Do I have this right? For gapless encoding, flac is best, ogg is next best, and mp3 is bad.
I’m using foobar2000 to do flac, ogg, and mp3. Is that a good choice?
There don’t seem to be many settings for the encoder in foobar. I’m using v0 for MP3 and q7 for ogg. Sound good?
Gapless in ogg seems to be pretty good, but not perfect on the clip? Are the some settings I should be using.
Thanks, I appreciate the help!
From my experience I’ve found the order is ogg, flac and then mp3 but I wouldn’t even consider using flac or mp3 for gapless playback onthe Clip+ at the moment.
I’ve been using foobar2000 to encode to ogg using the standard settings and the gapless playback is acceptable for me, I really haveto be listening for a gap to actually hear it and even then it’s difficult. From reading other posts it sounds like we will have to wait and see if a firmware update will make things better.
Message Edited by stelaw on 01-05-2010 10:27 PM
Message Edited by stelaw on 01-05-2010 10:29 PM
@stelaw wrote:
From my experience I’ve found the order is ogg, flac and then mp3 but I wouldn’t even consider using flac or mp3 for gapless playback onthe Clip+ at the moment.
But FLAC is natively gapless while any lossy format isn’t! (ogg is lossy).
It also depnds on the player. With my Cowon S9 everything (FLAC, MP3…) is FULLY gapless (and glitchless)
Foobar does sound good. DBpoweramp seems to be good as well and some say that the Rolls is EAC (Exact Audio Copy)
Message Edited by Nuntius on 01-06-2010 02:14 PM
@nuntius wrote:
But FLAC is natively gapless while any lossy format isn’t! (ogg is lossy).
It depends on the encoding schema, not whether or not the format is lossy (although any decent lossless format should be gapless).
My personal opinion on the whole gapless issue in general… 
@u38cg wrote:
@nuntius wrote:
But FLAC is natively gapless while any lossy format isn’t! (ogg is lossy).
It depends on the encoding schema, not whether or not the format is lossy (although any decent lossless format should be gapless).
I’m just replying to Stelaw that according to his (her) experience, ogg is “more gapless” than FLAC!
WIKI :
“Since lossless data compression excludes the possibility of the introduction of padding, all lossless audio file formats are inherently gapless”
“ogg have provisions for gapless encoding”
“mp3 does not officially support gapless encoding, but some implementations of encoders or decoders may handle gapless metadata”
I understand what your saying Nuntius.
My reply was stating my experiences with gapless encodings on the clip+ only.
Like you I also own a Cowon S9, all my files/albums play as intended without gaps on the S9 but as soon as I put them on the Clip+ only the ogg files/albums seems to come close to gapless. I hope this makes things clearer.
I’m off to try the new firmware now to see if this makes a difference.
stelaw wrote:
I’m off to try the new firmware now to see if this makes a difference.
Let us know how that goes . . .
since there isn’t any new firmware for the Clip+.
Well, I’ve just done the upgrade to 01.02.09 and there’s no change on the gapless front I’m afraid.
@tapeworm wrote:
@nuntius wrote:
And what is that?
Well, Shazam!
Sneaky little devils snuck it in on me!
What does Shazam mean? (I’m french speaking)
Message Edited by Nuntius on 01-13-2010 10:25 PM
I don’t believe that pushing the gapless issue is the beating of a dead horse… yet. It won’t be until Sansa abandons Clip+ firmware updates. It should be continued to be brought up while they are still updating firmware for the Clip+. The Sansa Clip+ was advertised to feature gapless playback, and gapless playback is noted as a feature in the user manual. Gapless was even mentioned in a lot of reviews by computer magazines, although every user that has tried to playback gaplessly has found that it doesn’t work properly. My take is that reviewers read that the Clip+ featured gapless playback in the manual, failed to verify it for themselves, and wrote that it worked in their reviews.
Gapless is not some additional feature that users were never promised, it was supposed to be functional on the Clip+ from the very beginning. While gapless may not be important for some, I think it is bad in general to leave customers hanging like they have thus far waiting for a feature that Sansa stated was functional right out of the box and with original firmware. In my opinion, to make the gapless issue into some kind of minor problem for fringe and obsessive customers is to not hold Sansa accountable for fixing the problem.
As far as a gapless workaround goes in the meantime, the best one that I’ve found is to just encode an album that requires gapless as one big audio file. You can search through the album with one of the front buttons and get to a particular song if need be, and the search function is pretty quick. Usually when I listen to an album like this on my Clip+, it’s during a time when I plan on listening to at least twenty minutes worth in one sitting without fiddling with it, so I tend not to be bothered with the inability to skip between songs on the album.
Bottom line is that if gapless matters to you, none of the audio formats you encode to will probably satisfy you, as you’re going to hear clicks or glitches between tracks no matter which one you choose.
@marvin_martian wrote:
My personal opinion on the whole gapless issue in general…
Message Edited by richter on 01-13-2010 06:25 PM
richter wrote:
I don’t believe that pushing the gapless issue is the beating of a dead horse… yet. It won’t be until Sansa abandons Clip+ firmware updates. It should be continued to be brought up while they are still updating firmware for the Clip+. The Sansa Clip+ was advertised to feature gapless playback, and gapless playback is noted as a feature in the user manual. Gapless was even mentioned in a lot of reviews by computer magazines, although every user that has tried to playback gaplessly has found that it doesn’t work properly. My take is that reviewers read that the Clip+ featured gapless playback in the manual, failed to verify it for themselves, and wrote that it worked in their reviews.
Gapless is not some additional feature that users were never promised, it was supposed to be functional on the Clip+ from the very beginning. While gapless may not be important for some, I think it is bad in general to leave customers hanging like they have thus far waiting for a feature that Sansa stated was functional right out of the box and with original firmware. In my opinion, to make the gapless issue into some kind of minor problem for fringe and obsessive customers is to not hold Sansa accountable for fixing the problem.
As far as a gapless workaround goes in the meantime, the best one that I’ve found is to just encode an album that requires gapless as one big audio file. You can search through the album with one of the front buttons and get to a particular song if need be, and the search function is pretty quick. Usually when I listen to an album like this on my Clip+, it’s during a time when I plan on listening to at least twenty minutes worth in one sitting without fiddling with it, so I tend not to be bothered with the inability to skip between songs on the album.
Bottom line is that if gapless matters to you, none of the audio formats you encode to will probably satisfy you, as you’re going to hear clicks or glitches between tracks no matter which one you choose.
@marvin_martian wrote:
My personal opinion on the whole gapless issue in general…
Message Edited by richter on 01-13-2010 06:25 PM
You have a fair point…it is in the manual , and this is the first Sansa that has claimed to be gapless. My dead horse analogy relates to having heard the whole gapless issue debated here and in other forums for a year and a half now, starting with the older players.
Your workaround procedure is one that has been brought up frequently throughout the debate…and it is a workaround that I have done myself in the past…works pretty well if you ask me.
The true believers in this debate, however, take offense to the suggestion and insist that they shouldn’t have to do this.
So the gapless music I have, I leave on the computer now, since usually on the go I am in shuffle all mode. When I sit here, I fire up Mediamonkey or WMP12, and listen to my gapless albums in glorious, gapless FLAC, with no worries about my battery life, etc. 
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