Problems with MP3 albums?

[AndroidOnTheRun]

Okay, first of all, if this has been addressed elsewhere already, I apologize. I searched the forum lots and found nothing. Second, please forgive my buying albums in MP3 format -- I don't particularly love live albums, so I thought I'd save some cash but still find out what's going on with Rush's live stuff.

 

The issue:

 

My Amazon MP3 copies of Different Stages and Rush in Rio are not right, and as far as I can tell, any commercially available downloads of these have the same issues.

• Different Stages has a weird "skip" between Presentation and Oracle that I can't fix completely even with some Audacity magic. Downloaded these two from iTunes as well and found the same problem. (Amazon could not resolve this issue, but did give me a refund.)
• RiR has goofy volume "jumps" at a lot of the track transitions... is this a problem of the CD as well, or am I imagining things? Again, the iTunes version had the same problem as Amazon.
• There's an odd "skip" at the beginning of Dreamline on RiR as well, also present in both Amazon and iTunes versions.

Anyone else experience these issues / have any solutions?

[CantStopThinkingBig]

QUOTE (AndroidOnTheRun @ Jun 19 2012, 01:12 AM)

Okay, first of all, if this has been addressed elsewhere already, I apologize. I searched the forum lots and found nothing. Second, please forgive my buying albums in MP3 format -- I don't particularly love live albums, so I thought I'd save some cash but still find out what's going on with Rush's live stuff. The issue: My Amazon MP3 copies of Different Stages and Rush in Rio are not right, and as far as I can tell, any commercially available downloads of these have the same issues. Different Stages has a weird "skip" between Presentation and Oracle that I can't fix completely even with some Audacity magic. Downloaded these two from iTunes as well and found the same problem. (Amazon could not resolve this issue, but did give me a refund.) RiR has goofy volume "jumps" at a lot of the track transitions... is this a problem of the CD as well, or am I imagining things? Again, the iTunes version had the same problem as Amazon. There's an odd "skip" at the beginning of Dreamline on RiR as well, also present in both Amazon and iTunes versions. Anyone else experience these issues / have any solutions?

that's the problem with live CDs... there's no "gap" between the tracks, so the skip is always noticeable when you listen on MP3. I always hated how the split 2112 up into different tracks on DS. My fix was to use iTunes to rip the song from the CD, and there's an option where you can combine tracks... so I just combined all of them into one song. Now I have all of 2112 live on my iPod, intact and without skips.

[AndroidOnTheRun]

QUOTE (CantStopThinkingBig @ Jun 20 2012, 09:08 PM)

QUOTE (AndroidOnTheRun @ Jun 19 2012, 01:12 AM) Okay, first of all, if this has been addressed elsewhere already, I apologize.  I searched the forum lots and found nothing.  Second, please forgive my buying albums in MP3 format -- I don't particularly love live albums, so I thought I'd save some cash but still find out what's going on with Rush's live stuff. The issue: My Amazon MP3 copies of Different Stages and Rush in Rio are not right, and as far as I can tell, any commercially available downloads of these have the same issues. Different Stages has a weird "skip" between Presentation and Oracle that I can't fix completely even with some Audacity magic. Downloaded these two from iTunes as well and found the same problem.  (Amazon could not resolve this issue, but did give me a refund.) RiR has goofy volume "jumps" at a lot of the track transitions... is this a problem of the CD as well, or am I imagining things?  Again, the iTunes version had the same problem as Amazon. There's an odd "skip" at the beginning of Dreamline on RiR as well, also present in both Amazon and iTunes versions. Anyone else experience these issues / have any solutions? that's the problem with live CDs... there's no "gap" between the tracks, so the skip is always noticeable when you listen on MP3. I always hated how the split 2112 up into different tracks on DS. My fix was to use iTunes to rip the song from the CD, and there's an option where you can combine tracks... so I just combined all of them into one song. Now I have all of 2112 live on my iPod, intact and without skips. That's not the issue, though; I've never had a problem with the normal "gaps" because of iTunes gapless playback. If I had the CD, this wouldn't be a problem at all.   I bought the MP3s online, rather than the CD, and DS has gaps that don't line up properly even when you cut the excess dead air in Audacity. RiR has even worse issues because the volume level jumps awkwardly at the start of each track.   Luckily, I was able to borrow the CDs from my dad when I was staying with my fam for my cousin's wedding this weekend, so I just ripped them and there's no issue.   I still think it's odd that Amazon and iTunes have these "bad" tracks for sale and no one on their end seems to know what to do about it.