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Help w/ gapless on Zune 30 ... what is best format, bitrate, etc?

post #1 of 5
12/17/09 at 12:31am
Thread Starter 
All the music on my ol' brownie Zune 30 comes from either a CD or a lossless digital file (FLAC, SHN, APE). I use dbpoweramp for converting, and right now my collection is converted to 320kbps mp3 for use on the Zune. A lot of what I listen to is classical and ROIO's (especially Pink Floyd), so tracks in excess of 20min in length are common. While I'm plenty fine with the SQ from the 320kbps mp3's, considering this is for a portable player, the gapless playback is very much hit or miss. Sometimes the transition between tracks is seamless, sometimes there's a large gap. It seems that the gaps are always in the same places, but if I rewind and play it back sometimes the gap will not be there the second time.

Anyway, I decided to experiment. I tried WMA 9.2 lossless on Dark Side of the Moon. And I was surprised that the playback was not only awesome, but there were no gaps between tracks whatsoever. Absolutely seamless! Until the end of "Us and Them" and the beginning of "Any Colour You Like" .... then I had about a 1.5 second wait between tracks.

Some people don't understand what the fuss is about, I know. But gapless playback is rather important to me. Not important enough maybe to buy a new player right now, but enough to solicit on head-fi for suggestions.

So, 1st gen Zune owners ... have you found the golden compromise for reasonable SQ and flawless gapless???
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post #2 of 5
12/17/09 at 8:38pm
The only lossless that the zune supports is WMA lossless. No support for Vorbis either which is a shame and typical Microsoft.
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post #3 of 5
12/17/09 at 8:43pm
Thread Starter 
Yeah I know WMA lossless is the only lossless codec my old Zune will run. And unfortunately, I've already concluded that flawlessly gapless playback isn't going to happen with it. Maybe if all my tunes were 2-3 minutes in length, but not when you're listening to a 25 minute version of A Saucerful of Secrets followed by a 26 minute version of Echoes.

I can't get perfect gapless with WMA 10 Pro at 384kbps either, so I'm just going to stick with my 320CBR mp3's until I get a new player.
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post #4 of 5
12/17/09 at 8:44pm
Quote:
Originally Posted by d_headshot View Post
The only lossless that the zune supports is WMA lossless. No support for Vorbis either which is a shame and typical Microsoft.
I dare you to name another mainstream player with vorbis support.
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post #5 of 5
12/17/09 at 10:35pm
get new and better hardware. it will never playback lossless with those huge file sizes.
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