Burning a gapless album

fpunk wrote:
How can I burn a gapless album from an album with tracks.... I've tried using get info and making all tracks gapless, turing on and off crossfade, and setting the gap to none on the burning popup.

That is all the settings there are. Sounds like you have answered your own question.

As a general rule, iTunes burning is suitable for quick convenient burns directly from a playlist. It is not suitable for producing a high quality finished product.

When I am trying to make a "good" CD I use Audacity to get rid of the silence at beginning and end of each track. There are probably more automated utilities out there too.

For example opera downloads have tracks with silence at the end of each track for up to 10 seconds; even though, the burned cd should have no gaps whatsoever

There can be silence at the end/beginning of the tracks and it can still be gapless.

You can try setting the Start & Stop times on the tracks then burn a CD and set the time to 0 second between tracks.
Play the songs in iTunes then note the time you want to start and stop the track.

Right click - get info on a track and click the Options tab to set the Start/Stop times.

I am having a similar issue in that I have recorded a DJ set in Sound Studio, split the tracks by markers, and imported the tracks into iTunes. If I play the mix in iTunes, it plays seamlessly from one track to another, but when I burn the same seamless, gapless mix album to a CD, there are the slightest gaps, or jumps, between tracks. iTunes will not allow me to change the start and stop times of the tracks, but I think it's a larger issue. I didn't have this problem until I downloaded iTunes 9. I made perfectly good copies of some of the same mix albums in iTunes 8 that will now no longer burn properly. I have even handed out some of these as demos, which makes the whole issue personally embarrassing. I didn't bother to check them out as they had burnt fine before this whole debacle.

I thought it was perhaps something I did during the splitting of the tracks and transition to iTunes, but I've tried to burn copies of CD mixes from other artists, off of professionally recorded and published original CDs, with the same result.

My mixes are useless if there is even the slightest pause between track. Any continuous album is useless in this sense, and I don't see how this can be an issue that iTunes has not resolved by now. Does anybody have the same issues as a DJ? Can you recommend how I can import my split tracks into another program that will burn me a continuous mix CD that sounds proper? Any help would be appreciated.

iTunes will not allow me to change the start and stop times of the tracks

What happens?

but I think it's a larger issue

It may be connected.

OK, I don't know how it worked, because I don't think I tweaked the settings any differently than I had before, but I imported the tracks as Apple Lossless, turned on both the compilation and gapless settings, and here's what tripped me a little bit. Coming out of the info menu, iTunes processed something very quickly - I couldn't catch it, but after that, I was able to burn a truly gapless CD. So I think it may have come down to two things:

1.) The Apple Lossless file format.
2.) Splitting the tracks in Sound Studio without activating the Compilations checkbox, and then once the tracks were activated into iTunes, I then activated the Compilation checkbox for the entire album.

I can't say this is a fix or a solution, but it was a maddening process that ruined about 12 discs before I finally got everything right. Now I have to figure out what I have to do to get my other DJ mix albums to burn correctly as well.

Chris CA wrote:

iTunes will not allow me to change the start and stop times of the tracks

What happens?

I get a ping when exiting the info window and when I return, the change has not taken effect.

but I think it's a larger issue

It may be connected.

I found something that finally works me. Reference my post just previous to this one.

Part of compilation and Part of gapless album will have nothing to do with burning.
*Part of gapless album* tells iTunes to not cross fade songs if Shuffle is turned on, Cross Fade is turned on and two consecutive tracks from the same gapless album are played one after the other.
*Part of compilation* will put the album under Compilations.

Coming out of the info menu, iTunes processed something very quickly - I couldn't catch it,

Couple of things iTunes does when adding/importing...
Checks for album artwork (if enabled).
Checks to see if it's gapless.
Checks volume for Sound Check (if enabled).

I have the same problem. With the new version of I-Tunes, I am now getting a very noticeable stutter between songs which normally run seamlessly into the next. This was not happening with the prior version of I Tune. I posted this complaint March 11 without any response or solutions.

This thread confirms what I have said from Day One. iTunes - great for pop - lousy for classical music. Same can be said for iPods.