And it this gapless info passes the diskwriter test ?

ie..compared WAVs are identical

That's odd compared to this users statement:
http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index....8231&st=29#


Edit: Or not.

I suppose tags are only written if iTunes had to analyse the encoder delay/padding itself. The values it finds are then stored in an ID3-tag. If iTunes could just rely on the data already in the MP3-info header put there by LAME it skips writing the tag because the data is already in the file.

And what about fixing the existing problem instead of jumping to another shaky solution like cuesheet?
MPC had the same issue: small glitchs on transition. An updated encoder fixed this issue and there's no complaint anymore.
Cuesheet is nice, but it supposes that you must upload to your iPod the full album, and that you can't delete from it some annoying tracks and to keep the most enjoying ones. Moreover, cuesheet doesn't work well with MP3-VBR. foobar2000 did it well, but this makes MP3 seeking much slower, even on 3GHz CPU... so let imagine the issue on a small iPod.

Sure but the beauty of cue sheet is it will play gapless on even the simplest mp3 player, or every mp3 player.

The only issue is you can't see the track names if the player is not equipped for this. Mjor issue on portable players but the sound is ok.

vs...gapless info with LAME header which only works with the right player & if it was encoded with this info in the first place.

Also the problem with a few bad tracks, well dont play the album then right

If its a gapless album to start with and you cut tracks off that are mixed in, the transition is sure to be jarring either way.

Regarding speed for seeking, i'm inclined to think its more of a HD issue than a CPU issue, the bottle neck is how fast it can read off the HD.

I just pulled a track from my ipod and looked at it with a hex editor. The file is exactly the same as it was before I put it on my iPod using iTunes. iTunes has never written anything to this file.

(Still lots of talk about gapless playback with iTunes and very little about gapless playback on iPods)



Bingo!

iTunes only adds the tag to a track which IT encodes.

@hit_ny, quit trolling with the off-topic nonsense.

My intention is not to troll, i noticed the title gapless playback and stated my opinion on the topic.

If you want gapless, Apple's implementation is close but no cigar.

It's the only issue preventing me from getting an iPod atm.

And this thing that isn't a cigar, is this fact or also your stated opinion?

Diskwriter test...

yes or no ?

I've yet to read about it.

record ouput from the iPod to WAV doing its "gapless" thing

..compare

Hhmm... I had my doubts about that and did a check. So far you seem right.

Where does iTunes store the values then? In the database? I suppose that makes sense because that's where the iPod needs the values as well since it won't read the tags on the files. Anyone notice any changes to the database structure?

Yes, that's in the database... that's what iTunes does when it does the long/painful initial "gapless scan."

It is a bit odd to store the results of gain-level analysis in the metadata but not the results of gap-analysis though.

Bill, could you please confirm if iTunes is using the gapless info provided by Lame, as it seems?

(btw welcome here)

Ouch! Seems I questioned a statement I shouldn't have questioned. Sorry.

I have a 5th gen video ipod and the gapless playback is not on the player only via itunes, as far as I can see this was apples intnetion as they have also timed this with the release of the new updated 5th gen 30 and 80g which has longer battery life and .........gapless playback.

Dissapopinted that they have seen a niche and sought to exploit it, but hey ho we live in a world of captialism.

Has anyone on here actually experienced gapless playback on their ipod when it is not played thorugh itunes?

My music is set to gapless playback, have also ripped the odd cd again to see if this makes a difference or not, which it did not.

Oh and hello all, been a lurker for some time, just thought i'd interject with my experience.

Big Fella, did you upgrade your firmware? That should bring it to parity with the updated 5G.

Doh!! Yeah just figured that in a moment of clarity, all is good now.

LAME -aps encoded MP3s, in which I ended up with noticable gaps.
LAME -aps encoded MP3s split with pcutmp3. This most definitely writes LAME header information, which iTunes promptly ignored.

I've successfully got gapless working with ALAC ripped by iTunes itself, but that seems to be the one instance where it's working without issue on my 5G 60GB iPod Video. Nero AAC is intermittent.

Thanks, Gabriel. Yes, iTunes does use LAME's gapless info (after some sanity checks).

Ah ha! I think I now know why iTunes 7 did not show this "Gathering information about gapless playback" when I upgraded (or it disappeared so quick I did not notice). All (100%) of my tracks are in Apple Lossless, it appears that for Apple Lossless (and highly likely iTunes encoded AAC) this process is not necessary but is necessary for LAME / MP3 tracks.

Admittedly I have only ripped about 600 tracks so far but based on other peoples reports of it taking hours to scan I think this is the answer.

[/quote]
Ah ha! I think I now know why iTunes 7 did not show this "Gathering information about gapless playback" when I upgraded (or it disappeared so quick I did not notice). All (100%) of my tracks are in Apple Lossless, it appears that for Apple Lossless (and highly likely iTunes encoded AAC) this process is not necessary but is necessary for LAME / MP3 tracks.
[/quote]

Correct. The scan is also required for store files. The scan is particularly slow for VBR MP3 files because of the need to decode the whole file to get an accurate sample count.

I couldn't wait to try out this feature, but when I installed iTunes 7, I noticed a distinct lack of "Gathering information about gapless playback". My entire collection is Nero AAC (as it's been converted, via foobar2000 from FLAC and high bit-rate MP3 or MPC purely for my iPod).

I'm a little disapointed that iTunes didn't even try...

What's the feasibility of a 3rd party app 'converting' Nero AAC gapless data into iTunes gapless data?

It definately hasn't worked: I even tested with Dark Side of the Moon, just as Apple suggested .

Thanks for the confirmation and the great work on this all together.

iTunes does, yes. However, for some reason, this isn't translating over to gapless playback on my iPod...

My observations:

1. iTunes does read the Lame-Tag
   • some songs I've cut with pcutmp3 now stop / start at the right place
   • gapless songs blend in perfectly
2. iTunes plays other non Lame mp3's gapless as well
   • there is no need to mark the album as gapless or anything (that will only have an effect if one has crossfading enabled, which is turned off by default now)
   • there is a little crackle for non Lame encoded files and there might be a slight pause, but if there is one I didn't hear it during casual listening

Great, but to get back on-topic, is this working on your iPod or are you only talking about iTunes?

Considering no one wants to take this off-topic discussion here, perhaps the mods can split it to a new thread titled, "GAPLESS Playback now in iTunes7."

Might not be the right place, but since I'm quite confident some of the developers will read this thread.

Be proud of this release. Excellent product.

Thank you !

Another reason to just stick with the recommendations. I use Lame MP3 -V 2 --vbr-new only, straight ripped from EAC without any additional processing, and so far every gapless albums are perfect, both on iTunes7 and 5G iPod (firmware 1.2). It's funny that if one find that his/her iPod is not gapless with 1 codec he/she uses, then he/she decided it's the fact that the iPod is not gapless with anything and claimed gapless playback on iPod is invalid, even though we already have many reports about users (including me) enjoying perfect gapless playback on their iPods.

Can anyone else verify this?

I too have good results with gapless on my IPOD 5G 60GB model, updated to ver 1.2. Lame encoded VBR files (many are encoded with 3.90 LAME version) work gapless (by "work" I mean based on careful listening, not any formal tests). I have lots of live music concerts and these really put the gapless to the test! Older files I have encoded with Fhg, CBR 192 also seem to play well as gapless on the IPOD.

I will say that with VBR files, particularly long files (some of mine are 25 minute songs), you can't simply move the slider to the end of the song to test the gapless transition. If I do this, I often get a gap from one song to another. But if I let the song play from the beginning the gapless works fine.

Hmmm.... I updated to itunes 7 and on my ipod summary page it says "Software version: 1.1" and below that it says "Your ipod is up to date." and the update button is greyed out. Does anyone else experience this? I bought my 5G 60GB in February (this year).

I Don't know how the Windows version looks but under the iTunes menu, select "Check for Updates". On my OS X system, the updated firmware option didn't appear until I performed this action. Unless you have a 5G Pod forget gapless, no matter what you may read.

Well I found it strange tht you have gapless using Lame (VBR) and EAC.

i have tried EAC with Lame 3.97 using VBR (-v 0 --vbr-new) and in Itune I still have a little gap between my tracks of Madonna - Confession on a dance floor

I notice at the end of the track when I check the remaining time left at the end it jump from 0 to -2 and then jump to the next song an I can hear a little gap. I have also tried using CBR 256 with lame & EAC and the same gap problem.

So far the only way i get gapless is by ripping the CD directly from Itunes using (AAC-256-VBR, MP3 VBR256). Ripping the CD from Itunes just work great ! Real Gapless !

So for my gapless CD I will use Itunes with AAC (256 VBR) and for all my other CD I will still use EAC with lame v3.97 (256 VBR).

I just can't find the way to make mp3 files with (EAC & Lame) with gapless playback in Itunes and soon my new Ipod Video 80G that I preorder this week. Hope I will gat gapless in my Ipod also.

For all people who use the crossfade playback don't forget to enable " gapless Album" so Itunes will not crossfade this album when playing and you will see if you can get gapless plyback.

Even better just disabled the crossfade playback option for your testing.

Try this. On EAC, go to the menu EAC -> EAC options -> Extraction. Make sure the checkbox for "Delete leading and trailing silent blocks" is checked.

I have tried this and still have a little gap. I can hear it because I have good ears and probably some people wont notice it. The CD rip from Itunes is still the perfect solution for me so far.

Also, with this option enabled now my MP3 are no more 100% confidence with Accuraterip. So I uncheck this option and now my Mp3 rip is back to 100% with Accuraterip.

So this option is changing samples in the extraction process because I have made 2 wav files with the option enable and disable and compare them in EAC and they were different and one was longer .052.

Thanks for the advice but for now it is not the perfect solution.

May i ask.... that Madonna album is gapless??? even more... does Madonna make mixed albums, instead of individual songs?

Yes, "Confessions..." is a gapless album (like a non-stop live performance).

A gap, no matter how small it is, will always be noticable. I don't hear any gaps/blips/clicks on my gapless albums. I use MD and Atrac, so I know if tracks are not played gaplessly.

If I have that checkbox unchecked, I don't even have gapless with my MP3s with foobar (have to use gapkiller to get gapless). I'd rather have gapless albums than worrying about 100% accuraterip/differences in file length, things that probably have nothing to do with the music anyway(probably more about EAC eliminating the silent blocks).

Maybe it's the optical drive? Try ripping the CD as an image file in EAC (1 big WAV file + CUE sheet). Load the image with Daemon tools, and let EAC rip to MP3s, from that image.

Of course, if ripping through iTunes give you perfect gapless, then I would just do that.

Noooooooooo!!!

If EAC is messing up anything it is because a compression offset is configured. Why tell EAC to remove silence that actually exists on the disc?!?

The only reason to do this is if you're ripping from a CD-R that was burned with additional silence between tracks.

This was horrible advice!

Did you test that by fast-forwarding to the end of the song or did you let iTunes play the whole track as suggested by garym?

Hi, just to echo what other people have been saying, I tested gapless on my 4G 20Gb Ipod and it does not seem to work . Although gapless is turned on in iTunes and playback is gapless in iTunes, when these files are uploaded to the iPod they are no longer played back gaplessly.

I should point out that I tested the "getting gap when not playing the entire song" on several different songs on albums created over several years using different versions of LAME, Fhg, sometimes VBR and sometimes CBR. Some of these MP3s were created from original CD, some from FLAC files, and some from SHN (the latter mostly downloaded from live music archive (archive.org). I can consistently create gaps when I start a song and move it until about a minute from the end to wait for the song transition. On the same songs, when I start from the beginning, I don't get the gap. On shorter songs (less than 7 minutes or so) I can fast forward to about 2.5 minutes from the end and sometimes NOT get the gap. I suspect all this behavior is strictly related to the buffering mechanism of the IPOD itself. I believe it gathers about 20 minutes of music in its buffer and interfering with this via fast forwarding probably screws things up. I can say that I spent all day yesterday listening to live concert MP3s playing on the IPOD through a relatively good home stereo system and when left alone to play from beginning to end, I heard no gaps, ticks, etc. If you actually look at the IPOD while it is transitioning, you'll see some odd behavior with the counter on VBR files, but still the gapless works fine. I think the odd behavior on the counter with VBR files is something that has always been an issue with ITUNES and IPOD but in recent years has not been a problem on the actual playback itself.

Apple doesn't support gapless on anything but the latest iPod releases... 5G iPod and 2G nano. I think they made that fairly clear.

Yes when I test I fast foward to about the last 20 seconds. With MP3 made with EAC & LAME I have a tiny gap when I test this way.

If I rip the CD from Itunes and use AAC or Mp3 I get gapless playback no matter if I fast foward at the end of the song or not.

Well I will need to test the gapless in I tunes for mp3 rip with EAC without fast fowarding and see if I get any gaps.

Why? The part removed is silent anyway.

Because the issue we're talking about is extraneous gaps (padding) that are introduced by lossy encoders. Removing silent blocks (before the encoding takes place) isn't relevant and doesn't solve the problem.

How do you know who adds the gaps? How do you know it's the encoder? Regardless of the relevance, at least this will eliminate the potential that the gaps are introduced by the optical drive/EAC.

Again, I use EAC + LAME MP3, and all my gapless albums are played perfectly gapless on my 5G iPod, so I don't think Lame (the encoder) adds any additional gaps.

If your ripped tracks (uncompressed) have added bits, which aren't on the original CD, then your drive is probably junk or broken. (or as greynol said, compression offset is misused). Or you're not talking about gapless in the sense of "tracks which are meant to transition seamlessly". A properly functioning drive and properly configured EAC will not add silence that didn't exist on the CD.


http://wiki.hydrogenaudio.org/index.php?title=Gapless

So you're saying that Lame MP3s will always have additional gaps? That means Lame MP3 is never truly gapless then, regardless of tags/metadata information.