In a thread somewhere (I've been searching up and down and still haven't found the thread again), someone put in two samples to test for gapless playback.

Do you think these samples can be uploaded to the Wiki? Then we can make a page about "Testing for gapless" or somesuch, and people no longer have to search the forums again... like me... fruitlessly...

I always use Pink Floyd's "The Happiest Days Of Our Lives" and "Another Brick In The Wall (Part 2)" for testing. I could upload them if needed.

Was this the thread you were looking for?

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....8211&hl=gapless

In case anyone is interested, here are mine: http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....showtopic=40998

Or generate a tone with an audioeditor like audacity and make a copy of the file. Thats what I use for my testings.

^^^^^^^^

If you use this method make sure your sample has a whole number of cycles, otherwise you may still hear a glitch even with gapless playback.

UJ

You are right. I just generated new samples with audacity and they aren't gapless.

BTW, I added a link to my samples on the "Gapless" wiki-page.

Strictly speaking they are, the glitch comes about because of the mismatch between the end of one and the start of the next, not because of any deficiency in the gapless playback. Conversely, gapless may not be working properly but you hear nothing because just enough samples are being lost to remake a seamless join up

With a unifrom tone it is even possible for playback to be biting chunks off the end of files, and you would never know as long as it was a whole number of cycles being lost.

This is a reason you should test with real world samples as well.

UJ

I've just created a sample suit which should be useful (and easy) to test gapless playback for all conditions (hardware, software, and even encoders).
gapless suite (2.1 MB)

The samples consist in 90 seconds of an old Beethoven recording (6th Symphony, recorded in 1939 - it's free of right in most countries), divided in 17 parts. I encoded it with WavPack lossy (which doesn't add padding like all transforms encoders).
Take care with MP3: LAME doesn't necessary handle this gaplessly (just tested with -V5 --vbr-new). It's fine with Vorbis (aoTuV q4), Musepack (1.15v q5), WavPack lossy of course; experimental Nero 3.1.0.2 has also big issues here.


P.S. To create a similar suite, just edit an existing .cue file and associate it to your favorite track. Then open the .cue with foobar2000: your file is virtually split into multiple part. You just have to encode it (losslessly or lossy-y) with foobar2000

They're not copyrighted?

Unfortunately, no.

Cool

You've added it the the wiki! Cool

Just in case anyone's wondering, the "Gapless" wiki is located here.

IIRC someone (not Sebastian Mares) did post 2 MP3s specifically for testing MP3 gapless... I think more gapless samples for the wiki page is good.

Of course they are - that's why I posted 10 seconds only.

Nobody owns the copyrights to Classical Recordings. They are free to distribute. . I would be contributing more to the wiki, except I don't have time as I am busy with school and stuff. I will try and help out here and there though.

OT: Just wondering... does the copyright law applies to clips of songs? If so, how short can a clip be to be free of copyright?

I mean sometimes I find good riff in a track and 'extracts' it using CoolEdit to be used in a loop. Am I in violation of copyright?

30 seconds.

This is not correct. Classical recordings are convered by copyright as anything else even when the work itself isn't anymore.

Clips are just as much covered. Here we have made the decision to allow 30sec clips as we believe noone would find it worth it to to after us for that.

Deconstructing Beck, was an entire album made using only samples of Beck's work without permission I believe:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_Art

Not sure what the legal outcome of that was though.

Kristian