Why not gapless ripping (for lossless encode) as standard? Options

[sidewalking]

I have a simple question, I think. I should know the answer to this, but I was explaining to a friend at work about compression and the topic of gapless came up when talking about live albums or albums that have songs bleeding from one into the next. I pointed out that iTunes has an option to preserve this effect on gapless discs but when he interjected with a question as to why this isn’t ON by default I was at a loss.

Why is it again that we don’t just go gapless on all or most discs when ripping?

[benski]

I have a simple question, I think. I should know the answer to this, but I was explaining to a friend at work about compression and the topic of gapless came up when talking about live albums or albums that have songs bleeding from one into the next. I pointed out that iTunes has an option to preserve this effect on gapless discs but when he interjected with a question as to why this isn’t ON by default I was at a loss.

Why is it again that we don’t just go gapless on all or most discs when ripping?

I believe the setting in iTunes relates to automatic disabling of the crossfader. Encoder delay & zero padding information is stored in the compressed file regardless of the setting.

[Maurits]

Yep, it is on by default for MP3 and AAC and I believe it's even impossible to turn off. The 'is part of gapless album' option is there for the reason benski just mentioned and actually has nothing to do with the gapless function itself.