How have you been listening to DJ remixes, live concerts and classic music?
I am new to the MP3 Mobile Player community - and have some thoughts on the gapless playback issue: I am now for 10 years a happy Minidisk user but recently picked up an entry level MP3 Player that cought my interest for the MP3 concept. I quickly learned that with (mobile) MP3 Players there is in general no gapless playback support. Lacking support for gapless playback renders the system practically useless to me. Most of what I lissen to is DJ remixes (Same applies to people who listen to live recordings and classic music). Audio compression formats like MP3 have been around for a long time - and it is still not possible to listen to the above mentioned gapless recording types without being irritated by gaps - I am surprised! Does the MP3 community not listen to that kind of music?
Anyway, on my recent quest for a mobile MP3 player capable of gapless playback I came across Sandisk players. They generally get very good reviews and there were hints on forums that it may be possible to tweak them for gapless support. So I picked up the new sansa fuze (at least it has ogg capability after firmware update) and then the e260 v2. Well, to make the long story short: I won’t be able to make one or both of these units capable o gapless playback, neither by means of original sandisk firmware update or Rockbox - therefore I will have to stick with my Minidisk players.
Is there any cue, that there will be efforts to introduce gapless playback capability with SanDisk MP3 players? Also: the technology for gapless support cannot be rocket science - just look how the Rockbox community does it. Why is this fundamental feature still not available “off the shelf”?
On the most basic level, gapless requires both files to be of the same format, and with a proper end file configuration (a standardized one). There are so many variables with our devices loaded in a myriad of ways, with various codecs and bit rates.
Gapless is wonderful for themed albums, where the artist blends one track into the next (like Pink Floyd).
If you are a fan of classical music, and movements, the sudden halt is hazardous, as it can make you spill your sherry. I love classical, but the live performance doesn’t have such interruptions.
The work-around to accomplish this same effect until such time as it can or is incorporated into the Sansa firmware is to merge the selected files into 1 larger file. Not perfect, but for some people, it might help. There are numerous free programs out there that will do this. One of these is Audacity, in which you can even cross-fade one track into the next if you desire and then save (or export) it as a new file. I’m sure other programs have something similar.
Gapless is wonderful for themed albums, where the artist blends one track into the next (like Pink Floyd).
If you are a fan of classical music, and movements, the sudden halt is hazardous, as it can make you spill your sherry. I love classical, but the live performance doesn’t have such interruptions.
Bob :smileyvery-happy:
Agreed…I keep my Pink Floyd FLACS…and the few classical pieces I have on FLAC(just recently opened my mind to it) on the computer…MediaMonkey plays gaplessly,so I just spin my computer desk around, plug my stereo patch cable into the sound card, and “rock out” . Would it be nice on the Fuze and Clip? Sure…but I’m not fretting over it. :smiley:
Yeah, gapless playback would be nice, but it isn’t a deal breaker with me. The fuze is so good in most other respects, I can live without it for the time being.
What I do for those pieces that do not have a concrete beginning or end; but seemlessly go from one track to another… is to fade the tracks at the beginning and/or end, which makes the transitions a little less harsh. My audio restoration software package that I use for restoring old vinyl and tape recordings has this capability of creating such files…as well as many other packages out there.
That sounds promising! Are there statements on the Rockbox forum that you can refer to?
Thanx.
I wouldn’t start holding your breath yet. They’ve made a lot of progress in the last few weeks, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to maintain that pace. There are still a lot of unknowns and potential technical hurdles. It’s only a guess, but I’d expect something like 6 months to a year before they have a production ready build. Could be even longer.
I wouldn’t start holding your breath yet. They’ve made a lot of progress in the last few weeks, but that doesn’t mean they’ll be able to maintain that pace. There are still a lot of unknowns and potential technical hurdles. It’s only a guess, but I’d expect something like 6 months to a year before they have a production ready build. Could be even longer.
My thoughts too. About the same time as the Fuze and/or Clip are discontinued by SanDisk to make room for the latest & greatest replacement is probably about the same time as the Rockbox folks will finish the porting to them. :smileyvery-happy:
I am wearing the headphones as much as possible. In fact, I’m listening to Heinrich Schutz at the moment.
The objective, to make as much expenditure of the service life of this device as possible, necessitating its replacement when gapless is properly implemented.
Ah, now some Janice Weber, Paul Hindemith…(catching up on years of stored classical)…I’ll have this machine all worn out just in time.
This is another one of those topics I’ve read about for years, and I find it almost comical that people will say its a “must have”…for a product they already own (that doesn’t support it).
This is another one of those topics I’ve read about for years, and I find it almost comical that people will say its a “must have”…for a product they already own (that doesn’t support it).
I didn’t see any such comical must haves in this thread…
Anyway, as someone noted above it is puzzling why any new player can’t do it off the shelf (esp. with file formats that have native gapless support already).
The Fuze looks pretty neat, however I bought it simply to try it out: FLAC support, sound quality etc If all that is good and there’s a promise of gapless playback from Sansa then I’ll stick with it in the meantime. If not I’ll try another media player
I listen to live recordings mainly and gaps are very annoying
