Stacking multiple media players to play multiple tracks for the same song (stems), the sync between them is not precise. It looks like the real time conversion of MP3s creates timing issues.
Right now, I prefer to convert or export all separate tracks as .wav to have them perfectly synced.
Is there a way to fix this issue?
Brad is probably the one to give a definitive reply…
…but I’ll just say that I’ve had sync problems with MP3 files in the past, probably (at least my assumption) due to all the data compression/expansion chicanery that’s going on behind the scenes. I now never use MP3 for backing tracks. In fact I use 24-bit WAV files. Never had a problem since.
TBH I rarely use MP3 files nowadays - maybe just for rough mixes for clients who expect them. Their day is over AFAIAC. Storage is cheap and streaming speeds are no problem for audio files. If I want data compression I use FLAC, which allows for re-expansion back to full-quality WAV, if ever required - something that MP3 cannot offer.
Media player drift is always a risk when having multiple separate media players.
When I need files in full sync, I tend to use multichannel .wav files in one media player. Cantabile’s media player supports multichannel WAV, and you can configure multiple output ports for a media player and then route the channels to these different output ports. That allows separate post-processing and mixing.
So best combine your stems to a multichannel WAV file; this will normally ensure best synchronicity.
I haven’t tried multi-channel FLAC yet - could also be an interesting option storage-wise.