Apple's Steve Jobs during a live press conference in San Francisco currently going on (at 10AM PST today, Tuesday, Sept. 12th) just announced a feature on iPods that will be sure to please audio enthusiasts -- GAPLESS PLAYBACK!

More details to follow. New iPods to be released. Please update this thread as the new iPods and GAPLESS info is released. This is taken from a live IRC transcript with iLounge reporters inside the Apple news event today.

See below for later posts for details on new iTunes 7, new iPod models/pricing/features, larger iPod video format, new set top wireless mac mini-like box for audio/video and more from this Apple press event.

Link to Quicktime presentation of this media event announcing these products that you can watch:
http://events.apple.com.edgesuite.net/sep_...vent/index.html

Question is: Do they comply with already existant quasi standards (LAME header, Nero AAC/MP4 gapless solution) or do they use a proprietary solution?

Also new iPods released. brighter with brightness control, up to 6.5 hours video playback, new headphones, gapless playback. Pricing and specs below:

iPods (6G) are now: $249 with 30 GB, and $349 with 80GB capacity

Nanos in aluminum colors of: Green, silver, black, blue and pink. New iPod Shuffle is much smaller.

Nano 8GB is $249 available in black only, 4GB is $199 in all colors but black, 2GB is $149 in silver only

Shuffle comes in only 1 size now: metal body, 1 model (1GB), $79, ships in october.

iTunes 7 available today! Will download free cover art for your existing music tracks if you are missing cover art on any songs.

TV shows are now encoded at 640x480 (h264), up from 320x240.

3 different views of iTunes, list view, album view (with art and tracks), then "cover flow view" lets you rapidly find what you want by album cover.

New games for new iPods and 5G iPods on iTunes ($4.99 each): Bejeweled, Cubis 2, Mahjong, Mini golf, pac man, tetris, texas holdem, vortex, and zuma.

You can now sync between multiple computers using an iPod, as long as both are authorized on the same account.

Movie store: 75 near DVD image quality (640x480) Movies now from iTunes. Dolby surround audio. Same day availability as DVD. Pre-order with one click. Most titles will be 9.99. New releases 12.99 preorders and first week, after that up to 14.99. New titles added every week. U.S. now, International in 2007.

No need to download new songs for gapless to work.

NFL football added to iTunes. Whole 2006 season added today: 1.99 per game or 24.99 for whole season (season pass).

Set top box (for video/audio) like Mac Mini to be released 1Q 2007... Will be wireless. Will tenatively be called iTV. 1/2 size of Mac Mini, built-in power supply, USB, Ethernet, 802.11 "wireless component video", optical audio and HDMI ports, plus old RCA stereo audio ports. Works with Apple Remote. Video looks very close to DVD quality even on a huge theater sized projector. Video access is instantaneous, looks like watching a DVD. iTV lets you get access to trailers and iTunes store selected content from internet. iTV box works with Mac or PC and is priced at $299!

Steve Jobs says: Apple is now in your den, living room, car, pocket

And will gapless playback be possible for older iPod models via firmware updates?

My heart hopes so, but my mind tells me that Apple would rather have me buy a new iPod.


52%?!? Before we know it you'll be able to hide a nano up your.....

sleeve.

Just maybe we will get the update on our current 5Gs as it has been announced that games can be downloaded to the 5G iPods.

52% was smaller iPod nano packaging size, not smaller iPod Nano size, and has been corrected above in thread.

The newer versions of iTunes detects which version of LAME that was used to encode by reading the LAME header instead of the "Encoder Settings" tag that LAME also writes. It is possible that the new ipods will use the LAME header or they could be using a gapless DSP hack.

(opera lover inside) This is an excellent new! I just hope that "gapless" doesn't mean "crossfading" in the marketing idiom.

iTunes7:

"Determining Gapless Playback Information"
"Analyzing 452 of 1568"

Hhmm... interesting... it's not just analyzing AAC, MP3 as well.
Under 'Get info' of a song you can select "Part of a gapless album" under the 'Options' tab.


Edit:
OK, I can confirm it now. Gapless playback works for both AAC and MP3, even made with previous version of the encoders (Lame 3.92 for instance). No evidence of crossfading, appears to be the genuine stuff.

I wonder if and when there will be an update for the 5G iPod.

I have a Mini and I doubt it will be updated.

It is an interesting question though whether all older Nano's and 5G's will get gapless. I guess they will because there is supposed to be a firmware update for them that introduces the other introduced new stuff. I doubt they made two version of the same firmware with just gapless as the difference between the older and newer versions.

@Maurits

Is it possible for you to encode some samples with iTunes AAC encoder (and eventually the MP3 one), just to see if the bundled encoders are also gapless?
Here is a small sample collection of my own which makes potential gap very easy to spot.
Ideally, I'd like to see if the resulting files would play gaplessly not only on iTunes but also with another player (especially foobar2000, which supports AAC gapless playback for years with compatible encoders).

Thank you

Any word on HE-AAC?

I'll have a look, hold on...

Edit: OK, the files are here.

I tried a HE-AAC stream and that didn't work, sadly.

Hope current 5G iPods get a new firmware update for gapless...

iTunes mentions something about QuickTime 7.1.3 being needed for video playback, however that doesn't seem to be in Software Update yet.

I just tried itunes 7. It scans and adds gapless playback info onto its database. I only tried a few tracks on it, so far the gapless playback works on itunes 7 but the tracktime VBR problem is still there and it is a huge resource hog uses about 40MB and 6 percent CPU power just to decode a MP3 . Does not use external album artwork and you need have the album artwork tagged (which is a waste of space and time)

EDIT: The Non-Itunes AAC decoder bug still on the latest version of Quicktime

Anyway I only spent five minutes with it and i removed like it was a virus

Steve said:

"You might be listening to Abbey Road or Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon, and one track doesn't flow seamlessly into the next. We are going to put this back together as it was intended and offer Gapless Playback for songs encoded with MP3, AAC, and Apple Lossless."

Well i dont know what sort of cpu you're running but its only using between 5-6% CPU to play a 128kbps AAC on my old old old 1ghz G4.

Interesting, iTunes 7 now integrates iPod software updates on its own.

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

I was using that bloatwared player on a Athlon 2000+ with 512MB. It was using about 6% CPU to decode a LAME APS MP3 and using about 100% to render + scroll on the screen it was like browsing the web with a crappy 2D VGA card without even 2D accelaration.

Awesome! How come this thread isn't in "Validated news"?

i was just notified by iTunes 7, iPod Video Firmware 1.2 is now available

Does that mean so much for your Rockbox?

It's not gapless. It's very close - I'd eyeball it at 20ms based on what I'm hearing. I'm not complaining.

(5g 60gb, encodes with nero AAC q0.3 LC)

So if it has to scan your library it's either A) adding some sort of metadata to your files or B) adding info to your library, if not both. Then, assumably, it's using said data to sort of connect the files during playback. So, in theory, it's not really playing back gaplessly in what we see as the normal fashion, but rather using a work around (?).

Would you guys agree?

Or am I missing some prerequisite knowledge?

I don't know if itunes 7 fixes the recently broken DRM but if it does then it would be convenient for them to hold off on valuable updates such as gapless in order to get people to upgrade away from the cracked drm...

I have no idea if it does this as I don't have an ipod or use itunes... just a curious thought...

let me get this one thing straight here

you have to set "part of a gapless album" to yes on all the files you want to play gaplessly?

as for the rockbox comment, I need to update my sig, I haven't used rockbox since apple firmware 1.1.2 was released, since it fixed the background noise issue in the older firmware that drove me nuts

Yes, you must set the gapless flag manually. (which is slow since it rewrites all the files!)

The gapless info itself, I suspect, is stored in a separate database rather than in the file.

that being said, as of iTunes 7 all my files have a new tag

ITUNSMPB shows up in fb2k, and has a similar numerical value as the soundcheck tag

perhaps this is the gapless playback info

Anyone confirm which iPod's got firmware updates?

*Holds out hope that the Mini got one for gapless*

If not, I may want a new Nano. Hard to resist one now.

Wow, this is really great news, I might actually get an iPod now!

I'm testing out iTunes 7 right now with an Avalanches album, which is completely gapless. They are mp3's encoded with 3.90.3 at alt-preset standard, and they sound perfectly gapless to me, but I don't know if it is using the LAME metadata or not. The files are not modified when iTunes scans for gapless information. You do not have to check "part of a gapless album" to make it work; I don't know what that option is useful for.

well...from the help file

"Some CDs, such as live concert albums and classical albums, are meant to be played straight through, with no fading between the songs (or tracks). If you turn on Crossfade Playback, you can have iTunes turn it off when you play these albums. "

apparently checking that will disable crossfading on those tracks

and i noticed after a clean install, crossfading is disabled by default in iTunes 7

I can also verify that setting "part of a gapless album" to yes has no effect if crossfading is disabled. I just ripped a live album and it played back seamlessly without that being enabled

ITUNSMPB

ITUNes Seamless Media PlayBack?

I just tried out gapless using my 4th Generation iPod Photo, it worked perfectly on the album Blood Sugar Sex Magik by Red Hot Chili Peppers. It is an album were ALL the songs transition into each other gaplessly, and it worked great.

iTunes 7 scanned both my library on my hard disc, and my iPod the first time I connected it. However I then had to go into the iPod, select all the tracks in Blood Sugar Sex Magik, then select "Gapless Album" YES in the bottom right hand corner of the Multiple Item Information screen. As soon as I did that it rescanned the files, and made it work.

"The new iTunes will download cover art for all the songs in your library, no matter where you got them from, as long as you have an iTunes account."

good news for cover art lovers.

(looks like apple is reading HA )

Instead of a checkbox for "Part of a gapless album," why didn't they just do the opposite and create a checkbox that says "Part of an album that I want to play with gaps for God knows why"...?

It just seems absurd. Why wouldn't it just playback gaplessly by default? Geesh!

There is an option for that and by default is off. It doesn't appear to be needed though, I have albums which play gapless without using this option. It plays gapless by default, or so it seems.

That's kind of amazing. Where is that quote from?

its been reported on all the blogs, taken from the presentation.

That quote is from slashdot, but i have also seen the same report in other blogs.

It continues with:

"(A confirmation dialog says: "Information about songs with missing artwork will be sent to Apple. Apple does not keep any information related to the contents of your music library.")"

The normal fashion is A), adding metadata. It's just not the data in the Lame-header but in a ID3/m4a-tag field. Apart from that, the method appears the same as other (non-crossfading) gapless solutions, storing info on padding and encoder-delay in the file and using that info on playback to skip the gaps.

"We've added a View switch, a 3-position swtch. we've added a 2nd view called album view, so you can scroll through your music library and look at it by album. what if you ripped your CDs and don't have the covers? Today wer'e announcing free missing album cover art for all the music in your library if you have an iTunes acct. iTunes will automatically download it for free."

http://www.engadget.com/2006/09/12/live-fr...e-its-showtime/

Gotcha. Thanks!

But this is supposed to be seamless for existing MP3s, right? So they must be using a heuristic based on the silence in the file. (Obviously they don't need to do anything for M4a though.)

I've taken a peek at the metadata for a gapless-tagged M4A file and couldn't find anything out of the ordinary, so I sort of suspect they're storing it in a different file.

I have no idea how they do it, it scans existing files and seems to work on all sorts of MP3's, regardless of original encoder.

For m4a I expect there to be some extra info in the MOOV atom. Haven't checked it yet though.
Edit: a quick peek with a Hex-editor in an iTunes analysed m4a file shows 'pgap' data in the MOOV atom. That'll be it.

I noticed that, too, with a nero encode -- played the same album encoded with lame (with --nogap flag, which isn't really supposed to be necessary, I know) and it was perfectly seamless.

Hmmm.. I suspect they're scanning the music, determining where the ending is based on where the track suddenly becomes "all zeros" or equivalent, and then marking that point. Perhaps the same for the beginning of the track. Thus it's sort of a faux-gapless detection, because if you don't get the real gapless info at encode time, it's lost.

Perhaps it does true gapless on new encodes though.

Here's a pic of the data from a gapless-flagged iTunes-encoded AAC file.

this is what itunes help says about the gapless check box...

"Playing albums straight through
Some CDs, such as live concert albums and classical albums, are meant to be played straight through, with no fading between the songs (or tracks). If you turn on Crossfade Playback, you can have iTunes turn it off when you play these albums.

To override Crossfade Playback for specific songs:
In iTunes, select a song and choose File > Get Info.
Click Options.
Select "Part of a gapless album."
Tip: You can select all the songs at once (press Command as you select them), choose File > Get Info, and then choose Yes from the Gapless Album pop-up menu."

So, indeed iTunes does play gaplessly and cleanly (in my tests for far)... even when faking it for content that can't be gapless, like FhG encoded MP3 files. They may have gotten this right for the masses. I'd be curious on the technical details on what they are really doing.

Also, they added my beloved "Album Artist' grouping logic. FINALLY! They are using the "aART" atom for M4A files... which was documented, but not used in iTunes. For MP3 ID3v2.3 content, they use the TPE2 tag. I was already using both of these... so it "just worked."