I hate to go out and buy a $150 tape player

Then do what I do -- go to ebay. :-)

Right now there are nearly 500 cassette players of one variety or another on sale, here's one that closes in two and a half hours that would do what you want for less than $10.

tanstaafl.

ew, yuck, that's mono and doesn't have a line out...

ew, yuck, that's mono and doesn't have a line out...

Whatever...

I just grabbed the first auction I saw, didn't look carefully at it -- the point being that there are literally hundreds of cassette players for sale on ebay at trivial prices, and certainly some of them will meet the requirements.

But you knew that...

tanstaafl.

Is MusiCutter the best way to achieve gapless playback when listining to MP3's ripped from line-in ?

My process listed above does leave a very short 'blip' (0.1 sec maybe) in between tracks.

Is MusiCutter the best way to achieve gapless playback when listining to MP3's ripped from line-in ?

Please read the FAQ entries on this subject:

"This method isn't perfect, because MP3 frames are not fully independent of one another. If a file is split at a frame boundary, some of the data from the previous file is not carried over when the next file starts playing. This creates a tiny "blip" at the transition point between two songs. It's much less annoying than an actual gap of silence, though."

Also, when you say "listening to MP3's", do you mean on the car player or on your PC? If it's on your PC, your player software has to play the files without gaps. Most players will pause between songs as they cache the next tune. For instance, if using WinAmp, you need a gapless output plugin, linked from the FAQ because it goes with my GapKiller utility.

It is when listening to continuous MP3's on the player when I hear the blip.

In terms of continuous playback, would an MP3 post-process using gapkiller on split MP3's be a better solution than ripping to a large MP3 then splitting using Musicutter ?

I have been splitting large wav's using CD Wave editor - then encoding with lame. I am not sure if the wav splitting process itself intoduces a gap as part of its processing, in which case gapkiller would not solve the problem I guess.. ...

that was my first 'refer to faq' by the way, so please go easy on me ...

In terms of continuous playback, would an MP3 post-process using gapkiller on split MP3's be a better solution than ripping to a large MP3 then splitting using Musicutter ?

First, keep in mind that Gapkiller actually has both functions in it now: The hand-trimming feature is there, as well as the "split a large MP3" feature. So Musicutter isn't the specific issue, it's the method.

As I state in the FAQ, the hand-trimming with Gapkiller produces slightly better results than simply splitting a large MP3. However, it takes a lot of work to get it right, and you MUST configure WinAmp properly ahead of time (installing the referenced plug-in) to do the trial-and-error previewing.

I am not sure if the wav splitting process itself intoduces a gap as part of its processing,

Unlikely. The encoder is what's adding the gap. As I state in the FAQ, the encoder adds the silence to the MP3 files itself.

Ouch - another 2 refer to faq's !

Only kidding - thanks for the help.