My Mp3s have skips or pauses

I am not exactly new to reaper, but I have just started trying to render to mp3. I have a new Windows 7 and have downloaded the 64bit reaper and the lame_enc. I have recorded a new 4 track piece and am trying to render to an mp3. I can't seem to find any render settings that won't produce skips or pauses in the render. Can anyone explain to me whats going on? Thanks, brad ps I have rendered same project to CD with no problems.

I had the best luck using the encoder from; In Win 7 64 Home Premium. D

Thanks for the suggestion, that version of Lame is certainly an improvement over what I tried so far, but now instead of skips and pauses it's more like pops and crackles. Anything else I can try? brad

what plugins are you using? lots of weird synthedit things in there? (or hardware inserts?)

Just a mic into the mic jack, no plugins no fx, just plain tacks rendered to mp3. Here is a weird development I rendered the track as mp3 directly onto my blackberry by USB instead of my computer's media library and it played fine, no crackle no pops. So maybe my real problem is not rendering but the way Media Player on my computer reads the mp3.

hmm... what sample rate are you using? what happens if you drag the crackly rendered mp3 into a new reaper session? does it play okay?

I tried several settings. At lower sample rates the crackles are more like momentary pauses, the last render I did, I set everything to highest quality(set at 19200 but it actually rendered at 96000). I rendered this as mp3 directly to my blackberry and another mp3 player-no problems. The computer will play these files from the devices but it crackles. I dropped the file back into reaper, reaper played it nicely. I then rendered the d&d'ed file as mp3(highest quality settings). Same crackly results in Windows Media Player. I then rendered the original project again as mp3 at 8000 samples, pauses in Windows Media Player and terrible sound but no pauses or crackles on mp3 player. The same file that crackles on my player player fine on another computer so I'm feeling the problem is my windows media player not reaper or lame.

I am trying to follow what you are saying. This whole project(4 track) WAS recorded at 44.1kHz 24bit. I didn't change that at any point. But none of the rendering settings allow my windows media player to play it cleanly as a mp3. The same file does play cleanly on two other computers and a blackberry and an mp3 player. So I'm gonna see whats up with my media player, thanks for all the help though.

what happens if you set your render settings to this: