I'd like to see some effective buffering put into place so that ripped CDs with music that spans tracks don't have a bump in the sound as the tracks are switching. It's a small point, but annoying none the less.
This is called "gapless playback", and this is my big request for iTunes too.
This has to be said before some idiot who thinks he's giving clever advice chimes in: The issue of gapless playback IS NOT SOLVED BY USING CROSSFADE SET TO ZERO.
The problem isn't chiefly due to a lack of buffering, but to the way MP3 and AAC tracks are encoded. There are short lead-in and lead-out silences encoded into each separate track, which for technical reasons aid in the encoding process at the boundaries of audio data. Although these silences are very short ? just a few milliseconds ? they are audible in the context of an interruption of what should be continuous audio.
Even without these silences, it's important to remember that perceptually compressed audio does not provide an exact representation of the original audio data from which it is derived, and also that something which sounds just like the original waveform to the human ear might be very different in waveform shape. Changes in the waveform shape can lead to a mismatched "seam" when one track plays straight into another track, and that mismatch can be audible.
The best solution is to improve the encoding process. Standard MP3 or AAC data can be supplemented with a small amount of data that will aid compatible decoders in producing gapless playback, data that tell the decoder how to create a smooth inter-track seam. This extra data can be added in such a way that it would simply be ignored by older decoders, keeping the music compatible even when the user won't get the gapless playback benefit.
The drawback here is that you have to re-encode music that you've already encoded once before in order to fix it. Apple would have to re-encode albums on iTMS like Dark Side of the Moon so that customers could buy seamless copies that don't have bumps between tracks. This wouldn't help people who had already purchased the album through iTMS.
So in addition to fixing the encoding, you'd also need some software trick that does the best job it can at detecting and eliminating the short lead-in and lead-in silences from older MP3 and AAC files, and then applies the right kind of filtering to make sure there's a smooth-sounding seam between tracks when those tracks are supposed to play into each other with continuous audio.
This is the only reason I still use Nero for burning CDs on my PC. My car CD player supports it and I do not like seeing "Track 1" when I could see the actual track name.
- Control over output filenames (not just Track# TrackName).
I have to go in and paste (" - ArtistName - ") in every single file I rip or encode through iTunes. Very irritating.
That's all I can think of right now. Damn... what a great piece of software.
I second gapless playback. Gaps are especially annoying for people with largely classical music collections (like me). Foobar2000 and Winamp (I think) on Windows have the ability to read CUE sheets, where you rip an entire CD into a single track and the playback software would read track information from a separate cue sheet, thereby allowing you to seek/search between tracks as if they were separate files. No, the "Join tracks" feature is not good enough. Moving around the slider to find the next track just sucks.
I'd also like more flexibility in the iTunes Browser, i.e. the Genre/Artist/Album panes. For example, for someone with mostly classical music might prefer to have "Composer" instead of "Artist" as the middle pane.
I'd like to see some effective buffering put into place so that ripped CDs with music that spans tracks don't have a bump in the sound as the tracks are switching. It's a small point, but annoying none the less.
Gapless playback just came up in another thread... seems more and more people are catching onto this problem.
Here's Apple's iTunes feedback page. I've already written to them already. Let's get a few more people jumping in on this so that Apple knows that the demand for gapless playback is out there.
I don't know the technical details in enough detail to do more than pull speculation out of thin air, but part of me wonders whether there's some technical problem (with Quicktime? the container formats?) that keeps Apple from figuring out where a song really ends and where the next one really begins, and starting to play the next song so that its padding overlaps the last song, and the last song's padding overlaps the next song.
That seems like the most straightforward solution, but it's obvious enough that I feel like I have to be missing some technical hurdle.
That seems like the most straightforward solution, but it's obvious enough that I feel like I have to be missing some technical hurdle.
It's really best to have a two-ended solution, where the encoding tells the decoder exactly what it needs to know to do gapless playback, rather than relying on a playback-only solution that where the decoder has to try to figure out things like "How quiet is silence?", "How long of a silence should be treated as real, must-keep silence, rather than a removable silence?", "If I take out this gap, will I create a clicking sound, and if so, how do I surpress it?".
M$ merged everything into media 9 and well use windows media 9 and try to do the same things you do in itunes/itms in media player, you can but there are at least 3 extra and needless steps, and the drm. dear god the drm...
If you removed all the bloated stuff, and gave it an Apple GUI feel, then it would probably work..
A few years ago when mp3 was starting to take off all of our uni parties went digital. We had some big collections of music floating around purely for the purpose of doing parties.
A couple of years ago ( last time I dropped in on the scene ) all of those people were moving their music collections from mp3 to mpeg. They were digitising all of the music videos they could get ( at the time off of video ). Thanks to the cost of storage and the availability of cheap video projectors music was making a big shift.
Why shouldnt itunes support video? It is a natural medium of distribution for music, while not all music has a video, a lot does. How would you output it? Well, Macs have excellent dual head support, so one head doing playlist management, just like normal, the other doing video and visualisation for projection. You would want to be able to play the video in a window as well.
You could even integrate the video and visualisation.
I think that apple is going to start merging it's media players to a single great app. Wouldn't it be logical that the next incarnation of iTunes be able to play video, as well? and if it can play videos, might as well throw in the ability to play DVDs and web streams, so you can throw DVD Player and Quicktime player out the window. Well, maybe this super iMedia app would be more of a "Pro-sumer" app, a la Final Cut Express.
This is my idea because i thing it could work really well, and because i have no more ideas as to what MORE apple could do with an simple music player. but then again, it is apple, so i wouldnt be supirised to be blown away by tottally new, unexpected, unforseeable features in iTunes 5.
Comments
Originally posted by sunrein
I'd like to see some effective buffering put into place so that ripped CDs with music that spans tracks don't have a bump in the sound as the tracks are switching. It's a small point, but annoying none the less.
This is called "gapless playback", and this is my big request for iTunes too.
This has to be said before some idiot who thinks he's giving clever advice chimes in: The issue of gapless playback IS NOT SOLVED BY USING CROSSFADE SET TO ZERO.
The problem isn't chiefly due to a lack of buffering, but to the way MP3 and AAC tracks are encoded. There are short lead-in and lead-out silences encoded into each separate track, which for technical reasons aid in the encoding process at the boundaries of audio data. Although these silences are very short ? just a few milliseconds ? they are audible in the context of an interruption of what should be continuous audio.
Even without these silences, it's important to remember that perceptually compressed audio does not provide an exact representation of the original audio data from which it is derived, and also that something which sounds just like the original waveform to the human ear might be very different in waveform shape. Changes in the waveform shape can lead to a mismatched "seam" when one track plays straight into another track, and that mismatch can be audible.
The best solution is to improve the encoding process. Standard MP3 or AAC data can be supplemented with a small amount of data that will aid compatible decoders in producing gapless playback, data that tell the decoder how to create a smooth inter-track seam. This extra data can be added in such a way that it would simply be ignored by older decoders, keeping the music compatible even when the user won't get the gapless playback benefit.
The drawback here is that you have to re-encode music that you've already encoded once before in order to fix it. Apple would have to re-encode albums on iTMS like Dark Side of the Moon so that customers could buy seamless copies that don't have bumps between tracks. This wouldn't help people who had already purchased the album through iTMS.
So in addition to fixing the encoding, you'd also need some software trick that does the best job it can at detecting and eliminating the short lead-in and lead-in silences from older MP3 and AAC files, and then applies the right kind of filtering to make sure there's a smooth-sounding seam between tracks when those tracks are supposed to play into each other with continuous audio.
- CD-TEXT in burning.
This is the only reason I still use Nero for burning CDs on my PC. My car CD player supports it and I do not like seeing "Track 1" when I could see the actual track name.
- Control over output filenames (not just Track# TrackName).
I have to go in and paste (" - ArtistName - ") in every single file I rip or encode through iTunes. Very irritating.
That's all I can think of right now. Damn... what a great piece of software.
Doug's Applescripts to be more precise..
I'd also like more flexibility in the iTunes Browser, i.e. the Genre/Artist/Album panes. For example, for someone with mostly classical music might prefer to have "Composer" instead of "Artist" as the middle pane.
Originally posted by sunrein
I'd like to see some effective buffering put into place so that ripped CDs with music that spans tracks don't have a bump in the sound as the tracks are switching. It's a small point, but annoying none the less.
exactly, i hate that damned skip!
Originally posted by mattjohndrow
exactly, i hate that damned skip!
Gapless playback just came up in another thread... seems more and more people are catching onto this problem.
Here's Apple's iTunes feedback page. I've already written to them already. Let's get a few more people jumping in on this so that Apple knows that the demand for gapless playback is out there.
That seems like the most straightforward solution, but it's obvious enough that I feel like I have to be missing some technical hurdle.
Originally posted by Amorph
I don't know the technical details in enough detail to do more than pull speculation out of thin air...
Please see the Missing iTunes 4.5 feature thread, near the end, for further details.
That seems like the most straightforward solution, but it's obvious enough that I feel like I have to be missing some technical hurdle.
It's really best to have a two-ended solution, where the encoding tells the decoder exactly what it needs to know to do gapless playback, rather than relying on a playback-only solution that where the decoder has to try to figure out things like "How quiet is silence?", "How long of a silence should be treated as real, must-keep silence, rather than a removable silence?", "If I take out this gap, will I create a clicking sound, and if so, how do I surpress it?".
Also, you should be able to drag songs from ipod to itunes without any problem, and use the ipod's songs in party shuffle.
They should have both been in the most recent update!!!
Originally posted by 666
one thing i can't beleive hasn't made it in yet is a group check box. You have to check/uncheck every song singley!!! Sooo 1995!!!
Install the Applescripts for iTunes and use the Enable/Disable Tracks command.
Originally posted by Paul
option clicking on the checkboxes will select or deselect all of the tracks in the current playlist...
actually, it's command-click
Originally posted by a_greer
M$ merged everything into media 9 and well use windows media 9 and try to do the same things you do in itunes/itms in media player, you can but there are at least 3 extra and needless steps, and the drm. dear god the drm...
If you removed all the bloated stuff, and gave it an Apple GUI feel, then it would probably work..
A few years ago when mp3 was starting to take off all of our uni parties went digital. We had some big collections of music floating around purely for the purpose of doing parties.
A couple of years ago ( last time I dropped in on the scene ) all of those people were moving their music collections from mp3 to mpeg. They were digitising all of the music videos they could get ( at the time off of video ). Thanks to the cost of storage and the availability of cheap video projectors music was making a big shift.
Why shouldnt itunes support video? It is a natural medium of distribution for music, while not all music has a video, a lot does. How would you output it? Well, Macs have excellent dual head support, so one head doing playlist management, just like normal, the other doing video and visualisation for projection. You would want to be able to play the video in a window as well.
You could even integrate the video and visualisation.
Originally posted by ShallowThroat
What are your ideas for iTunes 5?
More E.Q. bands
1. Get rid of the floating window EQ (or at least make it optional: window or pane).
2. Make a 31-band equalizer (20 - 20k) come up in it's own pane exactly like the Search Results pane comes up from below in iCal.
Originally posted by ShallowThroat
So i just had an idea about iTunes 5.
I think that apple is going to start merging it's media players to a single great app. Wouldn't it be logical that the next incarnation of iTunes be able to play video, as well? and if it can play videos, might as well throw in the ability to play DVDs and web streams, so you can throw DVD Player and Quicktime player out the window. Well, maybe this super iMedia app would be more of a "Pro-sumer" app, a la Final Cut Express.
This is my idea because i thing it could work really well, and because i have no more ideas as to what MORE apple could do with an simple music player. but then again, it is apple, so i wouldnt be supirised to be blown away by tottally new, unexpected, unforseeable features in iTunes 5.
What are your ideas for iTunes 5?
woah!! yeah i thought that too!