The Rio Karma has been looooong discontinued, and yet I don't see any gapless capable (MP3, AAC, OGG, WMA, whatever) DAP other than the ones using rockbox. With Sony opening up to support AAC, I'm afraid they might ditch Atrac in the future, which might throw away gapless capability of future Sony devices. Sony walkman phones are not supporting Atrac from the get go.

This is just sad, especially even OGG supporting DAPs are not gapless (unless rockbox is used).

I really think that a "Rated good by audiophiles" DAP is a very long shot, especially since the demands of such people are very specific and very much different than what the Average Joe expects from his DAP.

The only solution is to use alternative firmware, which you yourself did mention. So just forget it. Gapless and anything else than MP3 + proprietary formats? Never going to happen.

My best suggestion is that you buy an iPod, put RockBox on it, and forget about saving your virginity to the knight on the white horse. We all know he will never come.

So disappointing because I had higher hopes a few years back. The DAP market is forever stuck in the middle. Mp3 won't go away and neither will the gaps.

Yup, no choice but to jump on board the Rockbox train, as there's no use moping about something over which you have little control.

// speculating //
Lets look at it from the bright other side: Given the rising popularity, Rockbox might be the product that in the long run forces major DAP manufacturers to give support for gapless playback. And maybe even Vorbis.

Wanting gapless is nothing to do with being an audiophile, it's to do with being a music lover. You don't have to be an audiophile to want to hear Abbey Road / Dark Side of the Moon / Beethoven's 5th / etc. the way it was intended.

I'm sure that Steve Jobs must like at least *one* album that needs gapless. If only he could be sat down and have it played to him in a way he will respond to ("Steve, we love the iPod, it's just such a wonderful device, oh and by the way it would be 110% perfect if only it also supported gapless - here, listen to this..."), then gapless would appear on the next iPod, guaranteed. And then everyone else would have to follow suit.

At least you can still grab an H120 or H140 iRiver from ebay and Rockbox it. In my case I replaced the 40GB drive with a 60GB. It's not an iPod, but it's a damn fine music player. The firmware is very stable and polished. Much better than the factory firmware.

It's too bad that even Sony never brags about their gapless capability with Atrac on Netowrk walkmen and MD/HiMD units. I do have an iPod with rockbox, but there are features I use that requires the original firmware. All we need is for Sony to advertise gapless playback like it's the next best thing since sliced bread, or the rockbox team to mock other companies' paid R&D team. I mean, it's amazing that a free firmware developed by a small group of people can do things properly, while a paid R&D team from big companies cannot.

That's the way to go these days.



What do you expect it's business? I know it's sad isn't it? there are some companies that support open standards, they are the usually the smarter ones. It goes to show you who really cares about advancing technology and standards. In reguards to Sony I don't think that's going to happen.

You can also get a Karma on eBay

The Cowon (Jet Audio) x5 does gapless, FLAC, ogg, video and is available in a 60 gig. (at least that is what I recall)

Addendum: After further research, I was apparently incorrect. Rockbox is still the only way to get gapless. Sorry about that.

If Zune wants to kill iPod, then it MUST gapless.

If i were to approach iPod owners on the streets i'm pretty sure 99% of them are blissfully oblivious to what gapless playback is. Or replaygain. Or VBR.

iPods are fashion. When has a MS product ever risen to that status?

Maybe if we pointed out to the artists that it's not possible to listen to their music the way they intended because of a lack of gapless support then people might listen.

Nothing like stopping buying stuff to make big companies take notice

Well, good luck stopping people from buying ipods......

Hello!

I'm looking for a flash player with gapless playback on WHATEVER format but .wav. Does this not exist?

Thanks.

Apparently, steve feels the same

http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....c=48231&hl=

http://www.apple.com/ipodnano/

http://www.apple.com/ipod/ipod.html

the new apple ipod nano (and the old ones with rockbox).

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/12/hands-o...d-nano-rainbow/

Thanks but I don't want to use iTunes. Is there anything else than iPod? Samsung's YP-Uxxx maybe?

I have a Sony flash MP3 player that plays ATRAC gapless but it has to be ripped from CD to ATRAC. If it is converted from MP3 to ATRAC it still has a gap. I haven't tried converting from other formats or downloaded tracks.

You might want to check out this DAP that was recently announce. It has the Sigmatel firmware that was most likely on its way to the next-gen Karma before Rio went bye-bye.

Trekstor (Vibez)
Vibez Datasheet PDF

LOL. I posted this on Aug 7 2006. Of course, as everybody knows, now we have gapless iPods. My question has been answered.

Thanks for the link but I don't need that much space!

plays Vorbis and FLAC too.

Well, sort of.
Gapless doesnt work on my Video iPod. In fact, the gaps have been made worse since the new iTunes came out and spent several minutes of my time "scanning" my tracks for some voodoo-stuff that I really dont understand.

Besides, HbG is right, the average consumer just doesnt care about gapless. Even if you told them that their Britney Spears albums would be better with gapless support, they still would be like "Uh, okay?".

You might want to update your iPod's firmware before jumping to conclussions.

Well, I don't think the iPod is a fashion or that people who listen to britney spears are the only ones who own iPods. I listen to Korn, Dream Theater, Bleeding Through, Soilwork, and a bunch of other metal bands. I purchased a iPod because I wanted something that used good hardware (I just came from a 3 Rio Karmas that all had the same cheap hard drive in them), came with good software, and something that was really easy to use.

Anyways, 5G iPods, 5.5G iPods, and 2G iPod nanos (I don't know about 1G nanos) are in fact gapless with the new firmwares.

1G nano is not gapless. Hopefully Apple is willing to update the firmware, considering 1G nano and 5G iPod use the same CPU.

Indeed there are people like you and me, who deviate from the average person in their listening habits and preferences in technology. I, for one, find that Technical Death Metal (Namely bands like Cryptopsy, The Monolith Deathcult, Spawn of Possession, Necrophagist, et cetera) is the only type of music which can occupate my mind enough for me to be entertained. And I also like Tool. Listening to Tool without gapless is blasphemy in my world.

But!
Snap out of your dreamy illusions where everybody has an IQ above 100, because there needs to be a hell of a lot people to balance out all of the intelligent people in this world, and those people all listen to fake marketing music, and really couldnt care less about a DAP's features.

"It can play music? So what? It can play video? So what? It's a DAP which all the cool people have? AWESOME!"


Bottom line is that only a fraction of ipod users care about gapless support, and if losing that fraction of customers costs less than implementing real gapless support, or flac support, or ogg support, or all of the above, then sorry dude - Why should Apple care?

You don't have to:
http://www.redchairsoftware.com/anapod/




"Not here." It works perfectly on my Video iPod. And as you can tell from several of my older posts, gapless playback has always been one of my pet peeves.


Apparently, they do care...

That 'fraction' was clearly big enough for Apple to decide to introduce real gapless support.

And I suppose Madonna really bitched about 'Confessions on a Dancefloor' not being for sale gapless so they had to introduce two versions in the iTMS to overcome this.