[leqin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scompton /img/forum/go_quote.gif You don't have to display the artwork when you scroll do you? I have the previous generation, but I just bought my wife a current generation Nano and it has the option to do "Coverflow", but you don't have to. It can just scroll listing text. In that case, it's very fast. If coverflow is required, how do you scroll by artist, genre, composer, etc? Gapless playback also works fine on the Nano. BTW, I believe that the volume limit was imposed by the EU government, not Apple. From what I've read, it's supposed to apply to all portable players, not just iPods. I could be wrong about this

Well you can call me thick, but with the 6G classic you can either use Coverflow, which frankly is a feature I don't think much of on the PC and like even less on the iPod - or you can use the classic menu system... except that it isn't the classic menu system because Apple insist that you've got to have individual cover icons displayed for every album or individual recording by any artist which makes it that once you step down from the 'Artists' menu to the listing of individual albums by a artist your iPod spends ages thrashing about like a idiot until its parsed the image its supposed to use... oh and if you unlucky and happen to be a fan of someone like lets say 'Porcupine Tree' and you've got all their studio albums and singles and limited edition stuff and dozens of dozens of live recordings then you suffer the even more frustrating insult that it cannot ram every image into memory and you only scroll part way through before having to wait while it thrashes about once again to load some more images meaning you spend even more time just standing there thinking you know if this was a 5G I could have been listening to music by now.

Gapless playback on the iPod Classic is shot to bits so far as I can see. The 160 I own cannot do it and pauses the music so frequently, even midway through a song, that I long ago gave up any hope of being able to sit down and listen to albums such as Dark Side of the Moon like I can with my old 5G. I also know 5 other people who all own 6G's and they all suffer this same problem.

Yes your right the EU did make this hair brained ruling, but the iPod 6G appears to be amazingly crippled by comparison with other players available. The Zune isn't anything like as quiet and neither are Sony or Cowen players that I'm aware of.

 

[scompton]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leqin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Gapless playback on the iPod Classic is shot to bits so far as I can see. The 160 I own cannot do it and pauses the music so frequently, even midway through a song, that I long ago gave up any hope of being able to sit down and listen to albums such as Dark Side of the Moon like I can with my old 5G. I also know 5 other people who all own 6G's and they all suffer this same problem.

Do you listen to lossless or high bit rate files? When I bought my current 5.5G, I loaded a couple of albums of lossless (what I have at work) just to listen to on my commute home. I had the problem you describe. I also have some very large 128 bit files from before lossless playback. They're multi disc classical peices that I joined all of the tracks into one track to simulate gapless. I've had similar problems with those. With the 5.5G, I think it's more of a problem with file size.

Your comments make me happy I haven't bought a 6G. While having only 80GB drives me crazy, it doesn't drive me crazy enough to buy one with larger capacity until it starts to die.

 

[leqin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scompton /img/forum/go_quote.gif Do you listen to lossless or high bit rate files? When I bought my current 5.5G, I loaded a couple of albums of lossless (what I have at work) just to listen to on my commute home. I had the problem you describe. I also have some very large 128 bit files from before lossless playback. They're multi disc classical peices that I joined all of the tracks into one track to simulate gapless. I've had similar problems with those. With the 5.5G, I think it's more of a problem with file size. Your comments make me happy I haven't bought a 6G. While having only 80GB drives me crazy, it doesn't drive me crazy enough to buy one with larger capacity until it starts to die.

On my trusty 5G I can play any bit rate and always get true gapless playback. I can push things to the absolute extreme and use lossless with recordings of whole concerts featuring tracks that can last up to and even over 30 minutes and the 5G will not even skip a heartbeat and you cannot spot the join - I can't spot the join and I made a lot of the recordings, so I actually know when the join is because I mastered it.

On my 6G and any that I've used and heard it really doesn't matter what bit rate you use, because no matter what its going to pause and it will either pause in between tracks or it will just stop playing a track midway through which is even more annoying.

Just to give you a idea - I'm a big fan of the weekly Progressive Rock podcast 'Rogues Gallery' by Frans Keylard. Each podcast is almost 4.5 hours long and they average 230 megabytes a shot at 128bit. The 5G can play them without any problem whatsoever and the music never stops. On the 6G you'll get a pause about every 5 minutes. One of my latest live recordings is Porcupine Tree live at the Melbourne's Palace Theatre - on my 5G I can play it in lossless and its almost like being at the concert - on the 6G apparantly Steve and the lads stop every few minutes to have a breather or cup of tea and then after 3 to 5 seconds they start playing again and if they did that live then I'd think they were a bunch of amateurs.

 

[major_works]

^^ I'm not having this problem with gapless playback on my 6G Classic (less than three weeks old). To take your example of Dark Side of the Moon, it plays back seamlessly for me. I've not experienced any pauses in playback, either, and that includes listening through files that are over 1 hour in length.

Now the delays in image loading, yeah, that I'm seeing. I have about 55 GB of my 160 full, all with MP3s of 190 kbps and up.

 

[scompton]

You guys are making me real happy I don't own a 6G

 

[Vinnie R.]

From working with Wadia, maybe Apple has learned that there is some demand (but probably not nearly enough) for a digital output (SPDIF). My Macbook has a headphone output jack that also has a built-in mini-TOSLINK (optical SPDIF digital output), so make the iPod's headphone out have the same and we'll be onto something awesome!

 

[leqin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by major_works /img/forum/go_quote.gif ^^ I'm not having this problem with gapless playback on my 6G Classic (less than three weeks old). To take your example of Dark Side of the Moon, it plays back seamlessly for me. I've not experienced any pauses in playback, either, and that includes listening through files that are over 1 hour in length. Now the delays in image loading, yeah, that I'm seeing. I have about 55 GB of my 160 full, all with MP3s of 190 kbps and up.

Okay well send me your iPod

because I would definatly be interested in seeing and hearing yours by comparison with the 6G's I have access to, all 6 of which couldn't play gapless properly as per every 5 or 5.5G right from the off of gapless playbacks introduction.

 

[major_works]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leqin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Okay well send me your iPod because I would definatly be interested in seeing and hearing yours by comparison with the 6G's I have access to, all 6 of which couldn't play gapless properly as per every 5 or 5.5G right from the off of gapless playbacks introduction.

Well, I'll pass on sending you my iPod (not because I don't trust you, but rather because I'd go nuts without it

). Hey, maybe I'm not all that up to snuff on just what exactly "gapless" means. But again, taking the DSOTM example, it sounds like it always has to me. And live albums, where there's crowd noise between tracks but no real gaps, sound fine too.

Maybe it's a codec issue for some folks? I'm using LAME 3.97 and EAC, all set up using the best FAQs I could find on places like HA, etc.

The lagginess with album art does get to me at times. I've been using Cover Flow a lot, mostly because it's a zoomy new toy, but I can see myself getting tired of it.

 

[scompton]

Just a wild guess here, can it have something to do with the size of the library?

Has anyone asked Apple what the deal is? I'd think there would be a lot on their forums about this. I haven't checked, so there may be.

 

[sizwej]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scompton /img/forum/go_quote.gif Just a wild guess here, can it have something to do with the size of the library? Has anyone asked Apple what the deal is? I'd think there would be a lot on their forums about this. I haven't checked, so there may be.

I had a similar thought.I wondered if it might have to do with the file size of each track or library as a whole.So i converted my songs from apple lossless to 320kbps mp3 which increased my available space considerably,however the problems persisted.(in mp3 format i have about 3500 tracks using only 40gb of an available 148gb!!)

 

[mrarroyo]

Quote:

.. you've got to have individual cover icons displayed for every album or individual recording by any artist which makes it that once you step down from the 'Artists' menu to the listing of individual albums by a artist your iPod spends ages thrashing about like a idiot until its parsed the image its supposed to use ...

I do not have this problem.

I can scroll down by artist or song w/o cover art. The cover art only shows w/ the individual song is playing.

 

[smallmouth]

Quote:

Originally Posted by leqin /img/forum/go_quote.gif Well you can call me thick, but with the 6G classic you can either use Coverflow, which frankly is a feature I don't think much of on the PC and like even less on the iPod - or you can use the classic menu system... except that it isn't the classic menu system because Apple insist that you've got to have individual cover icons displayed for every album or individual recording by any artist which makes it that once you step down from the 'Artists' menu to the listing of individual albums by a artist your iPod spends ages thrashing about like a idiot until its parsed the image its supposed to use... oh and if you unlucky and happen to be a fan of someone like lets say 'Porcupine Tree' and you've got all their studio albums and singles and limited edition stuff and dozens of dozens of live recordings then you suffer the even more frustrating insult that it cannot ram every image into memory and you only scroll part way through before having to wait while it thrashes about once again to load some more images meaning you spend even more time just standing there thinking you know if this was a 5G I could have been listening to music by now. Gapless playback on the iPod Classic is shot to bits so far as I can see. The 160 I own cannot do it and pauses the music so frequently, even midway through a song, that I long ago gave up any hope of being able to sit down and listen to albums such as Dark Side of the Moon like I can with my old 5G. I also know 5 other people who all own 6G's and they all suffer this same problem. Yes your right the EU did make this hair brained ruling, but the iPod 6G appears to be amazingly crippled by comparison with other players available. The Zune isn't anything like as quiet and neither are Sony or Cowen players that I'm aware of.

Album art is a little laggy on my Classic too. It's annoying, but not a huge deal. But gapless works flawlessly (even DSotM)—I use lossless files too. I wonder if something is wrong with your iPod. Or maybe it's the difference between the 80 and 160GB.

 

[G-man]

Surprise! Apple to refresh iPod nano / touch, make tons of iPhones - Engadget

looks like they may be refreshing the whole line soon.

 

[leqin]

Quote:

Originally Posted by mrarroyo /img/forum/go_quote.gif I do not have this problem. I can scroll down by artist or song w/o cover art. The cover art only shows w/ the individual song is playing.

Well please tell me how you do that because I've hunted high and low in settings and online to get rid of this damnable feature of the 6G's menus.

Quote:

Originally Posted by major_works /img/forum/go_quote.gif Hey, maybe I'm not all that up to snuff on just what exactly "gapless" means. But again, taking the DSOTM example, it sounds like it always has to me. And live albums, where there's crowd noise between tracks but no real gaps, sound fine too. Maybe it's a codec issue for some folks? I'm using LAME 3.97 and EAC, all set up using the best FAQs I could find on places like HA, etc. The lagginess with album art does get to me at times. I've been using Cover Flow a lot, mostly because it's a zoomy new toy, but I can see myself getting tired of it.

For me it happens with any codec, either external to iTunes using EAC/Lame, or even if I convert to AAC or Apple Lossless using iTunes' itself. I can even take concert recordings that I've made myself and snip them up as WAV's in Audacity and then convert to Lame, or drag them into iTunes and let it carry out the conversion and on my 5G the resulting files play back flawlessly with one track flowing without any pause into the track following - but on any 6G I own or have access to there will always be either a momentary pause or a pause of several seconds.

Just a observation - if you hold a 5G in your hand, so that you can feel when the hardisk spins up to load the next track into memory, then the 5G starts to spin the hardisk several seconds before the end of each track. On the 6G the hardisk only starts spinning into life more or less right at the moment when a track ends. On the 5G the hardisk will have stopped spinning before the following track should start, but on the 6G the hardisk is still spinning when the following track should have started.

The closest possible thing I've seen to my complaints with the 6G's interface and how it handles gapless is actually mentioned in the review of the 6G done by The Gadgeteer... oh and I seem to recall they were firmly pan handled by the apple fan boyz for even the slightest mention of menu laggynesss due to the hardisk thrashing to load previously un-needed artwork.

Apple iPod classic - The Gadgeteer

One fact that I don't recall being mentioned anywhere is that the 5G has 64mb of on board memory, but as I've recently learned the 6G's only got 32mb.

 

[scompton]

The hard disk spin up would definitely cause problems with gapless playback. On thing I've always hated about iTunes is when you first hit play, when nothing has been playing, it starts playing right away, about 2 seconds later it pauses while it reads the rest of the track. I guess for people how listen to short tracks, it doesn't happen, but I wish it would read the whole track before it starts playing. This, and how much of a resource hog it is, are my only complaints about iTunes.