on hearing.

Is it something that Audition does to files when it opens / views them? Or that's how the files actually are?

I have another rip of this CD but in one image, and it doesn't have such a gap in the place - so the CD was mastered correctly.
I tried to decode flac files of separate tracks with flac v1.3.1 to wav and then sewed them into one file with sox, but the resulting file still had the same tiny gap.

I don't care that I don't hear the gap, I'm just confused. Isn't all this should be lossless? Are all qobuz pretentious "48KHz-96bit" releases not lossless and all have that tiny gap between tracks due to nature of flac?
Sorry for my English =)

Re: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Reply #1
FLAC, or any other lossless codec for that matter, doesn't introduce such gaps (a little off topic but WMA Lossless has had plenty of decoding bug cases where this could happen). What comes out of a lossless format is bit-for-bit identical to what went in - no gaps will be created.

I can think of two explanations for your issue. First and more serious problem might have happened during ripping. Exact Audio Copy used to have an encoder offset setting that would mutilate the files by shifting the samples in them. If you used that the files are broken.
Second possibility is that you have enabled an option to modify the data when doing edits in Audition. I have Adobe Audition 5.0.2 and there are settings at 'Preferences' -> 'Data' to smooth edit boundaries. If you enable those the program will crossfade the paste boundaries, which will cause issues like this.

Re: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Reply #2
You were right!

I am using Audition v13.0.13.46, I went to Preferences -> Data and unchecked both options:
- Smooth delete/cut boundaries with crossfades of 2 ms
- Smooth all edit boundaries by crossfading 5 ms

Also, I ramped up that Sample Rate Conversion Quality slider to 100%. Whatever that means.

And it stopped doing those weird damages to tracks! See the screenshot.

Thank you! I hope this thread will be helpful to people.

If anyone knows what those three options are for in Audition exactly – will appreciate the explanation. Who would ever need to damage their files?

PS: Also, there is a great chance that qobuz “48KHz-24bit” release of Linkin Park Meteora 20th Anniversary has these damaging smoothing effects on their “lossless” files. Anyone owing that can check it.
Sorry for my English =)

Re: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Reply #3
Basically this is about frames.
Codecs with a fixed frame (MP3) are not able to do gapless playback by design simply because the last frame will always contain som white.
Codecs withe a variable frame length are able to play gapless simply because the last frame id always filled completely with audio.
FLAC is one of the many supporting variable frame length.
Looks like your problem is not FLAC related.
TheWellTemperedComputer.com

Re: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Reply #4
Thank you for clarification!

I knew about mp3 files not having the ability to store data gapless. I just didn't know that some software could damage lossless files upon editing and saving.

I am now more interested in percentage of lossless releases put out by labels in online music stores that have this kind of damage in them.
Sorry for my English =)

Re: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Reply #5
It's likely an artifact of how Audition handles file concatenation. The original lossless files should be gapless. You can try using a different audio editor or a dedicated gapless playback software to confirm the integrity of the files.

Re: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Reply #6
After I removed from Audition settings the smoothing options, I checked other releases and they have normal concatenation. It's only new Meteora that I know of has this pause between tracks. I don't think that it's some special Audition handling for these files only.

>dedicated gapless playback software
to check by simply listening? I don't think such a tiny gap is noticeable by human ear
Sorry for my English =)

 

Re: Weird silence shown in Audition between two gapless FLAC tracks

Reply #7
It seems that the pause issue in the new Meteora release might not be due to Audition settings, as other releases with normal concatenation don't exhibit the same problem. Consider trying dedicated gapless playback software to verify, although such a small gap may be imperceptible to the human ear.