Gapless playback (No not teh ussual how do I get it question

[4130]

Well with gappless playback being annouced the other day as a feature of future firmwares I wa wondering about one thing.

Would I haave to re-rip a whole album and do some special thing to it if I wanted it go gapless, or would gappless apply to all the tracks on my player?

[reddshack]

You wouldn't have to re-rip anything as long as there isn't silence at the beginning or ending of any of the tracks. Some CD's have silence at the end of each track by default, but most rippers that I've used will automatically take that out. As long as your songs end immediately once the song is over, you will be fine.

It's also dependant upon which formats they choose to make gapless. If they make mp3, ogg, and wma all gapless, then it won't matter at all. But, if some of your songs are ogg and ogg isn't supported as "gapless," well yes, you would have to re-encode or re-rip for the feature to work.

We'll just have to see what "oversatisfying" expectations iRiver will be throwing our way this time!!

[sweetspot]

Well, it won't be OV that gets the shaft on gapless, that's for sure. OV does gapless natively, not Mp3 nor WMA. And only with the latest Mp3 codec can mp3's be truly gapless, otherwise it's an artificial crossfade job.

I'm guessing that they'll implament it for Ogg Vorbis files only. And then perhaps later on down the line Mp3's will see it.

[FlameGrilled]

'You wouldn't have to re-rip anything as long as there isn't silence at the beginning or ending of any of the tracks'

Please excuse me whilst i go bust a gut after reading the most stupid observation in DAP history...

You never, ever - ever, totally remove all trailing/leading silence from a recording (regardless of analogue or digital) unless the preceeding/forthcoming sections are to be played seamlessly - and seamlessly, is a whole different matter than 'gapless'.

Real gapless audio support can cue into the first safe instance of borderlin non-silence in a sequence of recordings and handle the transision quietly, with a near impercetable gap (there will always be a gap, even if infinite to the nth degree of tinyness).

If you dont believe me on any of this, and think i'm offering BS - go read some tech stuff on audio (the theory and real-world practical stuff - not the BS offerings written by DA 'experts' who came to life since DA became popular) and you see about why levels have to be matched or a transition of some kind of clean CF-type transition is highly desirable to allow the instant cue-out/cue-in to work without audio glitches.

Right, i'm outa here.. i gotta get some sleep before another graveyard shift in ovenight presenter hell.