I have become a gapless playback convert.

[uXs]

Until I got my iHP, I never realized just how many cds I have where gaps between songs are very easy to notice.

[MajorGrubert]

I agree! People think it's only live albums and Dark Side of the Moon, but there are a lot of albums where songs have run-on transitions. I can cite from my collection:

Peter Gabriel - III - Start/I Don't Remember

Joe Jackson - Night and Day - Another World/Chinatown/TV Age/Target/Steppin' Out
Also, Blaze of Glory is a continuous sequence à la DSOTM.

Björk - Post - You've Been Flirting Again/Isobel

Evanescence - Fallen - Tourniquet/Imaginary

Tears for Fears - Songs from the Big Chair - I Believe/Broken/Head over Heels/Listen

Manu Chao - Próxima estación Esperanza - Another continuous sequence

And it goes on and on...

Here's hoping for the new firmware.

[Sharki]

Helloooooo.....

Gapless is essential!!!!

I would say that maybe 50% (if not more) of my player is dedicated to live DJ sets, chillout sessions, and other DJ oriented music.
Now the live sets that I had were recorded at the DJ booth during the evenings of preformance which meant that I had 1-3 hour sets as one track. But a lot of the house sessions that come out on CD's and if you were to actualy cut them and make track marks on your own, it becomes a hassle. I know it's no biggie but it still annoys me.

[deathmarch]

any news when the may firmware upgrade will be available?

[jotwee]

in may

[noodles2go]

dont forget all of linkin parks albums, they have great transitions in my own opinion

[Naruto9tails]

gapless is in June... i'm guess they gonna release like end of may and gaples end of june considering there is really no word about any firmware release coming soon

[zomer]

why is gapless playback so hard than?

[FifthEcho]

Originally Posted by zomer

why is gapless playback so hard than?

A whole lot.
First and foremost, for gapless to be a possibility, the player needs to have formulated a playlist of its songs-in-queue. This pretty much demands on-the-fly playlists.
This is a necessity as the player needs to know what the next song to load after the currently playing song is in order to seek the hard drive to that file and start buffering that track.
It also requires coding a basic crossfading capability - having the hard drive seek to, read, and buffer two files concurrently.
This needs to be done without overloading the CPU, DSP, or memory buffer which is a challenge in and of itself...which requires different calculations based on the different bitrates that the songs are encoded in...nevermind if the songs are in two different formats requiring you to concurrently load two different codecs, decode audio streams using both codecs into the buffer, all without overloading the CPU, DSP, hard drive seek times, or buffer.

Gapless is a very difficult undertaking.

[Mike]

Thanks, FifthEcho, for the explanation--it makes sense when you explain it.

Of course, eliminating the 52-character limit couldn't be as hard as THAT ...

[FifthEcho]

Originally Posted by Mike

Thanks, FifthEcho, for the explanation--it makes sense when you explain it.

Of course, eliminating the 52-character limit couldn't be as hard as THAT ...

...no. That's just sloppy coding.
That's one of the few major factors keeping me from using the database with my iHP-120...

...that and the dismally slow start time...

[deathmarch]

Originally Posted by FifthEcho

A whole lot.
First and foremost, for gapless to be a possibility, the player needs to have formulated a playlist of its songs-in-queue. This pretty much demands on-the-fly playlists.
This is a necessity as the player needs to know what the next song to load after the currently playing song is in order to seek the hard drive to that file and start buffering that track.
It also requires coding a basic crossfading capability - having the hard drive seek to, read, and buffer two files concurrently.
This needs to be done without overloading the CPU, DSP, or memory buffer which is a challenge in and of itself...which requires different calculations based on the different bitrates that the songs are encoded in...nevermind if the songs are in two different formats requiring you to concurrently load two different codecs, decode audio streams using both codecs into the buffer, all without overloading the CPU, DSP, hard drive seek times, or buffer.

Gapless is a very difficult undertaking.

does the iPod have gapless playback?

[FifthEcho]

Originally Posted by deathmarch

does the iPod have gapless playback?

Nope.
AFAIK the only HDD player out currently with gapless is the Karma.

[zoltan]

Honestlly, The gap is what killed it for me about the H140 and made me buy a Nomad Jukebox 3 instead...that and the sound quality.

99.999% of my music is DJ Mixes!

Gapless was a VERY important factor in my decision, and I did a lot of reaserch befrore I made my purchase. Sure, the Nomad is not a "true' gapless player, but the gap is only dependant on the amount of blank sample in the last frame and generally less than 1/10th or 1/20th of a second. I don't notice it most of the time.

What is this about gapless playback being promised in June?!?!?
I've been away for a while, spending time on Nomadness.Net and I decided to pop back over to see what's new.

Is this true? Can someone point me to some links?!? Will I have to sell my Nomad?!?(not a chance! just save more money, they can live together in harmony!!)

[Adam]

http://www.iriver.com/community/notice_view.asp?idx=31