Pardon the thread grave digging, but I have a question, and I'd like to add my insight to the gapless and codecs topic in the context of PMPs.
Question: those of you with S9s, specifically with regard to MP3 gapless support, are you finding that gapless playback behaves seamlessly even with higher bitrate MP3s? (I'll address the reason for my question later.) I love the idea of FLAC, but being relatively new to the realm of high-quality portable audio, I don't have a player that supports it thus I have an extensive 320 kbps LAME library.
In response to a few folks on this forum, and in this thread (I'm too lazy to dig back and reference all the quotes.) who have asked about gapless, the benefits and, specifically, rock/metal and gapless, I'll say this: don't forget all those rock and progressive concept albums! Forefathers, Rush come to mind. And
relative newcomers like Opeth write horribly beautiful albums that flow in concept and composition from one song to the next. Gaps are an icepick to the ear on these albums.
Now if you've made it this far (sorry) here are my thoughts on gapless and portables. Gapless playback requires intensive processing. In the beginning, I don't think the pioneers of compressed audio expected or thought it would expected of them to delivery audiophile approved media. Lossless formats do this (Remember, it's still compressed though even if it's just the superfluous bits that are removed.) but at a cost or costs. Some like FLAC aren't that widely supported, proprietary formats like WMA lossess are just that, proprietary. And these formates are process intensive. Relatively modern PCs and playback software have never had a problem processing high bitrate or lossless files and playing them gaplessly assuming the codec supported it.
Technology blazes on and enthusiasts and consumers demand more. Codecs improve and so do PMPs, but in the PMP market, the requirements and desires of audio enthusiasts lag behind. Why? A combination of proprietary curmudgeony, processing power, and majority consumer requirements. Microsoft develops WMA lossless so they aren't obligated (never mind what a small percentage of their customers want) to support FLAC. Which is, due to its enthusiast pedigree and the fact that it's open source, a much more efficient codec than WMA. I'm just picking on MS as an example. (I happen to own a Zune 80 v2) But when MS has its own lossless format, why embrace FLAC?
Especially when your marketplace is all WMA? The sad part is, the high bitrate WMA format is so process intensive the Zune device can't play more than a couple songs before its buffer chokes, the processor and memory aren't powerful and fast enough, and the device code isn't efficient enough to read and cache the next song. And... you've got gap.
This brings me back to the reason I asked about S9 gapless playback and high bitrates. Who wants gapless on a portable if it only works on 128 kbps files? Not me. I want my cake and I want to eat it too.
My point is this: In order for us to enjoy gapless and lossless playback across a majority of PMP manufacturers, manufacturers must drop the pretense of proprietary codecs, support the "fringe" codecs that are growing in popularity (along with the idea of portable high fidelity) and portable technology must improve. Thank goodness that's inevitable.
We'll see it sooner or later, but right now the desires of the few are in direct contradiction with manufactures plans and who they perceive (Though I grudgingly admit it's more than perception. They do have market researchers after all.) to be their priority demographic. I guess we have to yell louder and at a higher bitrate.
-Ogre and out
P.S dfkt, if you're listening (and I know you always are) lemmeno about the S9 and high bitrate gapless playback, OK? Something tells me that because it has only flash memory as opposed to a HDD, it does fine. Could solid state drives be part of the answer?
