How can I have gapless music playback in Winamp?
I have seen a few solutions to gapless playback in Winamp, including a plugin by “Crudsoft” that uses the lesser WaveOut output plugin, but Winamp itself has perfect support for gapless playback using the DirectSound plugin. You just have to realise how. Set Winamp to use the (already superior) DirectSound output plugin, and then set these DirectSound options: • Buffering: Buffer-ahead on track change (pick a value that seems reasonable) • Other: Remove silence at the beginning / end of track (the -40.0 dB default is good) The mistake I made was to assume that the first setting is all you need, but it doesn’t quite work for MP3: it still introduces a slight amount of silence between tracks that is enough to be irritating. The reason being – I read recently – is that due to the lossy compression in the audio, there is a small amount of silence and then a small amount of error at the beginning of the file, and then the reverse at the end. There is a small amount of cross-fade performed a
