…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 agree that this is obviously not a “must have” for the person who bought something in a store with little clue as to how it would perform. “Must have” means it must make some sort of noise that resembles music, and have software that can indeed load media onto the product… and have less obvious faults that are not discovered until the packaging is thrown out. I am sure that using packaging that has to be destroyed to release the product helps in the retention of devices with irritating faults as well.
I did return one MP3 player with it’s packaging in shreads (from another company) because the software on the website did not support the model I had (the website pointed to an older version), and after I found this out and loaded the right version it would still hang in the middle of adding music files. I never did get to the point of plugging in the headphones.
Obviously the originator of this thread and myself will keep the product even if there are no further changes to fix the playback issues that we find annoying. We are stuck just as much as those tourists in the restraunt under the Eifel tower who look around after ordering to see only unhappy americans in an obvious tourist trap that serves up bad food to people who will never return no matter what is served up. For us, “must have” features are those that will cause us to recommend the product to a friend the next time they ask or to buy another next year when we want to upgrade our capabilities. This is the fifth MP3 player I have purchased. What brand will be the next one?
Every once in awhile the subject of iPods comes up, and in fact one day I may fork out the 3-4 times larger amount of money to buy one. The reason if I do will not be because they have an inherantly better product - I think the hardware of the Fuze is just as classy. The only reason I would fork over that kind of money would be because I have lost faith that the non-iPod companies have the desire to create a quality product and are in the buisiness for the long haul.
I rip live shows two ways: as a series of individual tracks and as a single long track.
If I want to listen to the whole concert, I play the single rip.
If I want to burn a track to a mix CD, I can pick individual tracks. Because I use Feurio!, I can also burn sequential live tracks without any gap, when needed.
The header information in MP3s and Flacs creates those gaps, and must be a bear to try to work around in a playback device.
So, I read through the thread and saw that gapless playback was being worked on. But there were no updates. I really need this. It’s the one annoying thing that makes digital media inferior to records/CDs. Please give us an update on the status!
I’ve never considered this feature as URGENT. Yes, it would be nice to have, but I’m quite content with the fuze as it is. On those pieces that don’t have natural breaks and the gap interrupts the mood, I simply combine several (as in the old LP album side) tracks together, so there are no pauses in playback.
@slugicide wrote:
So, I read through the thread and saw that gapless playback was being worked on. But there were no updates. I really need this. It’s the one annoying thing that makes digital media inferior to records/CDs. Please give us an update on the status!
Should be the next Firmwire, Due out before the end of March
It should be noted that if and/or when they get ‘gapless playback’ to work, it may be as the folks at Rockbox ran into in adding this feature to their firmware. Only .mp3’s ripped with the LAME encoder will play gapless. That means all those .mp3’s ripped in Windows Media Player will NOT play gapless. You may have to re-rip your entire collection with a program that uses the LAME encoder.
Sometimes the answer you get is not the answer you want.
It should be noted that if and/or when they get ‘gapless playback’ to work, it may be as the folks at Rockbox ran into in adding this feature to their firmware. Only .mp3’s ripped with the LAME encoder will play gapless. That means all those .mp3’s ripped in Windows Media Player will NOT play gapless. You may have to re-rip your entire collection with a program that uses the LAME encoder.
Sometimes the answer you get is not the answer you want.
That’s exactly the answer I would expect, given that inherent problem in the MP3 standard. If it supports the Lame mp3 kludge, that’s bonus. First thing is supporting formats that inherently allow gapless, like Vorbis.
@sansafix wrote:
Dont get so excited, the next firmware release wont contain gapless playback.
Time to look for another player then
Cowon, Archos, Trekstor…here I come
Before you get all hot and heavy and jump ship, he is saying in his post that it wont be here by march but by June it should be. If you cant wait til then for this feature, do what the rest of us did, create Gappless files. Some have taken albums like Dark Side of the Moon, and used Audacity or other audioediting software and created 1 track by adding all the files together. It doesnt take that long to do. Then when gappless is ready you can jsut delete that file and put the multiples back on there and use the feature. If a less than 1 second gap between songs is too much for you, good luck with your future players… I feel sorry for the mp3 world if something this small which 10 years ago was unheard of is a deal breaker.
@sansafix wrote:
Dont get so excited, the next firmware release wont contain gapless playback.
Time to look for another player then
Cowon, Archos, Trekstor…here I come
Before you get all hot and heavy and jump ship, he is saying in his post that it wont be here by march but by June it should be. If you cant wait til then for this feature, do what the rest of us did, create Gappless files. Some have taken albums like Dark Side of the Moon, and used Audacity or other audioediting software and created 1 track by adding all the files together. It doesnt take that long to do. Then when gappless is ready you can jsut delete that file and put the multiples back on there and use the feature. If a less than 1 second gap between songs is too much for you, good luck with your future players… I feel sorry for the mp3 world if something this small which 10 years ago was unheard of is a deal breaker.
Yup…
Jeez…It’s such a minor issue to get all upset over. I remember “in the good old days” when we had to walk across the room to flip an album side or switch reels. It’s good to always look for possible future features, but why can’t people be happy with the player they have now? In my book, the Fuze is pretty fantastic just the way it is.
Message Edited by fuze_owner-GB on 01-29-2009 01:04 PM
@sansafix wrote:
Dont get so excited, the next firmware release wont contain gapless playback.
Time to look for another player then
Cowon, Archos, Trekstor…here I come
I don’t know about Trekstor, but the Cowons don’t do gapless either . And Cowon and Archos…save your pennies…they’re not nearly as inexpensive as the Fuze. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but they can be pretty pricey. If you’re that hyped up to get gapless and rockbox then buy one of the discontinued Sansas.
you guys are a hoot you’re the only ones that get “hot and heavy” when this topic comes up and people dare to say it’s important to them.
btw I’m not in or from the “mp3 world” - flac for me thanks. I know I could reencode to one big file - but life’s to short and for ~£100 it seems I can get a player that plays flac files “properly”.
the listening experience is subjective, of course, but for the music I play (albums and live recordings) that gap is very, very irritating…when Jimmy Page does a perfect segue from Misty Mountain Hop to Since I’ve Been Lovin’ You I want to appreciate it!
For folks who listen to mp3 pop singles then, I agree, who needs gapless?
Anyway, I was only giving feedback to Sansa - if my opinion is shared by a tiny minority, then I don’t blame Sansa for making it low priority. But for me, their little Fuze would be near perfect with gapless playback(on FLAC anyway). Maybe I’ll come back to it in June
. And Cowon and Archos…save your pennies…they’re not nearly as inexpensive as the Fuze. Not that there’s anything wrong with them, but they can be pretty pricey. If you’re that hyped up to get gapless and rockbox then buy one of the discontinued Sansas.
