Real gapless playback!1!!1!!
Along last! The iTunes feature I've been bitching about wanting for years is finally here!
The feature for which there are always several idiots who don't understand what true gapless playback is about, who must always chime in on threads about gapless playback to insist that using crossfade with a the time set to 0, or using "Join CD Tracks", is a solution.
Those aren't real solutions, you inevitable dumb bastards! But iTunes 7, and apparently the new iPods too, are the real thing!
The automated process which scans your library for gapless tracks when you first start up iTunes 7 didn't seem to do me much good, but I popped in my CD of "Dark Side of the Moon", ripped it without having to do "Join CD Tracks" as I'd done in the past, marked all of the tracks "Gapless Album"... et voilÃ*, perfect gapless play back!
Now I can have one track per track, instead of all of the composite tracks I've created in the past to avoid inter-track dropouts. For the most part, all I'll have to do is re-rip maybe two dozen of my CDs which need the gapless treatment. Apart from that, I've got 10 albums purchased electronically with no CD to rip from, that I made gapless by burning the music to CD, re-ripping joined tracks as AIFF, and manually fixing the inter-track gaps with an audio editor (Amadeus II). Those will be a bit more work to redo, but I'm going to be very happy to finally rid myself of the kludge of using joined tracks to avoid playback gaps.
And my new 80 GB iPod which supports gapless playback is already ordered and should soon be on its way!
w00t!
The feature for which there are always several idiots who don't understand what true gapless playback is about, who must always chime in on threads about gapless playback to insist that using crossfade with a the time set to 0, or using "Join CD Tracks", is a solution.
Those aren't real solutions, you inevitable dumb bastards! But iTunes 7, and apparently the new iPods too, are the real thing!
The automated process which scans your library for gapless tracks when you first start up iTunes 7 didn't seem to do me much good, but I popped in my CD of "Dark Side of the Moon", ripped it without having to do "Join CD Tracks" as I'd done in the past, marked all of the tracks "Gapless Album"... et voilÃ*, perfect gapless play back!
Now I can have one track per track, instead of all of the composite tracks I've created in the past to avoid inter-track dropouts. For the most part, all I'll have to do is re-rip maybe two dozen of my CDs which need the gapless treatment. Apart from that, I've got 10 albums purchased electronically with no CD to rip from, that I made gapless by burning the music to CD, re-ripping joined tracks as AIFF, and manually fixing the inter-track gaps with an audio editor (Amadeus II). Those will be a bit more work to redo, but I'm going to be very happy to finally rid myself of the kludge of using joined tracks to avoid playback gaps.
And my new 80 GB iPod which supports gapless playback is already ordered and should soon be on its way!
w00t!
Comments
Along last! The iTunes feature I've been bitching about wanting for years is finally here!
I'm really impressed by gapless playback. I was listening to a live Oasis album this morning was the only one I have enabled gapless playback on in my collection and it's so satisfying when the tracks just flow from one to the next as they are supposed to. Only problem is I've gotta go through my collection and work out which ones need gapless playback enabled. Still, this is a very professional touch. Cover flow is fancy shiny, but gapless playback is useful and really adds to the music you're listening to...
I'm really impressed by gapless playback. I was listening to a live Oasis album this morning was the only one I have enabled gapless playback on in my collection and it's so satisfying when the tracks just flow from one to the next as they are supposed to. Only problem is I've gotta go through my collection and work out which ones need gapless playback enabled. Still, this is a very professional touch. Cover flow is fancy shiny, but gapless playback is useful and really adds to the music you're listening to...
hhhhmmm.... I didn't have to check the gapless thing and "Tool - Lateralus" played back fine gapless and all?
I thought the idea it just played EVERYTHING without any gaps, regardless of whether the tracks are on the same album? So as it approaches the end of a partcular song, it caches the beginning of the next track in the playlist/shuffle and manages to play it back without any gaps?
Jan
Along last! The iTunes feature I've been bitching about wanting for years is finally here!
The feature for which there are always several idiots who don't understand what true gapless playback is about, who must always chime in on threads about gapless playback to insist that using crossfade with a the time set to 0, or using "Join CD Tracks", is a solution.
Those aren't real solutions, you inevitable dumb bastards! But iTunes 7, and apparently the new iPods too, are the real thing!
The automated process which scans your library for gapless tracks when you first start up iTunes 7 didn't seem to do me much good, but I popped in my CD of "Dark Side of the Moon", ripped it without having to do "Join CD Tracks" as I'd done in the past, marked all of the tracks "Gapless Album"... et voilÃ*, perfect gapless play back!
Now I can have one track per track, instead of all of the composite tracks I've created in the past to avoid inter-track dropouts. For the most part, all I'll have to do is re-rip maybe two dozen of my CDs which need the gapless treatment. Apart from that, I've got 10 albums purchased electronically with no CD to rip from, that I made gapless by burning the music to CD, re-ripping joined tracks as AIFF, and manually fixing the inter-track gaps with an audio editor (Amadeus II). Those will be a bit more work to redo, but I'm going to be very happy to finally rid myself of the kludge of using joined tracks to avoid playback gaps.
And my new 80 GB iPod which supports gapless playback is already ordered and should soon be on its way!
w00t!
You don't need to re-rip your CDs to get gapless playback.... someone correct me if I am wrong.
I guess you do need to re-rip them if you ripped them as one single file (with "Join CD Tracks" set) to begin with
Jan
You don't need to re-rip your CDs to get gapless playback.... someone correct me if I am wrong.
I experimented with just turning on the "Gapless Album" flag on a pair of consecutive tracks, ripped by an older version of iTunes. That didn't help -- there was still a small audible drop-out at the track change. I also tried that trick with older tracks purchased from iTMS, and no joy there either.
Only a freshly re-ripped CD, with no track joining this time around, gave me true gapless playback. But that's just what I expected -- anything which would have done the job without re-ripping would just be a trick, and probably a trick that didn't always work quite right.
I'm wondering now if iTMS has gaplessly-encoded tracks available, and if so, how long they've been encoding tracks that way (where needed), and if they'll re-encode any of their old catalog to take advantage of gapless encoding.
I guess you do need to re-rip them if you ripped them as one single file (with "Join CD Tracks" set) to begin with
It's not like I ripped every single one of my CD with joined tracks -- I only did that for albums where there was some cross-track play through, and even then I only selectively joined tracks which were linked to each other without a silent pause in between. I only have two albums where I ended up joining an entire CD down to one track. (Dark Side of the Moon, for example, ended up as two tracks before, corresponding to sides A and B of the original vinyl.)
scanning 18606 files is gona take ......
gapless playback is good but PLEASE give me the option to disable it !!
scanning 18606 files is gona take ......
I think if you just click the little... what was it, a black dot with an 'x' in the middle of it?... that scan will stop. You don't think you have to wait through the gapless scan the way you have to wait through the initial iTunes 7 re-building of your iTunes Library. I've got about 4500 songs and a Quad G5. 18606, especially if you've got an older Mac... yeah, that's going to take a bit of time!
I'm not even sure I can figure out what that scan is looking for, no do I see any easy way to figure out which albums get flagged by the scan. All I know is a few things I tried which should have been marked as gapless weren't, and manually marking them that way wasn't quite enough to get true gapless playback.
hhhhmmm.... I didn't have to check the gapless thing and "Tool - Lateralus" played back fine gapless and all?
I thought the idea it just played EVERYTHING without any gaps, regardless of whether the tracks are on the same album?
There are probably a few things going on affected by the "Gapless Album" flag, and I haven't experimented enough to know they all might be, so I'm going to have to engage in some guesswork...
For things like crossfade and "Sound Check", the gapless flag might tell iTunes not to do the crossfade between songs which connect to each other (if you have the crossfade feature turned on), and to not independently adjust the playback volume of tracks in a gapless album for Sound Check.
I thought the idea it just played EVERYTHING without any gaps, regardless of whether the tracks are on the same album? So as it approaches the end of a partcular song, it caches the beginning of the next track in the playlist/shuffle and manages to play it back without any gaps?
There's more to gapless playback than not adding gaps between songs.
Without a special effort at gapless encoding, lossy compressed files like AAC and MP3 files essentially have "ragged edges". Each song, all by itself, has tiny drop-outs or glitches, just a tiny fraction of a second at the beginning and end of the song, built right into the encoded form of the song. When a song starts in silence, and ends in silences, these glitches are simply hidden.
Stick two such song files together, one after the other, where there is no fade to silence between the songs, and it doesn't matter if you have everything all nicely cued up and cached ahead of time and ready to play without the slightest moment's delay, because there's still a good chance you'll hear the glitches built into the songs themselves.
Along last! The iTunes feature I've been bitching about wanting for years is finally here!
The feature for which there are always several idiots who don't understand what true gapless playback is about, who must always chime in on threads about gapless playback to insist that using crossfade with a the time set to 0, or using "Join CD Tracks", is a solution.
Those aren't real solutions, you inevitable dumb bastards! But iTunes 7, and apparently the new iPods too, are the real thing!
The automated process which scans your library for gapless tracks when you first start up iTunes 7 didn't seem to do me much good, but I popped in my CD of "Dark Side of the Moon", ripped it without having to do "Join CD Tracks" as I'd done in the past, marked all of the tracks "Gapless Album"... et voilÃ*, perfect gapless play back!
Now I can have one track per track, instead of all of the composite tracks I've created in the past to avoid inter-track dropouts. For the most part, all I'll have to do is re-rip maybe two dozen of my CDs which need the gapless treatment. Apart from that, I've got 10 albums purchased electronically with no CD to rip from, that I made gapless by burning the music to CD, re-ripping joined tracks as AIFF, and manually fixing the inter-track gaps with an audio editor (Amadeus II). Those will be a bit more work to redo, but I'm going to be very happy to finally rid myself of the kludge of using joined tracks to avoid playback gaps.
And my new 80 GB iPod which supports gapless playback is already ordered and should soon be on its way!
w00t!
Does this work for burned CD's - ie do burned CD's have the little glitch or do they play as on song - if so I don't need Toast anymore....
CD text is there in the burn menu by the way!!!
The gappy playback has been a gripe of mine from day 1, but can someone explain why it took so long to get right - and why it took new iPod hardware to implement it? Wouldn't a software/firmware update work for older models?
There are probably a few things going on affected by the "Gapless Album" flag, and I haven't experimented enough to know they all might be, so I'm going to have to engage in some guesswork...
For things like crossfade and "Sound Check", the gapless flag might tell iTunes not to do the crossfade between songs which connect to each other (if you have the crossfade feature turned on), and to not independently adjust the playback volume of tracks in a gapless album for Sound Check.
There's more to gapless playback than not adding gaps between songs.
Without a special effort at gapless encoding, lossy compressed files like AAC and MP3 files essentially have "ragged edges". Each song, all by itself, has tiny drop-outs or glitches, just a tiny fraction of a second at the beginning and end of the song, built right into the encoded form of the song. When a song starts in silence, and ends in silences, these glitches are simply hidden.
Stick two such song files together, one after the other, where there is no fade to silence between the songs, and it doesn't matter if you have everything all nicely cued up and cached ahead of time and ready to play without the slightest moment's delay, because there's still a good chance you'll hear the glitches built into the songs themselves.
That explains it pretty well actually
Jan
That explains it pretty well actually
I suppose it's possible that iTunes has been doing the needed gapless encoding for a while, but Apple simply chose not to make a big deal out of it until all of the support features were in place, including iPods which support gapless playback.
Then again, sometimes when I point out what I mean by a gap, I get a "What? That?" kind of reaction from some people. The gaps bother me and many other people a lot, but others consider what I'm calling a "gap" a fussy detail way below their level of concern. I'm not talking about a yawning chasm of silence or ear-splitting pop, just a little glitch with around the same duration and magnitude of effect as a mild scratch or a small speck of dust on an old vinyl LP.
Those gaps might as well be ear-splitting when you're using an iPod at a party connected to large speakers and playing a DJ mixed set. That 0.5 second silence is deafening!
Even 0.5 seconds is longer by far than the central problem created by a lack of gapless encoding. If everything else is done right -- no cross fade in effect, everything is properly cued up and cached and ready to go without delay -- the glitch caused by non-gapless encoding is only on the order of about 1/20 second or less.
It's still enough to be heard, however, and I'm much happier when there is absolutely no audible sign of track changes at all.
A couple of things I first tried at first showed gap problems, but I found out later that a lot of my iTMS purchases, and a few things I'd either ripped from CD or from lossless files (purchased from allofmp3.com) without joining tracks, played gaplessly just fine.
I still have to re-rip a handful of CDs (to undo the track joining I'd done before), but this is working out better than I thought. It could be that a lot of my iTMS isn't gapless, but that they are songs that don't need gapless encoding -- most start and end with silence. I've only got one problem album that needs to be burned to a CD, fixed up in an audio editor, and re-reripped (yeah, I know, with a small loss of sound quality) to get rid of the gaps.
iTunes now even burns gapless CDs.
Even though iTunes and the iPod didn't fully support it, it looks like gapless encoding might have been lurking inside iTunes (or, more rather, QuickTime) for a while, and that at least some stuff from iTMS has been gaplessly encoded for a while.
A couple of things I first tried at first showed gap problems, but I found out later that a lot of my iTMS purchases, and a few things I'd either ripped from CD or from lossless files (purchased from allofmp3.com) without joining tracks, played gaplessly just fine.
I still have to re-rip a handful of CDs (to undo the track joining I'd done before), but this is working out better than I thought. It could be that a lot of my iTMS isn't gapless, but that they are songs that don't need gapless encoding -- most start and end with silence. I've only got one problem album that needs to be burned to a CD, fixed up in an audio editor, and re-reripped (yeah, I know, with a small loss of sound quality) to get rid of the gaps.
iTunes now even burns gapless CDs.
cool
Jan
cool
I had managed to do that in iTunes 6, and even 5, with stuff ripped as AIFF. I can't remember the last time I tried burning a CD of AAC files that needed gapless treatment -- I don't burn CDs all that often anyway -- so I suppose that I might just have missed that improvement being introduced.
One experiment I have yet to do is to see if iTunes encodes and/or decodes MP3 gaplessly like it does with AAC now -- not that I use MP3 much, I'd just be curious.