Talk:Gapless playback

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[edit] Lacks clarity

So basically gapless playback allows one track on an album immediately to follow the next? The article doesn't say these exactly. There seem to be about two sentences directly describing gapless playback and many, many more circling around the topic. If someone who knows more about this could add a section toward the top specifically describing gapless playback, that would be much appreciated.

Theshibboleth 08:46, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

Err doesn't the very first line say that clear enough "Gapless playback is the seamless playback of digital audio formats. It allows live music or consecutive tracks to be heard exactly as they are mastered, without gaps between tracks" --C Hawke 08:59, 13 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Biased

How are iTunes 7 and Windows Media not "Optimal Solutions" when they are easily the most widely used gapless solutions out there?


-- also why does iTunes 7 have 'basic' gapless support? It works perfectly, what else do you want?

I just installed iTunes 7 - the gaps might be smaller (it's hard to be sure), but it's not perfectly gapless, by any means. Unless I've done something wrong (I've turned off crossfading which , according to iTunes help, means gapless playback will be globally applied), Apple still have some work to do before they can claim truly gapless playback. David 02:33, 16 September 2006 (UTC) PS Mine is an early Nano, so that may be the reason it's not perfectly seamless.
  • iTunes 7 does gapless playback perfectly for me, with iTunes-encoded MP3s and AAC files. No gaps, not even itty bitty tiny ones. Perfectly seamless. -- Moondigger 05:03, 2 November 2006 (UTC)


I was just about to ask the same thing. I've used Winamp for years and it's my favorite, but that's my opinion. This here is someone else's opinion. Can we get some info on what makes these non-optimal, aside from brand recognition?--Deusexaethera 02:41, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

I don't know exactly how Winamp's gapless playback works, but it's not truly gapless because it can fail if you don't tweak the output plugin's buffering settings. Also, the seekbar can act weirdly at track boundaries as a side effect. --Kjoonlee 16:57, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Dispute over iPod gapless?

Is there a reference for the claim that's just been inserted, that there is dispute as to whether iPods with the latest firmware can play gaplessly? All I know for sure is that they managed to vastly shorten the gaps on 1st gen Nanos, but not remove them completely. I understood that all iPods after that were now gapless-capable.

There's a link to a petition, but it probably dates from before the firmware updates. David 10:35, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

I have confirmed both with multiple users on the ilounge forums and with my own iPod that the gapless playback feature works seamlessly with: iTunes-encoded MP3s (even those encoded with old versions of iTunes); iTunes-encoded AACs (even those encoded with old versions of iTunes); iTunes music store AAC files; most MP3s encoded with other tools. Based on complaints registered in various forums, many of those complaining that gapless playback doesn't work seamlessly on their iPods don't understand that most of their music was never meant to play back gaplessly and wasn't recorded that way in the first place, or have music files that were encoded with "unknown" encoders. -- Moondigger 19:57, 30 May 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Worse than gaps

You need to get the music all matched up (tempo near an integer factor, pitches not clashing, etc.) to make this nice. When that is unreasonable, it's better to leave a gap. The player's "random" shuffle could try to make this easy by having a mild preference for songs that match up well. A bit of pitch/tempo bending may be needed. See also: Beatmatching, Beatmixing, Harmonic mixing. 24.110.144.116 19:55, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

That isn't very relevant. Gapless playback isn't about crossfading of unrelated tracks; it's just the preservation of timing. --Kjoonlee 20:09, 15 July 2007 (UTC)
Links moved to Fade (audio engineering). --Kjoonlee 20:30, 15 July 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gapless and glitch-free

"It should be noted, however, that while using metadata will ensure that the right amount of samples are played, it does not preclude the encoder from encoding the end of (or the beginning of) a track as just that, which can lead to glitches in the transition. Currently the only available solution to this problem is to rip the album in question as an image plus cue sheet, encode the album to the desired format as a single file, then split the resulting file into individual tracks with the aid of the cue sheet. Although this solution is the best available as it avoids both pops and glitches, the process can be tedious and player support for it is relatively low."
Here's some more information, including a test, for the case of mp3.