[sniks7]

Got a 5g 30g.. it always seems to stall at the beginning of a new track (or at the end of the old one!). Is there any way to avoid this? It's hugely irritating. I've used apple lossless on all tracks and play thorugh a pocket dock to a stax set-up.

 

[Zakalwe]

Welcome to the wonderful world of digital audio players, which are sleek and shiny and can play games and show pretty pictures, yet which have lost the old tape-Walkmen´s and PCDPs´ ability to play music without ripping holes into it.

The issue is the lack of gapless playback, and it is sufficiently annoying that there even is a Wikipedia page about it.

Björn

 

[sniks7]

Interesting piece, but..

"Since lossless data compression excludes the possibility of the introduction of padding, all lossless audio file formats are inherently gapless."

I'm using apple lossless, but still get the gaps. Hmm.

 

[jonnywolfet]

wait a little for audio support with rockbox on the 5g, or join in with the development! rockbox.com

 

[sniks7]

checked out rockbox.. What deos it do that the standard iPod stuff can't? The site wasn't very clear on the ipod stuff..

 

[jonnywolfet]

still a bit buggy and under development and you need some command line knowlege to install it.
anyway, more info

http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showthread.php?t=160439

btw, i have been using rockbox for 2 days now, i love it so far! and wait for the glitches to be worked out.

 

[D555]

Ahhhh.....

Minidisc, ATRAC Flash, PCDP w/ATRAC.

gapless bliss.....

Paul

 

[bigshot]

If you want gapless, rip tracks together as one track.

Lossless is not the best type of file to play in an iPod. The huge filesize defeats caching, and reduces battery life. It's not surprising if playback suffers as a result.

See ya
Steve

 

[gshan]

Apple lossless does have extra delay between tracks as compared to 224 AAC or mp3. Isn't it because the buffer gets overfilled, therefore you get the hiccup?

 

[bigshot]

The RAM in an iPod is 32 megs. If you have a file larger than that, it's going to play off the hard drive, increasing the likelihood of gaps and playback errors.

See ya
Steve

 

[papakoks]

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigshot The RAM in an iPod is 32 megs. If you have a file larger than that, it's going to play off the hard drive, increasing the likelihood of gaps and playback errors. See ya Steve

didnt know about this one...

 

[sniks7]

So just to double check, the iPod won't copy the next chunk of song into ram and play it from there, it'll just play off the hard disk if the file-size is too big?

 

[bigshot]

I'm pretty sure it's not smart enough to swap to and from the RAM except between songs.

See ya
Steve

 

[rhythmicmoose]

No, the iPod always plays from RAM, but playing lossless files means it's accessing the hard drive more often because less music fits in the buffer. And yes, it can access the hard drive and buffer upcoming songs while it is playing. Still, this shouldn't cause excessive pauses between tracks. At least not any longer than you normally get. The problem here is that the iPod does not play gaplessly, even if your files are gaplass.

And to clarify, Apple Lossless is gapless because it's a lossless compression of the exact audio data. Non-LAME MP3s and I'm pretty sure all AACs are not gapless because their audio data is divided into equally sized chunks, and most of the time the end of the final chunk does not align perfectly with the end of the actual audio data, creating a very tiny (usually unnoticeable) gap. I tell you this because while there's no way (besides rockbox, I suppose) to make your iPod gapless, if you want to be a real stickler about your source files, it'd be a good idea stick to LAME MP3 encoding (unless AACs are gapless... can anyone confirm this?).

 

[K2Grey]

Note that you need a gapless player (which is mostly reserved to Karma, Rockbox, and some MD players if you use Atrac format). The file being gapless isn't relevant unless the player is.