The gapless mystery

[jdk]

So here I am, still using my Rockboxed first gen Nano, making my annual tour of the web to see if anyone has released an MP3 player worthy of the name that handles gapless playback.

Well it seems at last we have a contender, the Cowon S9 -- at £170 for a non-expandable 8GB player....The S9 is overkill, all I want is a music player.

And that's it. Apart from iPods and the Zune (very expensive if you're importing to the UK), gapless is still a big black hole in the MP3 player market.

Most of my collection is classical, so gapless is essential. Last time I looked, classical music was about 5 per cent of the market. That's obviously not a big enough percentage to make it worthwhile for the player manufacturers to add gapless play.

But then there are live albums, of course, and some soundtracks and so forth. So it does puzzle me. Is gapless playback hugely complex? Or is there really no demand from consumers?

I just can't believe I'm sitting here contemplating buying a refurbed Nano 4G simply because I want a player with more capacity, and the Nano is the only reasonably priced option that handles gapless....

[saratoga]

Its not that complex, but it does involve having both an mp3 decoder and a playback system capable of gapless decoding. Most of the time they're written by different groups/companies so I guess they tend not to coordinate.

[vice]

Well rockbox has been ported (somewhat) to the nano second generation, go look at the status of the port and maybe you'll be interested in trying it out.

[jdk]

Originally Posted by vice

Well rockbox has been ported (somewhat) to the nano second generation, go look at the status of the port and maybe you'll be interested in trying it out.

Nano 2G still only offers me 8GB at best -- my first gen Nano is 4GB and I was hoping to jump to 16GB at least, hence why I'm looking at Nano 4G. I'd also like the novelty of not using Rockbox!

Am I the only person astonished by the fact that a company as big as Sony has created hundreds of MP3 players over the years and never seems even to have made an attempt to create a player capable of gapless playback -- and that from a company heavily involved in the classical music industry over the years.

[saratoga]

Its basically a reasonably complicated feature that only a small minority of people even know about, so of course its mostly on products that are positioned as 'top shelf' players.

Either keep using rockbox, or just buy a product that sells to the niche you want. Cowon is an obvious choice.

[The DarkSide]

Sony removed the gapless support from the non-sonic stage players as a spanking for all of us that didn't like the proprietary software. On the Japanese Walkman players they still have gapless, along w/the ability to use the ATRAC codec. Sony can really be a bunch of BEOUCHES!

[vice]

Blasphemy! Rockbox is not a novelty, it is salvation from the evils and of sync programs. All possible features (and more) are included in rockbox. I'd pray that rockbox was more readily available on the newest mp3 players so I wouldn't have to compromise.

Ye he who does not believe in drag n' drop be doomed to the lowest pit in hell! John 4:12

On a more serious note try cowon.

[Olley]

I have to admit I didn't know what "gapless" was until it became a hot topic on a few threads on this site. Of the 200+ albums I own I have only two (both live performances) that benefit from gapless playback. If someone cares to start a thread with a list of all the albums you have that "need" to be played gapless, perhaps the term and it's implimentation will become more wide-spread and better known.

I've got "Unplugged" by Eric Clapton, and "Dark Side of the Moon" by Pink Floyd. There's another one in there I can't remember at the moment, which is of course not that memorable.

[dfkt]

My list would be shorter if I would mention which albums I listen to that do NOT need gapless playback...

[jdk]

Originally Posted by vice

Blasphemy! Rockbox is not a novelty, it is salvation from the evils and of sync programs.

I never suggested for a minute that Rockbox was a novelty. On the contrary, it has been my saviour for the last couple of years, turning my first gen Nano into a useful device.

What I actually meant was that I would enjoy the novelty of experiencing gapless playback on a player that didn't need Rockbox to achieve it...

[vice]

Don't take me too seriously, now I think of the 30+ reviews I've read , gapless playback is not something they tend to highlight much or at all (unlike apps which they never shaddup about, i.e. cnet) Seems cowon looks like your obvious choice, d2,d2+, etc.

P.S. Every time someone talks about gapless playback it's almost always involves 100% of the time pink floyd's dark side of the moon. Every single time!

[quintets_man]

Originally Posted by vice

...Seems cowon looks like your obvious choice, d2,d2+, etc.

P.S. Every time someone talks about gapless playback it's almost always involves 100% of the time pink floyd's dark side of the moon. Every single time!

I think the S9 is the only thing from Cowon with gapless playback(but I could be wrong).

And Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon seems like the official album to test gapless playback with.(And live albums of course )

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by vice

Don't take me too seriously, now I think of the 30+ reviews I've read , gapless playback is not something they tend to highlight much or at all (unlike apps which they never shaddup about, i.e. cnet) Seems cowon looks like your obvious choice, d2,d2+, etc.

P.S. Every time someone talks about gapless playback it's almost always involves 100% of the time pink floyd's dark side of the moon. Every single time!

The D2 and D2+ don't do gapless....the only Cowon that does is the S9. There is a Rockbox port for the D2, but I don't know if it's anywhere near complete.

quintets_man , one minute quicker to the punch!

[Leontion]

Gapless is an important feature for me too. The vast majority of classical works require gapless. I went for a Cowon D2+ DAB and installed Rockbox in the end. I also wanted a DAB radio to listen to BBC Radio 3 at work and there really are very few players with this feature.

Rockbox is in a reasonably functional if a bit buggy state for the D2 at present and is working fine on my player.

I find it very odd that gapless playback isn't supported on more players - classical music may only be a small part of the market but when you add in those listening to live albums, audiobooks, dance music, dj mixes etc, there must be a fairly sizeable number of consumers wanting this feature.

Apple seem to have got the message and listened to the demands of their customers - perhaps part of the reason that they dominate the market so much. It's a shame that other manufacturers don't get it.

[Marvin the Martian]

The majority of the market probably would give you a blank stare if you asked them if they wanted gapless playback on their DAP. Fourteen months ago I wouldn't have known what gapless was, because I was just getting into the DAP scene for the first time.

The more informed consumers, like those who participate in the site, know what it is, but don't assume that everyone does.

[gebal]

I dont know, when we had CD players, gapless was one of the box stickers, after the battery life and skip stuff.

And just because the majority of gapless content is in the classical genre (and older rock), there are plenty of modern CDs that comply as well. Common Dreads by Enter Shikari for example, lends itself well to gapless on my S9

EDIT:
In fact, I want to argue with myself a little here. The problem is, the sort of people who go out looking for gapless are generally already in the realms of audiophilia. Classical music just doesn't work if you have some cheap player that cant separate sound leaving you with a mess. Because of this, its only the players that want to reach the audiophiles that get the feature, like the S9 and presumably the ipod based on its large-ish market share on head fi.
As far as the likes of sandisk and samsung are concerned, they've probably decided that if I go out and buy a fuze its more likely to be because its an 8gb player for less than £60, not anything to do with the audio processing.

[kasrhp]

Heck, even listening on random is nice to have gapless. I always loved the end of a song fading into the next one. Why not? seems more seamless.