[Tfug] CD Ripping

[Bexley Hall]

Hi,

I carry a rescued MP3 player around on my daily (nightly?)
walks -- since walking is *so* boring!  :<

In general, I don't update the music on it very often.
It's just more hassle than its worth and whatever is
there is usually "good enough" to serve as a distraction.

Recently, I *did* start changing the music.  And, noticed
something that, had I thought about it ahead of time, I
should have been wary of!

The ripping software treats each "cut" on the CD as a
separate "song".  I suspect the player deliberately inserts
some fixed amount of dead space *between* songs during
playback -- even if the songs were originally temporally 
contiguous.

Note that vinyl, tape and even CD's are able to play their
entire contents *without* gaps between songs.  I suppose
the MP3 player *could* have been designed to NOT insert
this gap (though how it would "separate" songs by different
artists would be an issue).

While this is mildly annoying on my walks, it would be
*crippling* if all ripping/playback software had a similar
problem!  I surely don't want to start digitizing my music
collection only to find all my live recordings, etc.
"broken up" into an arbitrary set of disjointed "cuts"!

<frown>

So, is this *just* an implementation issue that I am facing?
Is it more likely in the *player* or *ripper*?  How do other
tools/utilities deal with slicing "sides" of albums into
discrete "cuts"?