[Lamplighter]

Hello all- I have been reading about formats and have been hearing of people tout these terms (ATRAC Lossless, Gapless playback, etc...) but I am unsure of what these terms gapless and lossless really mean ??
Are these things that I should know in regards to sound quality, bitrate space, etc.. or perhaps they are very specified and I'm probably just OK staying with my usual format and bitrates ?

Thank you for any information, Cheers LL-

 

[LFC_SL]

Gapless - as suggested means no gap between songs, i.e. no gap when one track ends and another begins You can encode music in lossless and lossy. Lossless, e.g. Flac means every 'bit' of the music is copied and so is essentially the same as the original CD. Lossy means the excess data less detectable in human hearing is chopped off, e.g. MP3

Some prefer lossless as either "purists" or because external HDs are cheap enough, you "may as well". As space is a concern in DAPs, many go lossy, like MP3 and AAC but due to good encoding methods, you cannot hear a difference between the original CD

 

[JES]

Lossless is a form of file compression that doesn't lose any of the information when compressing/decompressing. An example is FLAC. Mp3's are NOT lossless.

Gapless refers to a lack of time delay between the switching of audio tracks. This is a big deal if what you listen to are live recordings. A 1/4 second pause can sometimes ruin the listening experience.

 

[pingalep]

most of portable music player ar not gapless, and play only one lossless format file.
unless you can use rockbox. if you have to buy a new pmp, imho read at first the rockbox forum and find what device runs better it at the moment, and fits better your needings.

 

[ZackT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lamplighter /img/forum/go_quote.gif I am unsure of what these terms gapless and lossless really mean ?? -

Well, to try and put it in simple speak (took me a while to get my head around it too).

GAPLESS: Until last year on iPods (and most other digital music players) there would be a wee gap inbetween songs. This was not really noticable on most albums but where the original CD had songs that blended into one another it could be quite annoying. Now the iPod supports "Gapless". Gapless is something to look for in a player if gaps of silence between songs concerns you.

LOSSLESS: If a CD is "CD quality" and you want to put a song on your player with no "loss" of that sound quality you can use a large file that is "Lossless" - examples of lossless files are Apple Lossless (for ipods) and Wav and Flac (for other players). I use an iPod and have tried lossless files on it. A Warning: Lossless files are huge so you'll fit a lot less songs on. My recommendation would be to keep Lossless files on your computer but convert them to 244 AAC files for the ipod. Most would agree the sound quality is very similar and it's a good compromise. Lossless files also tend to chew up battery life.

Hope this answers your questions,

ZT