Gapless Winamp output without the use of a plugin.

[Hiiragi Tsukasa]

I am a very big Pink Floyd fan. I pretty much listen to them everyday of the week.

They are also the only band that has more than 1 album that I love every song on.

The only problem is that most audio players have a small gap between songs, and when you're listening to Pink Floyd it can ger really annoying.

I tried many plugins but all of them didn't work too well and they didn't allow me to use my other DSP plugins.

I then started messing around with Winamp and found the trick to doing this without a plugin.

I only did this in Winamp 5 but it should work on just plain old 2.

Lets get on with the guide now.

1)Open Winamp and right click "Options>Prefrences" or just press ctrl+p

2)In the treeview on the side look for the group titled Plug-Ins. In that group there should be an Output selection. Click it.

3)You should now see a box in the area next to the treeview. In that box there should be things that say "Nullsoft Disk Writer plug-in" and "waveOut output". Look for one that says "Direct Sound output". Click it and then press the configure button at the bottom of the window.

4)A new window should've popped up. Look on the top of it and click the tab "Buffering". This is the final part. all you need to do is Adjust the Buffer-Ahead on Track change to a high number.

There are 3 slider bars that allow you to adjust the Buffer settings.

Buffer Length

This adjusts the length of the buffer. This also limits the Prebuffer and Buffer-ahead.

Example: If I had a Buffer Length of 2400 ms then my Prebuffer and Buffer-Ahead could only go from a range of 0 ms - 2400 ms.

Prebuffer on start/seek/underrun

This tell Winamp how much data to eat before it outputs sound. I don't really understand what that means, so I can't inform you on this.

The suggested amount for this is 500 ms - 1000 ms.

Buffer-Ahead on track change

This is what we want to change. This tells Winamp when to start reading the next song to get a gapless transition. For me, I just set it to 5000 ms (5 seconds) but that is a bit to high for some people. I'd say anywhere from 1000 ms to 5000 ms is a good range. If you have low memory, a slow computer, or and outdated one, then set it lower, but not to low, or else it'll still have gaps.

The way this works is like this.

Example: If I set the Buffer-Ahead to 5000 ms, then Winamp will start reading the next song where the current song had 5 seconds left until it ends. This make it so winamp can trnasition them smoothly.

After that is all done, click the apply button on the window and then close the propterites window. Try it out! open two songs and set it near the end. If it worked then there should be no gap.

Waluha!

[Dazza]

You know, I was wondering the same thing as you were and I too decided to fiddle around with those settings, because I have alot of Game soundtracks that loop. When I did it though I didnt think it was the best way to it though. Seems I was wrong.

Good stuff.

Oh, Ill also point out, It should be fairly obvious, but you cannot set the Buffer-Ahead any higher than the max amount winamp is allowed to buffer tracks. :D

[superkicky]

Winamp2 only goes to 2000ms! :(

EDIT: Wait no.. it depends on your other settings to! Intriguing.

[johngalt]

which is what Dazza said.

OK folks, let's get this right:

When you get to the buffering tab, Whatever the value for "Buffer length" is is going to be the *MAX* you can make the "Buffer-ahead on track change" setting. So, if you leave "Buffer length" at 2000 you can't set "Buff-ahead ..." to any higher than 2000.

That is what Kenta meant when writing

  "Kenta" said:

Buffer Length

This adjusts the length of the buffer. This also limits the Prebuffer and Buffer-ahead.

Example: If I had a Buffer Length of 2400 ms then my Prebuffer and Buffer-Ahead could only go from a range of 0 ms - 2400 ms.

HTH

[Enrickey]

Or you could just listen to your music with a Rio Karma :D

[johngalt]

Hmmmm - RIO Karma - =costs money = I have to spend money

WinAmp = free = I can listen to it through my 210 Watt Receiver in my AV system which I have my computer routed through and add effects, set EQ, etc.... - And I don't have to pay for it.

Guess which one *I* am going for.

[superkicky]

My bad, didn't read through the whole post. It still doesn't work in Winamp2, no matter what I set it to. :(

[semifamous]

What's funny is that you're still using a plugin.

It's just that they plugin you're using *comes* with Winamp. =)

What you mean to say is that you're not downloading *another* plugin.

Just about *everything* in Winamp is plugin based. Input plugins, output plugins, DSP plugins, visualization plugins...

If you didn't have any plugins, Winamp wouldn't do very much...

[Hiiragi Tsukasa]

Dazza: I daid it, but it wasn't in a very good position to read it from.

Superkicky: I could send you the updated Direct Sound output plugin to see if that works.

If you want it just PM me.

semifamous: Yes your right, but it's the way out language developed.

Think of it this way. If you had hot coffie and let it set on the counter for a few hours and then drank it, you'd say it's cold.

Then you do the same thing, but with an ice cold soda. When you go to drink it, you say it's warm, even though the soda and coffie are about the same tempature.

The same can be said with the included plugins and the 3rd Party plugins. But if we got technical, yes, they are just plugins.

[retri]

I still notice one "little" gap in live recordings, to fix it, choose "remove silence at the beginning / end of track" in "other" tab.....

Use this trick, plus Kenta Guide, and you will no hear gaps between songs.

Edited April 1, 2005 by retri

[subsonic005]

Thanks man! I've been looking at how to do this for ages!

[Joshua-San]

Good guide, thumbs up! :)

Another solution for gapless listening is ripping to OGG, as OGG doesn't have that little gap between songs. I use this all the time for my Pink Floyd cd's ^^

[brand]

Nice thanks!

[norm]

Good thread thanks. Just the info I needed.

[Breakthrough]

Thank yee!

[Garry]

Way to bump a four year old thread. :)

[Spartan Erik]

Anyone know how to do this for VLC?