Nice post, Bangraman, it's good to see that Apple has admirers able to defend it in such an elegant, well argumented way. I disagree, but respect your points. In any case, Proust was fussy and it wouldn't surprise me he would be picky about his pens. But obviously by proustian I would think of...

Quote: Originally Posted by K2Grey With Rockbox, the iPod has gapless playback (and a parametric EQ, and file tree browsing which is more convenient for unusual arrangements). I have the artist name set to the composer, and then have the conductor's name in the album. For example, the...

Quote: Originally Posted by marcelproust I don't want to be recognised as an ipod used in public. Completely off-topic, I just thought your username was very interesting. I love In Search of Lost Time, it's my all-time favorite novel. And to me it seems fitting that a proustian...

Quote: Originally Posted by The Monkey Personally, I couldn't care less about gapless because it really doesn't factor into the way I listen to music. However, I want to manufacturers to care about gapless because it means they will be paying attention to a detail that is important to...

But the whole point of the gapless discussion is exactly having albums like Dark Side of the Moon without gaps, not the Sinatra songs. It's not inserting fermatas in Beethoven symphonies that were never supposed to have them, it's not breaking the flow of live recordings, it's preserving the...

I don't think it's especially attractive, but then, I don't think iPods are either. I usually get tired of these "look at me" styles. But what really bothers me in this player is that it's the size of an iPod. Sony was always the leader in pocketability, and now they suddenly create a player...

Quote: Originally Posted by jmb I have a feeling as C38368 pointed out, that there will be some instances of audible gaps, but I am just excited to finally get gapless playback. As a former Karma user, I can say that will probably be the case. I had more than a few instances of...

HeadKase, maybe you can save some space by ripping CDs to Atrac at 192kbps (you'll need the new SonicStage 3.2; make sure you deselect the copy protection option). I don't have the HD5, but I know that bitrate works, and some people say it's difficult to distinguish it from 256.

You can use Atrac 192 with Sony's HDD players.

Not only that. Now you have the option to copy CDs in the perfectly gapless Atrac without DRM, and Atrac offers more bitrates (48, 64, 96, 128, 132, 160, 192, 256, 320), though most of them are not yet supported by existing players.

I'm sorry, I respect Bangraman's knowledge, but I don't see why this would be cheating. Is there any rule that forbids a DAP maker of tweaking the sound to make it more pleasant to the general public? It seems to me that Sony just understands a little better the limitations of its hardware and...

Quote: Originally Posted by pata2001 The good news is, Atrac is not the only gapless codec. OGG and WMA are gapless too. The bad news is the only DAP that can play them gaplessly is the Rio Karma. All other OGG and WMA supporting DAPs cannot play them gaplessly. For now and the...

Sony should kind of open Atrac, liberate it from DRM (for CD copies; if Apple can do it, Sony should do it as well) and offer the encoder to third party software, be it Windows Media Player, RealPlayer or Musicmatch. It's too late now, but they should have tried to make Atrac one more standard...

Quote: Originally Posted by davidd I think Sony's HDD players do gapless, but I'm not sure if it's does gapless for ATRAC only or for both ATRAC and MP3 They are gapless for Atrac, but only if converted directly from CD. It's certainly a limitation, but that said, it's the only...

One question: can you pause and have a fast ff to search a specific point in a track? That would justify the separate stop button, and would be a nice addition.

Quote: Originally Posted by traficante That is true if you buy it online but I just got mine 30 minutes ago in store for $149. It did ring up for $199 but the sign said $149. So if you want one race down to CC before they change the signs. Funny thing is that both CC I visited had...

They already corrected the price to $199. I just saw it at a Circuit City (and confirmed in its Web site).

I saw this player today at a Circuit City in Manhattan for $299. What's on with Sony, dropping it unnanounced like this? (It doesn't even show in the SonyStyle Web site.) In any case, my through-the-glass impression was that it looks about the same size as the HD1, though isn't as elegant, but...

Quote: Originally Posted by PSmith08 I think this issue reveals, very effectively, the core market for the iPod. Apple clearly is marketing this at people with a decent collection of random music. Audiophiles are attracted to it by storage capacities, digital line-out, WAV capabilities...

Quote: Originally Posted by PSmith08 Gapless playback and the lack thereof is the one serious flaw with the iPod for classical (the reliance on the questionable Gracenote CDDB service is another issue). As others have noted, many albums need gapless, classical or not. Pink Floyd's Dark...

True, Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth are not played entirely without pauses. But the String Quartet Op. 131 is, and there are other examples of big orchestral or instrumental works that are supposed to be played continuously: Nicholas Maw's Odyssey, Messiaen's Turangalila-Symphonie, John Tavener's...

Quote: Originally Posted by Spad Really? Odd, but I've been attending classical concerts all over the world for more than fifty years, and, despite having heard all 19 symphonies multiple times, I've never experienced a single such performance. I wonder how Karajan could have...

Quote: Originally Posted by Spad Perhaps I'm missing something, but why would one want gapless playback of classical music? If I had a gapless formatted symphony I would be doing everything possible to insert pauses between movements. Now I'm the one missing something. Why would...

You have to consider that the iPod is not gapless. The pause it produces between tracks is extremely irritating, especially when you're listening to a piece like Beethoven's Fifth or Sixth Symphonies, Stravinsly's Petrushka or almost any opera. I'd suggest you to go with a Sony player and use...

Sony's HD players, Vaio Pocket included, don't add absolutely any gap to the playback. Which means tracks encoded directly in the gapless Atrac format will play with perfect gaplessness. Tracks converted from any format to Atrac will have the gap added by previous compression, and playback of...