New iPods! Options

[Busemann]

Seems the 4th gen iPods will debut Monday July 19th..

Mag Cover


20 & 40 GB for $299 and $399 respectively.

[ChangFest]

Actually, can even iTunes play mp3's gapless?

No.

Majority of portable users don't care about number of format support, gapless or not, all they care is style, good enough audio quality, ease of use and coolness factor.

Yeah. Sad but true...but when the format support allows for extra player functionality vs. less support then it's better.


I own a Rio Karma. My main beef with Apple's Ipod is their lack of proper album playback. If they would impliment gapless then I'd probably own one. The Karma does this and much more and probably the better player hands down in the end.

[markgr]

Actually, can even iTunes play mp3's gapless?

No.

Majority of portable users don't care about number of format support, gapless or not, all they care is style, good enough audio quality, ease of use and coolness factor.

Yeah. Sad but true...but when the format support allows for extra player functionality vs. less support then it's better.


I own a Rio Karma. My main beef with Apple's Ipod is their lack of proper album playback. If they would impliment gapless then I'd probably own one. The Karma does this and much more and probably the better player hands down in the end.

Actually, iTunes does have a feature which may result in something similiar to what you are looking for in it's crossfade feature. What exactly do you mean by gapless and reproducing the album effect?

[AtaqueEG]

Actually, iTunes does have a feature which may result in something similiar to what you are looking for in it's crossfade feature. What exactly do you mean by gapless and reproducing the album effect?

Gapless is much more than just playing song with no silence between them (like you can do with a crossfader). "True gapless" is the ability of a codec to somehow retain/register the actual length of a music sample. This is very important to retain the "effect" on some albums where all the tracks are made to be played uninterrupted, like a live album, of a Pink Floyd album. There are also albums that are designed to have some tracks play like that and others with silences between them. A good example of this is The Beatles' "Abbey Road".

"Reproducing the album's effect" is nothing but to be able to listen to the album the closest one can to what the artist wanted to achieve.

[Cygnus X1]

Gapless is much more than just playing song with no silence between them (like you can do with a crossfader).

iTunes can't even do that....even when using Apple Lossless or AIFF files, setting the crossfader to zero still results in a pop and a brief pause. It's annoying enough that I've ripped all my Pink Floyd, classical, and The Who albums as single tracks, rather than individual ones.

CD's are the only things that play back gaplessly in iTunes, but why would I play a CD in iTunes to begin with? Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having a HDD-based software jukebox?

[AtaqueEG]

iTunes can't even do that....even when using Apple Lossless or AIFF files, setting the crossfader to zero still results in a pop and a brief pause. It's annoying enough that I've ripped all my Pink Floyd, classical, and The Who albums as single tracks, rather than individual ones.

CD's are the only things that play back gaplessly in iTunes, but why would I play a CD in iTunes to begin with?  Doesn't that kind of defeat the purpose of having a HDD-based software jukebox?

This is the one thing that has changed my mind about buying an iPod.
You know, I had learned to "deal" with the lack of gapless playback on portables, but having read that Rio Karma supports LAME-tag-based gapless playback, I am definitely going that way.

[markgr]

This is the one thing that has changed my mind about buying an iPod.
You know, I had learned to "deal" with the lack of gapless playback on portables, but having read that Rio Karma supports LAME-tag-based gapless playback, I am definitely going that way.

Well, as mentioned above, why not just rip a 'suite' of tracks into a single track using iTunes. Logically, it makes sense. Having several movements contained in a piece of classical music is theoretically still one piece of music. If they are assigned seperate track numbers, and shuffle is set on your CD player, they don't, ofcourse, play consecutively. I just don't think it is that big a deal, I think it is a bit 'nit-picky'

[Chun-Yu]

Well, as mentioned above, why not just rip a 'suite' of tracks into a single track using iTunes. Logically, it makes sense. Having several movements contained in a piece of classical music is theoretically still one piece of music. If they are assigned seperate track numbers, and shuffle is set on your CD player, they don't, ofcourse, play consecutively. I just don't think it is that big a deal, I think it is a bit 'nit-picky'

This kind of logic may work for classical music, but what about, say, a trance CD that's composed of a bunch of different songs by different artists that are mixed together continuously? Also, the slightest gap in this sort of album is very annoying.