[Venasa]

Hello wonderful Head-Fi community. I was wondering if someone could explain to me why so many portable devices lack the simple yet immersive function known as gapless playback. It's something I think I took for granted until I entered the Hi-Fi world and now the amount of times I end up thinking "sounds amazing but doesn't support gapless" almost matches the amount of reviews I have read. Is it really so difficult to include in a device?  

 

[davidcotton]

Looks like it.  Annoying isn't it?  However just make sure your player of choice supports rockbox and there's no problem anymore.
 
Cheers

 

[skamp]

Get a DAP that's supported by Rockbox: guaranteed gapless playback. iPods are gapless too.

 

[Achmedisdead]

I think it is essential to support gapless. Quite often though you'll see "audiophiles" making excuses for some of these supposed "high-end" players that can't do it....nonsensical statements like ,"sound quality is more important than features!" 

 

[skamp]

Audiophiles will put up with all kinds of crap as long as they believe they are getting the best "sound quality".

 

[H20Fidelity]

I actually prefer not having gapless. Usually (due to my audiophile DAPs) the experience is absolutely so intense, a short break is required between each song.

 

[skamp]

I actually prefer not having gapless. Usually (due to my audiophile DAPs) the experience is absolutely so intense, a short break is required between each song.

LOL

 

[Sefelt103]

An interesting question. You would think companies like Apple that produce devices for the masses wouldn't be interested in bothering with gapless playback as it only desirable to a small percentage of their customers. Then there's the extremely expensive specialist audio device that you might think would support gapless to keep the purists happy and it doesn't. It is seemingly expensive to effect gapless playback either in terms of software you have to write or buy. Perhaps this cost is something (like support for m4a) that many smaller, less well known manufacturers dispense with. Maybe in the early days of mp3 no-one thought about albums by Pink Floyd or designed in anything to support constant playback. These are just my thoughts on why there is little support for gapless playback.

 

[Achmedisdead]

Quote:

I actually prefer not having gapless. Usually (due to my audiophile DAPs) the experience is absolutely so intense, a short break is required between each song.

 uh, what? 
 
I'm assuming that you know that not every album is gapless.....but the ones that are, are meant to be heard in a seamless manner. So your statement makes no sense. 

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

An interesting question. You would think companies like Apple that produce devices for the masses wouldn't be interested in bothering with gapless playback as it only desirable to a small percentage of their customers. Then there's the extremely expensive specialist audio device that you might think would support gapless to keep the purists happy and it doesn't. It is seemingly expensive to effect gapless playback either in terms of software you have to write or buy. Perhaps this cost is something (like support for m4a) that many smaller, less well known manufacturers dispense with. Maybe in the early days of mp3 no-one thought about albums by Pink Floyd or designed in anything to support constant playback. These are just my thoughts on why there is little support for gapless playback.

 
These are not the early days any more. And if a maker can't support gapless in their own firmware, they could just port Rockbox.

 

[thoughtcriminal]

These are not the early days any more. And if a maker can't support gapless in their own firmware, they could just port Rockbox.

Very few manufacturers even support 3rd party firmware on their devices, let alone helping with the port. Its more common to see measures against 3rd party firmware like locked boot loaders and hardware encryption (at the consumers expense, of course). Though I agree 100%, the aftermarket exists to fix the failings of the OEM in all markets. Rockbox is the aftermarket for our players

 

[Sefelt103]

Manufacturers won't want to port Rockbox because then the user can put a 240GB HDD to replace the original 20GB disk or take out the 8GB memory chip and solder in a 128GB one. Which also means they wont buy the next model with slightly more storage.

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

Very few manufacturers even support 3rd party firmware on their devices, let alone helping with the port. 

 
Well, yes. But you have to questions why this is so in the case of these manufacturers. Porting Rockbox would save them much of the cost of firmware development and give them a superior feature set.

 

[scuttle]

Quote:

Manufacturers won't want to port Rockbox because then the user can put a 240GB HDD to replace the original 20GB disk or take out the 8GB memory chip and solder in a 128GB one. Which also means they wont buy the next model with slightly more storage.

 
Quite possibly. At the risk of irritating even more people who own these, it's impossible to see these players as anything other than cynical exercises along the same lines as "brilliant pebbles" (rocks that supposed make your hifi sound better) "power conditioners" and magic cables. As voldemort showed, the $30 Clip+ already has a DAC/amp combo too close to perfect for the human ear to tell the difference; a single chip today can do the work of thousands of dollars of 70's style electronics. A competently specced modern audio system is always limited by its transducers (i.e. the headphones) which is where the money should go.

 

[skamp]

gaaaaah, enough with the Clip+ nazi talk. Yes, transparency can be achieved on the cheap, but the Clip+ isn't always it.