[Bri]

Apologies but I've already searched the archives etc.

I pretty much gave up on replacing my MD with a HD player because I (wrongly?) presumed 100% gapless playback was impossible with mp3s. As a fan of electronic music / live sets this is a major flaw not to be able to trackmark! Anyway, I'm still none the wiser after reading past posts.

So...instead of buying a Hi-MD...which HD-based models will offer me playback the way a CD/MD would? The Karma only? The Sony models but with ATRAC recording not mp3? And if so, what level of ATRAC quality is needed to ensure this.

Read this:
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showp...&postcount=100
yet:
http://www6.head-fi.org/forums/showp...8&postcount=10
Maybe it makes sense because of different codecs but...

I'd really appreciate a specific answer

Thanks in advance.

 

[notnormal]

Yeah, gapless playback is one of the things I like about Hi-MD.
mp3 weren't designed to be gapless. The Karma is only pseudo gapless, not true gapless. If your use to true gapless, then you would notice pseudo effect on the karma.

Sony HD models are gapless as long as atrac is used. Atrac was designed to be gapless a codec, so the bitrate and various incarnations of atrac won't affect the gaps.

Another possiblity is to encode the CD as one large mp3 and either use cue sheets or mark the tracks.

 

[Bri]

Thanks for the reply.
Quote:

Originally Posted by notnormal The Karma is only pseudo gapless, not true gapless. If your use to true gapless, then you would notice pseudo effect on the karma.

Can you expand on this sorry? You mean the Karma has a buffer or something and preloads the track, or something completely different? Is there any problem in pseudo gapless if it works correctly (running down the battery or something?) The RCA RD2765 seems to support mp3 gapless too...

Quote:

Sony HD models are gapless as long as atrac is used. Atrac was designed to be gapless a codec, so the bitrate and various incarnations of atrac won't affect the gaps.

And the only catch about ATRAC is mp3s usability elsewhere, and the restriction to using SS right? Presumably if I converted existing mp3s into ATRAC I'd be further compressing a compressed file and reducing quality to 2-figure digits?!
If I have the CD around, does recording with the latest 'gapless' LAME affect what I'm asking for here? I don't get this sorry

Quote:

Another possiblity is to encode the CD as one large mp3 and either use cue sheets or mark the tracks.

And you've lost me again apologies. Are you talking about listening on a CD player?!

Actually at the end of the day I don't give a monkey's about what format the average punter uses on his iPod etc. as long as whatever I use on my player delivers gapless and won't become utterly obsolete in the near future.

 

[Damage]

Clearing things up, the second generation of HiMD players to Play MP3s natively, but it has to be transferred using SonicStage. These models (denoted by RH or DH moniker, includes RH-910, RH-10, for example) will play your MP3 nigh-gaplessly. That is, you will notice a small gap (less than 1/10th of a second, technically, something on the level of multiples of 0.013) between tracks.

Practically speaking, if the track transitions are quiet, you won't notice a thing. If the track transitions are loud (meaning there's meaningful music), then you'll notice a slight gap, but it is consistent across the tracks. Compare this with iPod or Zens, where the gaps maybe variable in time (and LAME's 'gapless' will have no effect on it whatsoever).

Finally, if you use ATRAC3/plus codec with your (or these days, pretty much any Sony DAPs save 1st generation of ATRAC enabled PCDPs) HiMD or MD player, all tracks that are encoded directly from source (CD, live recordings) will remain gapless. Any MP3 transcoded to ATRAC will retain the 1/10th second gap.

 

[Bri]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Damage Clearing things up, the second generation of HiMD players to Play MP3s natively, but it has to be transferred using SonicStage. These models (denoted by RH or DH moniker) will play your MP3 nigh-gaplessly. That is, you will notice a small gap (less than 1/10th of a second, technically, something on the level of multiples of 0.013) between tracks. If the track transitions are loud (meaning there's meaningful music), then you'll notice a slight gap, but it is consistent across the tracks.

In summary, mp3 = bad.

No really, for what I want which is no audible gap at all for continous music the way it was supposed to be heard...it looks like shying away from mp3 altogether so.

Quote:

if you use ATRAC3/plus codec with your (or these days, pretty much any Sony DAPs save 1st generation of ATRAC enabled PCDPs) HiMD or MD player, all tracks that are encoded directly from source (CD, live recordings) will remain gapless.

i.e. All the current firmware upgraded and future Sony HD players will be properly gapless once using ATRAC not mp3?
Quote:

Any MP3 transcoded to ATRAC will retain the 1/10th second gap.

NoooooO! Seriously this was the one thing I somehow overlooked. Oh well if they're individual tracks I shouldn't worry, but if it was a giant mp3 of a live CD could it be trackmarked when converted to ATRAC on HD player?

Sorry for all the questions but you've no idea how invaluable it is to get specific non-marketed answers.

Really appreciated!

 

[Damage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bri In summary, mp3 = bad. No really, for what I want which is no audible gap at all for continous music the way it was supposed to be heard...it looks like shying away from mp3 altogether so.

From a Gapless POV, definately. MP3 has its ubiquity going for it, and the LAME project has squeezed out more than what was expected from the format. But it's definately a fully-matured format, much like ATRAC (in that all the advancements have been squeezed out for the most part).

Quote:

i.e. All the current firmware upgraded and future Sony HD players will be properly gapless once using ATRAC not mp3?

I should say that outside of the very first generation of ATRAC enabled PCDPs, all MD/Hi-MD units, all ATRAC Flash units (AFAIK), and all HD-series Sony DAPS (vaio pocket included?) will play ATRAC gaplessly. For Sony PCDPs, the option has to be enabled on every battery swap, but it's there for your use.

Quote:

NoooooO! Seriously this was the one thing I somehow overlooked. Oh well if they're individual tracks I shouldn't worry, but if it was a giant mp3 of a live CD could it be trackmarked when converted to ATRAC on HD player?

Not sure if SonicStage allows you to insert trackmarks, I don't think it'll let you. So you have some choices:

1) Record that said huge live MP3 to your HiMD in real time, and add gaps as you see fit. Upload back to your PC (once and only once), rinse lather.
2) Slight Alternative to no.1 is to burn that huge MP3 to a CD (adding trackmarks with your CD burning app, make sure the gaps are 0 seconds or the like), then use that CD to record in real time or transfer via SonicStage in ATRAC.
3) IF you have the original CD, then use that CD and import tracks via SonicStage or SonicStage Simple Burner and transfer to your MD in ATRAC.

Note that no. 1 and no. 2 still involves transcoding. To guard again any more loss of quality with methods 1 and 2, I'd recommend using PCM recording. This however eats up disc space like Wimpy on a Wednesday Hamburger Binge (about 1:20ish ona 1GB blank). I've heard that HiSP (256kbps) or LP (132kbps) transcoding process works well for the most part, but then again, there's still transcoding involved in the chain.

Finally (really!), note that any tracks transferred via SonicStage is protected, so I don't believe you can add track marks or edit the tracks in any significant way. I haven't tried this much, but this was true for any tracks transferred via NetMD (aka MDLP tracks via USB).

 

[funnytimes]

rio karma is pseudo gapless? i heard it has two dsps to locate silence and splice two audio streams/files together

 

[Damage]

Quote:

Originally Posted by funnytimes rio karma is pseudo gapless? i heard it has two dsps to locate silence and splice two audio streams/files together

Then it's about as gapless as HiMDs playing back MP3s, it's pseudo-gapless. Consider, if there is a silence intended for X amount of seconds, and if that is cut out, then you're not getting a true gapless playback.

Which would be more useful, cut off sounds in the middle of tracks (or transitions), or a very slight gap? Truthfully, neither, but given the choice, which would you stick with?

 

[Beethovenian]

Sony's HD players, Vaio Pocket included, don't add absolutely any gap to the playback. Which means tracks encoded directly in the gapless Atrac format will play with perfect gaplessness. Tracks converted from any format to Atrac will have the gap added by previous compression, and playback of MP3 tracks will have whatever gap the MP3 encoding adds. It will be a slight click, but it's perceptible. Still, it's much better than the iPod, which will add a gap regardless of the existence or not of a gap in the original (meaning, if you manage to make a track end exactly at the end of a frame and start the next one at the exact beginning of a frame, it will still produce a noticeable gap). In my experience of 10 months with the Rio Karma, it produced perfect gapless playback using the Ogg Vorbis format at almost all times, and was gapless with MP3 files about half of the times (I tried different Lame encoders, always using EAC, and could never get always perfect gaplessness). But the Karma could be cappricious. Depending on how you played the tracks (if you jumped tracks or went back, for instance), it could lose the gaplessness. Of course, perception of the gap will depend on the listener and type of music. My experience is with classical, which denounces pretty easily any gap or click.

And let me add: SonicStage doesn't let you add trackmarks as in MDs, but you can split a track. If it's an Atrac file, it will retain gaplessness. (But the process is boringly slow.)

 

[Bri]

Excellent info. there guys thanks...although I must admit I'm still undecided about what it means for me. I don't keep my tracks in any other format than mp3, although by the looks of it I'll have to spend a few days re-ripping into OGG or ATRAC. I don't wanna splash out on either Hi-MD or Sony's HD players until I work my way through ALL of SS's notorious limitations. Googling at present but if anyone has:

a) Any recommended sites that take SonicStage apart for criticism?
b) Recommend a model to purchase...given that pseudo gapless seems flawed it seems I'm restricted to Sony models right? /me goes off to read all the reviews.

Much appreciated!

 

[Girdag]

Take a look here for info on gapless players.

And the Karma DOES do true gapless, as said by DaPreview

Quote:

Even though a player doesn't add gaps, Regular MP3 playback can have gaps between tracks because blank frames at the start and/or end of the track. Old encoders would regularly prepend or append blank frames to tracks for no particularly good reason. This is less common now, and in any case the frames are relatively easy to remove using an MP3 trim program. First and final frame padding. This problem is inherent to the MP3 format. Frames are a fixed length (1/32nd of a second) but of course a track is rarely an exact multiple of frames. Therefore some padding must occur, and usually this is split between the first and final frame. This means there could be a glitch up to about 1/32nd of a second in length between tracks. In practice this is often not noticeable. YMMV. Karma will attempt to compensate for gaps introduced by MP3 encoders. It can use information added to VBR files by Lame (3.90 and later) in order to do so with total precision; for other encoders or for files without the Info header (i.e. most CBR files), it uses a heuristic, which produces indistinguishable results in most cases. This process will not eliminate gaps which are present in the source material, i.e. if there's a one-second gap between songs when you play the original CD, Karma will render that gap faithfully. You can look into using the cross-fader if this is a problem. There should be no other situation in which MP3 files exhibit one-second gaps on Karma, unless the MP3 files themselves are damaged. A rip to individual FLAC tracks will play back gaplessly on a Karma, and, as FLAC is lossless and sample-accurate, it should play back gaplessly on any other FLAC player, too. Karma 1.41 and before didn't use the Lame tag to do gapless, it used a heuristic in all cases. The very first Karma firmware required LAME --nogap encodes, with all tracks of the album encoded in one operation, to give gapless MP3s. Subsequent versions can also produce gapless playback by reading the gapless tag which is added even for single-file encodes.

 

[IstariAsuka]

Yeah, if you're using properly encoded MP3s on the Karma it will really be gapless.

If you're using random MP3s from the internet, then it will try to do it gaplessly, sometimes with more success than othe times.

Of course, you can also just use, say, OGG on the Karma. Then you got no problems at all with gapless.

 

[FenderP]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bri a) Any recommended sites that take SonicStage apart for criticism? b) Recommend a model to purchase...given that pseudo gapless seems flawed it seems I'm restricted to Sony models right? /me goes off to read all the reviews. Much appreciated!

a) Don't have to look far. SS is not everyone's favorite software, but 3.0 is better. It is the thorn in the Sony DAP story for most.
b) I love my Vaio Pocket. 40GB, color screen, album art, yadda yadda ... and it's down to $399 I think. The NW-HD5H would be the one to get if you want a new one but don't need color, want something a bit smaller, etc. That's a 30GB one.

The Toshiba Gigabeat G series is also supposedly gapless with WAV files, but the battery life blows. The G series is a smart looking machine. It makes me wonder if the new F series is also gapless with WAV.