iPod and Gapless Playback -- Sign the Petition!

M

MBHockey

Registered
I created a petition to show Apple how many users want gapless playback on their iPod

http://www.petitiononline.com/13421509/petition.html

maybe Apple just didn't realize how important it is to us DAP owners, but all i'm hoping for in this petition is for them to realize that it is pretty important.

Please sign it if you would like to have gapless playback on the iPod.

thanks guys

mike
 
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH!

http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45229&highlight=petition
http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?t=45018&highlight=petition

Just a couple of links to express my distaste for petitions. Petitioning for a refund on your OS because the company promised it would work on your computer, then turns around and ships the OS with obviously crippled code so that your machine runs the OS but at a severely crippled rate is one thing. Petitioning for a feature on a piece of hardware is another thing. There's nothing wrong with the iPod. There's no reason to have a petition to back it up, since it didn't do anything wrong and you weren't promised any features that are being held back. I believe petitions like this take credibility away from what I consider to be meaningful petitions.

A much more tactile and worthwhile effort would be, instead, to contact all those people who you would like to sign your petition and get them to send similar feedback to Apple (http://www.apple.com/feedback/) if they feel the same as you. I think you'd have much better chances of having that feature implemented that way rather than starting a petition that Apple will probably never see about something that a petition is just overkill for. It's like holding a formal meeting to decide who exactly the penny on the floor in the bathroom belongs to.
 
Randman said:
Just go into iTunes' preferences and set the playback gap to 0.
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That isn't gapless, and furthermore, there is no cross fader in iPod

Read carefully, the petition is for iPod, not iTunes, John Doe :)
 
MBHockey said:
That isn't gapless, and furthermore, there is no cross fader in iPod

Read carefully, the petition is for iPod, not iTunes, John Doe :)
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If you rip an album with that setting, it'll keep when you copy over to iPod.

And ElDiablo is correct, one of those petitions is silly and a waste of time.
 
Setting the crossfader to 0 seconds is not the same as gapless playback.

I have a lot of live albums, which i have ripped with the crossfader at 0, since it's as good as iTunes will get for now, and it isn't as good as the gapless original CD.

Also, the settings for the crossfader do not cross over to the iPod, since it isn't part of the file, it's iTunes doing the cross fading, whereas iPod cannot do the crossfading itself.

While it may sound acceptable for .aiff and .wav files, in .mp3 format, it will not work. In .mp3 format, a trailing silence is added to the file, and to be truly gapless in .mp3 format the software needs to be able to recognize this silence and then filter it out before the next cached song begins playing.

Not to be condescending, but it does sound like you are unfamiliar with all of this. Read up on how the Rio Karma achieves this, and you will have a better understanding of gapless playback in various formats.
 
My MP3 files that I create from my AIFF and WAV files are identical in length, meaning that there is absolutely no "trailing" anything added to my MP3 files. They are a perfect, lossy copy of the original file, with nothing added in the beginning, middle or end.
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
My MP3 files that I create from my AIFF and WAV files are identical in length, meaning that there is absolutely no "trailing" anything added to my MP3 files. They are a perfect, lossy copy of the original file, with nothing added in the beginning, middle or end.
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I guess you haven't analyzed them with something like Peak 4 then ;)

I'm not trying to start a fight, but it is a fact that many mp3 encoders, iTunes included, add trailing silences when going from .wav, .aiff, to .mp3.

The only program that gives you an option to automatically remove these silences is EAC for Windows.

Check out the www.hydrogenaudio.org forums if you want to learn more -- it is a great resource for everything audio.

Also, to test what you said Diablo. Import a CD using the aiff or wav encoder, then convert the files to mp3 (keep the original aiff or wav files too)

Now set the crossfader to 0 seconds

you will see there is bigger gap (of time) between the playing of successive .mp3 files than between successive .aiff or .wav files

g/re/p: If you read the description carefully, you will see we are not demanding anything, i realize how silly that would be, i'm simply asking. :p
 
No, no, no. None of those encoders add ANYTHING to the file, except an ID3 tag.

The silence at the end of an MP3 lasts less than 20 milliseconds and is inherent in the MP3 format. It's not caused by the encoder, it's caused by the format because MP3 uses fixed-sized frames, so if your song isn't an exact multiple of 20 milliseconds, you'll get less-than-or-equal-to 19.999999 milliseconds of silence at the end.

The way I see it, an audiophile would rightfully be concerned about the very audible, 20 millisecond gap between songs -- but then again, why would an audiophile be using the MP3 format?

I'm not trying to start a war or anything, but it's kinda like complaining about paint chipping off of the hood of my rusted, old Pinto that barely runs anyway -- kind of pointless, given the big picture. If you want true, gapless playback, then there are ways to accomplish that with MP3s. No, you can't just rip a bunch of MP3s separately and expect the software to string them together flawlessly, but you can rip them specifically for a no-gap playback and have them work that way surprisingly well.

MP3 ain't an audiophile, professional, true-to-the-original format, and as such, comes with certain limitations that most casual users will never even know exist.

My question is this: if you use Apple's Lossless format, does it have the same problem? Does AAC also have fixed-size frames? Does it affect other formats other than MP3?
 
Thank you for clearing that up, it all makes more sense now.

I don't want to keep reviving this thread, but i did want to say i appreciate your thorough explanation.

As for the petition, i doubt it will do anything, but a guy can hope, can't he?

:)
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
A much more tactile and worthwhile effort would be, instead, to contact all those people who you would like to sign your petition and get them to send similar feedback to Apple (http://www.apple.com/feedback/) if they feel the same as you.
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g/re/p said:
You will have much better luck going to http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/ and requesting this feature - a petition demanding something like this is laughable at most and will not get results.
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Satcomer said:
What would be better if the thousand of people who signed the petition sent a message to iTunes Feedback. The more people that send the same request to Apple then the better of a chance you will get your wish.
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Yup, I think we've pretty much driven that point home now.
 
Audiophile or not, I think that gap of up to 20 ms it is an annoyance. I know the work arounds but is it too much asked for to have it both in concert recordings or live mixes:

* individual songs
* and no gap between them

I also don't think there's any need for a rocket scientist to resolve that problem. All you need to make the iPod (or iTunes for that matter) do is analyse the last 20 ms of each song, take a good guess where the gap starts and just leave the rest away. I suspect the reason this hasn't bee incorporated into the otherwise excellent iTunes and iPod is that people have not been demanding this feature often enough and probably Steve just doesn't listen to live DJ mixes :D
I agree with the Apple feedback comments but why not also support an online petition. People who really want it badly can still go through Apple's feedback form.
 
yeah, exactly. Steve jobs is a known grateful dead fan though, i'm curious as to why he hasn't pushed for this!
 
Satcomer said:
Maybe because you were using the wrong feedback!

iTunes & Music Store feedback:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/itunes.html

iPod feedback:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/ipod.html

Mac OS X feedback:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/

All other product feedback links:

http://www.apple.com/feedback/


Maybe if your complaint went to the right division then maybe you would see the desired results in the future.
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Who is this directed at? Seems pretty much out of nowhere.
 
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