[dj nellie]

Sorry for giving inaccurate information about the firmware.  I think gapless playback is possible using .cue files, although I haven't really tried it and my cue files usually say "Invalid File" whenever I try to play them (although I may not know the right way to create them).
 
I'm excited to see what new hardware, firmware and other support will be released for the HM-801 in the near future.

 

[xabu]

Quote:

...I think gapless playback is possible using .cue files, although I haven't really tried it and my cue files usually say "Invalid File" whenever I try to play them (although I may not know the right way to create them)....
 

Cue files and gapless playback are not correlated.
What I meant is you can have gapless playback by joining all song files of an album to one file. Then it's by default gapless ...
... but you can't navigate through the album song structure anymore.
 
Though with a cue file embedded in the album file the information where a song begins and ends would be available again and software could use this information to display the album structure and you could access the single songs inside the joined file again.
If this could happen in the normal folder structure it would be even more wonderful.
Perhaps it were enough to have an independent cue file in the same folder as the album file.
 
Currently you can use independent cue files with the Hifiman, but the resulting song structure is just one very long list over all songs for which cue files exist and it shows up only via the CUE lists menu entry and not via the SD card menu entry in the folder structure where the album file resides.
 
Whew, ... maybe my English isn't good enough to explain this intelligibly.

 

[corsario]

Quote:

If this could happen in the normal folder structure it would be even more wonderful. Perhaps it were enough to have an independent cue file in the same folder as the album file.
 
Currently you can use independent cue files with the Hifiman, but the resulting song structure is just one very long list over all songs for which cue files exist and it shows up only via the CUE lists menu entry and not via the SD card menu entry in the folder structure where the album file resides.

 
+1

As you say, it is currently already working (in a specific menu) and I listen to concerts or concertos/symphonies this way (a cue file and a single flac file, both created with EAC ("Copy image and create cue sheet" in the Action menu).
 
But, you are right, this is actually a little bit painful to have to use a dedicated menu (the cuefile menu) to access to the cuefiles, resulting in a very long, unsorted list.
 
It would be awsome to have the possibility of clicking a cue file from the normal SD card menu when there is one in the folder. And may be this is not very difficult to implement since all feature are already there.
 
Good idea !

 

[Tonyflo]

Fang ... If we purchase the 801 in the next 2 weeks, will it have the new amp or the game amp? Also, is there an 802 model planned? If so ... When?

 

[ClieOS]

Game amp doesn't come standard with HM801, it is a separate purchase.. Most likely you will receive the new power amp and 8GB internal memory, but I guess only Fang can confirm it.

 

[dj nellie]

I would wait for Fang to announce that he's completed the new amp card and he started installing it into new HM-801s, if you really want it.  He may still be working on it, and it should be done next month.
 
If you don't want to wait, you could order an HM-801 now and then look out for when Fang offers the new amp to current HM-801 owners.  It should only cost around the shipping charge to ship from China.

 

[MarkTwain]

I have just ordered the Game Amp card and portable slim charger. Checked with Fang and confirmed that the new card will not be ready until early Dec 2010.
 
That's not too long a wait!
 
Cheers,
Mark

 

[xabu]

Quote:

I have just ordered the Game Amp card ...

GAME amp is great! Hope you enjoy!

 

[MarkTwain]

Great to hear that!
 
The Game Amp Card will reach me next week.
 
Anyway, have been trying out a few portable amps (e.g. stepdance) with line out from 801 comparing with headphone out via the standard ST AMP (low gain version).
 
With blind test, I can't really guess which one is which.
 
Either my ears are failing, or the 801 with standard amp is good enough to compare with most amps.
 
Excited to listen to Game card!

 

[Convergence]

I can't believe that HF players don't support gapless!  These are supposed to be high end players.  My $30 rockboxed clip plus does gapless just fine. Gapless is very important, and I won't spend money on a player that can't do it. 
 
I think that it would have been great if they would have used rockbox as the default firmware instead of reinventing the wheel.  They are selling hardware, not software, so who cares if they have to GPL it;  if people hack it to do things for which it wasn't originally intended, that will only drive up sales.  People still go out of their way to buy hackable hardware items (sansa players, wrt* routers, etc.)  I guess the one possible problem is that they have some proprietary software processing that they don't want to (or can't)  GPL.  I'm sure that there would be some easy way around that though.
 
This is exactly the kind of risk that a smaller company like this can afford to take.

 

[Achmedisdead]

 

[Tronz]

Quote:

I can't believe that HF players don't support gapless!  These are supposed to be high end players.  My $30 rockboxed clip plus does gapless just fine. Gapless is very important, and I won't spend money on a player that can't do it. 
 
I think that it would have been great if they would have used rockbox as the default firmware instead of reinventing the wheel.  They are selling hardware, not software, so who cares if they have to GPL it;  if people hack it to do things for which it wasn't originally intended, that will only drive up sales.  People still go out of their way to buy hackable hardware items (sansa players, wrt* routers, etc.)  I guess the one possible problem is that they have some proprietary software processing that they don't want to (or can't)  GPL.  I'm sure that there would be some easy way around that though.
 
This is exactly the kind of risk that a smaller company like this can afford to take.

The Rockbox firmware ( in an unstable state as of now ) can be installed on to these players and allow them to support gapless.
 

 

[nc8000]

Fang is on record for saying that he does not consider gapless to be important or the lack of it a problem hence the lack of support which apparently is by design

 

[dallan]

Doesn't bother me at all and i listen to a lot of live stuff.  SQ overall is wonderful and that's what counts to me.

 

[nc8000]

Yes sq is wonderfull but the lack of gapless bothers me no end. It bothers me so much that I run albums that require gapless through the foobar merger into single files before transferring them to HM801. Also have to up or down sample 24/88 albums and a number of 24/96 albums have to be down sampled to 24/48 as HM801 introduces huge amounts of background hiss when playing them at 24/96