I've been saving mps with Variable Bit Rate, using the default minimum/maximum bit rates of 32 and 320. If I understand what I've read around the net about bit rate and track length, mp3 files don't contain any data point that defines the playing time, which is calculated by each application accessing the file as file size divided by bit rate. Windows Explorer displays file size, bit rate and track length, but the track length is wrong, because it is file size divided by the displayed bit rate, which is NOT the average bit rate of the file. The real problem arises when I reopen such a file in WavePad, which performs the same calculation and displays the file's waveform in an editing pane based on that calculation which is therefore either too long (in minutes and seconds), extending beyond the end of the audio in silence, or too short, cutting the audio off before it's finished.
Why is WavePad apparently ignoring the variability of the bit rate, assuming a single bit rate for the whole file, and incorrectly sizing the time scale of the editing pane as a result?
