Gapless mp3s ?

Hi

I am trying to play my mp3s without a gap.  I have searched thru the archives here and found a few threads but nothing clear, other than that the manual says it supports gapless playback, and that some guy named Doug got his Clip+ to play FLACs without a gap.     I’m trying to play mp3s, not FLACs, and I am hearing a short butvery annoying gap between songs.  this is particularly bad in live recordings when two songs have a segue between them rather than a stop and start.  If anyone knows how I can get my clip+ to accomplish this, or if there is a previous thread on this subject I couldn’t find, please help me out!

FYI, I have not upgraded my firmware (due to complaints I’ve read here on this forum, and nothing stating it will help with gapless playback) and I’m using a variety of mp3s - some i’ve ripped with FreeRip, and some I’ve downloaded from archive.org (and I am pretty certain that the folks who upload these files know what they’re doing and they know we want/need gapless playback because of the segue issue).

any help is appreciated!

gary

Implementing gapless playback involves multiple codecs and formats, since the Sansa can play many different types.  The LAME MP3 encoder has a “nogap” possibility, which was mentioned a while back.  The Clip+ does better than previous Sansas, as the gap between each track’s load and playback is much shorter.

The iPod, with its “what you see is what you get” format, strongly married to iTunes, meaning everything is M4A / AAC, has an advantage in this regard.  I prefer the advantages of being free to use any one of several file formats on the Sansa.

Imperfect “gapless” is one of the compromises we have to make.  I have made alternate rips of classical recordings, with no gap, just for these occasions.  The problem is that playback of the individual movements is better (more convenient) with the “separated” versions.

Bob  :wink:

With VBR MP3 files, I get what I can best describe as a quiet record-like single skip sound.  Wish even that wasn’t there, but better than on the original Clip. 

yikes, this is not the answer I wanted to hear!  I read in the promo material that there is gapless playback so I figured there was no issue… I’m an old deadhead and one of the trademarks of the Grateful Dead (which fills about half of my Clip+) is their segues between songs.  It’s very annoying to hear a POP in the middle of a segue, even tho it’s very short.  :(   I was hoping there was a setting or a simple adjustment but it sounds like not…  :frowning:

If it’s any consolation, users have asked that true gapless be developed.  But it’s anyone’s guess if that is possible and would be implemented.

Surely they must work on it since they say in the manual that it’s gapless… and it isn’t yet.

@neutron_bob wrote:

 

The iPod, with its “what you see is what you get” format, strongly married to iTunes, meaning everything is M4A / AAC, has an advantage in this regard.  I prefer the advantages of being free to use any one of several file formats on the Sansa.

 

 Ipod can play gapless mp3, not just AAC.   Both formats have the same requirement of the player depending on a hint in the database to skip blank space in the file.

 Of the issues with playing gapless, I haven’t seen  an authoritative statement of what Sansa did and what is left to do.  Since I don’t have a + yet, I’ll just keep on for now with Rockbox on my older player which does gapless fine.

 

Message Edited by donp on 02-10-2010 02:28 PM

I’ve just done some listening to Dark Side Of The Moon and disc 1 of The Wall with my Clip+…V2 LAME conversions from FLAC, and to be honest, some of the gaps are not even noticable…and the few that are, are pretty unobstrusive. I haven’t tried other codecs yet,(although I generally only use LAME vbr and WMA vbr on my players) but so far, I’m pleased with my results.

Unfortunately, once again, the well intentioned, but in my opinion misguided Sandisk apologists continue to minimize and rationalize their way around the fact that gapless functionality, as advertised by Sandisk and listed in the manual that Sandisk wrote, is a crock.

There was even a recent firmware update to the Clip+. Gapless wasn’t mentioned in the “known issues.” 

It appears that Sandisk continues to be in denial that gapless does not work on the Clip+.

See my post about this issue following the recent firmware update on the Sandisk “product feature suggestions” forum:

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=featuresuggestions&thread.id=1531

Message Edited by richter on 02-11-2010 05:34 AM

@marvin_martian wrote:
I’ve just done some listening to Dark Side Of The Moon and disc 1 of The Wall with my Clip+…V2 LAME conversions from FLAC, and to be honest, some of the gaps are not even noticable…and the few that are, are pretty unobstrusive. I haven’t tried other codecs yet,(although I generally only use LAME vbr and WMA vbr on my players) but so far, I’m pleased with my results.

Aww you finally got one!!!

summerlove wrote:


@marvin_martian wrote:
I’ve just done some listening to Dark Side Of The Moon and disc 1 of The Wall with my Clip+…V2 LAME conversions from FLAC, and to be honest, some of the gaps are not even noticable…and the few that are, are pretty unobstrusive. I haven’t tried other codecs yet,(although I generally only use LAME vbr and WMA vbr on my players) but so far, I’m pleased with my results.


 

Aww you finally got one!!!

Yup! And I like it…even the custom EQ I always bitched about with my old Sansas is better. And the folder browsing, and Replaygain make it a sweet little player.:smileyvery-happy:

richter wrote:

Unfortunately, once again, the well intentioned, but in my opinion misguided Sandisk apologists continue to minimize and rationalize their way around the fact that gapless functionality, as advertised by Sandisk and listed in the manual that Sandisk wrote, is a crock.

 

There was even a recent firmware update to the Clip+. Gapless wasn’t mentioned in the “known issues.” 

 

It appears that Sandisk continues to be in denial that gapless does not work on the Clip+.

 

See my post about this issue following the recent firmware update on the Sandisk “product feature suggestions” forum:

 

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=featuresuggestions&thread.id=1531

Message Edited by richter on 02-11-2010 05:34 AM

With all due respect, having a different experience than you or not thinking that an issue is as big as you do does not make one a SanDisk “apologist.”    :wink:

I don’t find the less-than-perfect gapless MP3 play a dealbreaker, and it is close to being fine, in my opinion.  Of course, it would be good for SanDisk to get it all the way there, having said that …

richter wrote:

Unfortunately, once again, the well intentioned, but in my opinion misguided Sandisk apologists continue to minimize and rationalize their way around the fact that gapless functionality, as advertised by Sandisk and listed in the manual that Sandisk wrote, is a crock.

 

There was even a recent firmware update to the Clip+. Gapless wasn’t mentioned in the “known issues.” 

 

It appears that Sandisk continues to be in denial that gapless does not work on the Clip+.

 

See my post about this issue following the recent firmware update on the Sandisk “product feature suggestions” forum:

 

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=featuresuggestions&thread.id=1531

Message Edited by richter on 02-11-2010 05:34 AM

I’ve just listened to a FLAC album that played gapless. I won’t keep the FLAC on this player, but I wanted to see if it worked.

 I’ve tested multiple albums in FLAC on the Clip+ that did not playback with flawless gapless.  I’ve ripped securely with EAC, have verified gapless playback of these FLACs on my desktop with a media player known to support flawless gapless (Foobar2000), have loaded them onto my Clip+, and have heard digital distortion and clicks between the tracks.  I’ve loaded the same FLACs onto my Cowon S9 (a player which supports gapless), and these FLACs have played back with flawless gapless (no gaps between tracks, no digital distortion or clicking between sound files as they segue between each other).

 This isn’t a personal attack against any posters on this forum.  I just find it counterproductive for users here to co-sign SanDisk’s failure to remedy this problem.  This type of behavior, in my opinion, does not encourage SanDisk to fix a problem that they are failing to acknoweldge.

 It’s not a perfect analogy, because people’s personal safety and lives do not hinge upon gapless playback on the Clip+, but say for example, a car company advertises anti-lock brakes and lists in the car manual that the car a person purchased has anti-lock brakes.  Then when the customer applies brakes, and they lock, they are upset.

 They discuss this issue with other customers on the company’s webforum, and many other customers confirm that the brakes lock on this particular model.  Then, other customers start talking about how the brakes only lock sometimes, when they do lock, it’s not as bad as how other cars’ brakes lock, some users don’t notice them locking, or that they notice that the brakes do lock, but it doesn’t really bother them all that much.

 Bottom line is that the company continues to state that their car has anti-lock brakes, which I take to mean that the brakes should not lock period, no matter who is driving the car.

 The accepted definition of “gapless playback” among audio users for whom “gapless playback” matters is that audio files play one after another without a gap between the files, without a digital click or distortion between the files, and most importantly, when playing back an album in which each song flows into the next song without a break of silence, perceptually, it sounds like one perfect transition of uninterupted flow from one song to the next (the most popular example of this is Pink Floy’d Dark Side Of The Moon).

 I have searched multiple forums, and this statement by Marvin that he found one album that did playback gaplessly in FLAC is the first statement of a user that I have seen in which someone verified that the Clip+ does playback with flawless gapless.  In every other instance of a claim of gapless playback on the Clip+, when the user was challenged and went back and listened a second time, the user came back to the forum and admitted that there was at least a little bit of a click between tracks when playing back the kind of album in which each song is supposed to flow into the next one seemlessly (like in Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon).

 From my perspective, the bottom line is that “gapless playback” on the Clip+ as advertised by SanDisk and as listed in their manual means that all playback on the Clip+ should be gapless for any sound files and for all users under all circumstances, not just for the one album out of thousands that one user out of thousands reports worked in FLAC and then promptly deleted from that user’s Clip+. 

 This isn’t intended to turn into a flame thread.  I’m trying to keep the constructive criticism of SanDisk’s failure to correct the “gapless playback” problems on the Clip+ going.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

    Marvin_Martian wrote:

    I’ve just listened to a FLAC album that played gapless. I won’t keep the FLAC on this player, but I wanted to see if it worked.

Message Edited by richter on 02-15-2010 11:05 AM

@miikerman wrote:


@richter wrote:

Unfortunately, once again, the well intentioned, but in my opinion misguided Sandisk apologists continue to minimize and rationalize their way around the fact that gapless functionality, as advertised by Sandisk and listed in the manual that Sandisk wrote, is a crock.

 

There was even a recent firmware update to the Clip+. Gapless wasn’t mentioned in the “known issues.” 

 

It appears that Sandisk continues to be in denial that gapless does not work on the Clip+.

 

See my post about this issue following the recent firmware update on the Sandisk “product feature suggestions” forum:

 

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=featuresuggestions&thread.id=1531

Message Edited by richter on 02-11-2010 05:34 AM


 

With all due respect, having a different experience than you or not thinking that an issue is as big as you do does not make one a SanDisk “apologist.”    :wink:

 

I don’t find the less-than-perfect gapless MP3 play a dealbreaker, and it is close to being fine, in my opinion.   Of course, it would be good for SanDisk to get it all the way there, having said that …

Do you speak for every owner of a Clip+?  Just because you don’t find it a problem, I am assuming many owners or potential owners will find the less-than-perfect gapless a deal breaker.

Richter has a point.  It was foolish on Sandisk’s part to advertise a player as gapless, when it isn’t glitchless gapless.

My guess, judging by Sandisk’s track record, that the Clip+ will never have glitchless gapless playback… and I’m sure it will be a deal breaker for many.

 

Everyone has certain aspects of a player’s feature-set that are extremely important to that individual.  What is extremely important to one person, may not be important at all to the next. When I had a Clip+, I personally didn’t mind the less-than-perfect gapless; it was the cheap looking plastic appearance of the thing, as if I just pulled it out of a box of Cracker Jack, that bothered me the most

But…If you ask 10 people what’s the most important feature a player must have, you’ll probably get 10 different responses.

 

 Don’t read too much into my statement, either. I’m not suggesting that every gapless FLAC I put on it will play back gaplessly. Just saying that this particular one seemed to. I have seen a post  on another forum from which I will quote directly "  I managed to achieve gapless playback with a few FLAC files (not all),
but no Vorbis or LAME MP3 files.
" If you think I am making that up, then you can read it for yourself here.

So I am not being an apologist, or anything of the sort…just reporting my results with a player I just received.

I’m sure by now that SanDisk is aware of this issue. It’s being discussed on multiple forums. They have proven in the past that if they are not going to fix an issue, they’ll publicly state so…as they did with the famous “pitch issue” with the Fuze and original Clip. As they have not made any such proclamation yet with the Clip+, I am willing to give them a little more time to rectify things.:wink:

 

richter wrote:

 I’ve tested multiple albums in FLAC on the Clip+ that did not playback with flawless gapless.  I’ve ripped securely with EAC, have verified gapless playback of these FLACs on my desktop with a media player known to support flawless gapless (Foobar2000), have loaded them onto my Clip+, and have heard digital distortion and clicks between the tracks.  I’ve loaded the same FLACs onto my Cowon S9 (a player which supports gapless), and these FLACs have played back with flawless gapless (no gaps between tracks, no digital distortion or clicking between sound files as they segue between each other).

 

 This isn’t a personal attack against any posters on this forum.  I just find it counterproductive for users here to co-sign SanDisk’s failure to remedy this problem.  This type of behavior, in my opinion, does not encourage SanDisk to fix a problem that they are failing to acknoweldge.

 It’s not a perfect analogy, because people’s personal safety and lives do not hinge upon gapless playback on the Clip+, but say for example, a car company advertises anti-lock brakes and lists in the car manual that the car a person purchased has anti-lock brakes.  Then when the customer applies brakes, and they lock, they are upset.

 

 They discuss this issue with other customers on the company’s webforum, and many other customers confirm that the brakes lock on this particular model.  Then, other customers start talking about how the brakes only lock sometimes, when they do lock, it’s not as bad as how other cars’ brakes lock, some users don’t notice them locking, or that they notice that the brakes do lock, but it doesn’t really bother them all that much.

 

 Bottom line is that the company continues to state that their car has anti-lock brakes, which I take to mean that the brakes should not lock period, no matter who is driving the car.

 

 The accepted definition of “gapless playback” among audio users for whom “gapless playback” matters is that audio files play one after another without a gap between the files, without a digital click or distortion between the files, and most importantly, when playing back an album in which each song flows into the next song without a break of silence, perceptually, it sounds like one perfect transition of uninterupted flow from one song to the next (the most popular example of this is Pink Floy’d Dark Side Of The Moon).

 I have searched multiple forums, and this statement by Marvin that he found one album that did playback gaplessly in FLAC is the first statement of a user that I have seen in which someone verified that the Clip+ does playback with flawless gapless.  In every other instance of a claim of gapless playback on the Clip+, when the user was challenged and went back and listened a second time, the user came back to the forum and admitted that there was at least a little bit of a click between tracks when playing back the kind of album in which each song is supposed to flow into the next one seemlessly (like in Pink Floyd’s Dark Side Of The Moon).

 From my perspective, the bottom line is that “gapless playback” on the Clip+ as advertised by SanDisk and as listed in their manual means that all playback on the Clip+ should be gapless for any sound files and for all users under all circumstances, not just for the one album out of thousands that one user out of thousands reports worked in FLAC and then promptly deleted from that user’s Clip+. 

 This isn’t intended to turn into a flame thread.  I’m trying to keep the constructive criticism of SanDisk’s failure to correct the “gapless playback” problems on the Clip+ going.

 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  

    Marvin_Martian wrote:

    I’ve just listened to a FLAC album that played gapless. I won’t keep the FLAC on this player, but I wanted to see if it worked.

Message Edited by richter on 02-15-2010 11:05 AM

fuze_owner-GB wrote:



 

 

_ Richter has a point.  It was foolish on Sandisk’s part to advertise a player as gapless, when it isn’t glitchless gapless. _

QFT :wink:

Okay, I guess I’ll second the gapless playback finding, at least on my Clip+, running EAC generated FLAC, via the AutoFLAC utility package.  No editing of the end frames was performed.

Running mp3 or wma, I do encounter a ‘click’ at the track transition, but FLAC is quiet and smooth.  I’m listening with the big phones, moderately high volume, and amplified, to listen closely.

Bob  :smiley:

Just tried two more FLAC albums…

Dave Matthews Band’s Live at Red Rocks…flawless transitions…Dave Matthews/Tim Reynolds Live At Luther College…flawless transitions again. So if gapless was that important to me, I would keep the thing loaded with FLAC files only. Of course, FLAC took a horrible toll on the old Clip’s battery life…not sure if it would be the same with the newer player.

fuze_owner-GB wrote:


@miikerman wrote:


@richter wrote:

Unfortunately, once again, the well intentioned, but in my opinion misguided Sandisk apologists continue to minimize and rationalize their way around the fact that gapless functionality, as advertised by Sandisk and listed in the manual that Sandisk wrote, is a crock.

 

There was even a recent firmware update to the Clip+. Gapless wasn’t mentioned in the “known issues.” 

 

It appears that Sandisk continues to be in denial that gapless does not work on the Clip+.

 

See my post about this issue following the recent firmware update on the Sandisk “product feature suggestions” forum:

 

http://forums.sandisk.com/sansa/board/message?board.id=featuresuggestions&thread.id=1531

Message Edited by richter on 02-11-2010 05:34 AM


 

With all due respect, having a different experience than you or not thinking that an issue is as big as you do does not make one a SanDisk “apologist.”    :wink:

 

I don’t find the less-than-perfect gapless MP3 play a dealbreaker, and it is close to being fine, in my opinion.   Of course, it would be good for SanDisk to get it all the way there, having said that …


Do you speak for every owner of a Clip+?  Just because you don’t find it a problem, I am assuming many owners or potential owners will find the less-than-perfect gapless a deal breaker.

 

Richter has a point.  It was foolish on Sandisk’s part to advertise a player as gapless, when it isn’t glitchless gapless.

 

My guess, judging by Sandisk’s track record, that the Clip+ will never have glitchless gapless playback… and I’m sure it will be a deal breaker for many.

 

Everyone has certain aspects of a player’s feature-set that are extremely important to that individual.  What is extremely important to one person, may not be important at all to the next. When I had a Clip+, I personally didn’t mind the less-than-perfect gapless; it was the cheap looking plastic appearance of the thing, as if I just pulled it out of a box of Cracker Jack, that bothered me the most

 

But…If you ask 10 people what’s the most important feature a player must have, you’ll probably get 10 different responses.

Thank you for your point-of-view, as a former Clip+ owner.  I guess, in reading my comment, you twice overlooked my stating that my comment was my own personal view (which certainly is not an apology for anyone, and which certainly I am entitled to have, as one of the “10 people” you refer to):  " I don’t find …" and “in my opinion …”