ipods are gapless... - Riovolution

Einkoro (Administrator) 2006-09-25, 12:43 #106

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In reply to post ID 3251

Quote by radish:
All in all, I'm pretty impressed by the ipod gapless, but still like my Karma.

I am impressed with 80GB and 20hr battery life for the price I paid.

I would be impressed if it came with a dock. I paid less for my Karma when it was the new thing on the block, including shipping and tax, than the cost of the new 80Gb iPod with no tax or accessories.

"There is no avoiding war; it can only be postponed to the advantage of others," - Niccolo Machiavelli

jaw2ek 2006-09-27, 04:45 #107

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Quote by ipod nano review at EverythingUSB:
Scrolling has been significantly improved, as a white on black overlay will appear in the center screen after about two seconds of fast scrolling with the current letter of the alphabet displayed in the center, which then proceeds to scroll by first letter even at slow speeds until your thumb is lifted off of the scroll wheel.

[Image: http://www.everythingusb.com/images/list/ipodnano2goverlay.jpg]

OMG! Alphabetic Scrollong?

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This post was edited on 2006-09-27, 11:11 by jaw2ek.

RubenNYC 2006-09-27, 10:34 #108

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Hey Jaw, had no idea you were so close (RHS). Tis a mighty small world.

jaw2ek 2006-09-27, 11:04 #109

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Yup, I teach chemistry here.

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fondy44 2006-09-29, 06:34 #110

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a white on black overlay will appear in the center screen after about two seconds of fast scrolling

Thanks for the quote, I was wondering why sometimes the overlay doesn't show up.

MrCookie989 2006-09-30, 13:26 #111

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I noticed while reading through this that nobody mentioned gapless performance on the Nano 2G...so here goes. Yes, I turned to the dark side and bought a Nano (8GB) because I really wanted gapless in a small and simple package. And so far, out of my 1,599 albums (none of which ripped or downloaded using iTunes), I would have to say that about 98% of my gapless albums play back just as they should on the Nano. In fact, gapless on the iPod is *gulp* better than I could ever acheive on my Karma. On my Karma, I could only get 100% gapless all the time/every time using FLAC, nothing else. Mp3's of any and all kinds would rarely get a 'gap-blip'. Certain albums that ALWAYS had a gap-blip using Karma (DSotM, Tommy, Who's Next, Live Aus Berlin) excpet when using FLAC can play back gaplessly on my Nano. YES, the Nano isn't true gapless (it's all tied into iTunes and not hardware), but I don't care about that so long as the damn thing can play the Floyd properly. I am very satisfied with what Apple has done, and I would like to think that further improvements down the line will fix what isn't 100% yet.

*EDIT* I forgot to mention to RubenNYC that using the Nano, my acient 320k Mp3 rip of Dookie from 2002 (Rio Riot Baby!) plays the Chump/Long View transition perfectly

This post was edited on 2006-09-30, 13:31 by MrCookie989.

nudel 2006-09-30, 13:47 #112

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Quote by MrCookie989:
YES, the Nano isn't true gapless (it's all tied into iTunes and not hardware)

I don't think iTunes does anything except ensure that the correct track lengths (i.e. without any padding in the last frame) are communicated to the iPod. iPod/iTunes aren't doing any tricks; they're both doing proper gapless playback. I don't see how it could be any more "true gapless" than it is.

If you mean the "part of a gapless album" flag in iTunes, that doesn't affect the iPod at all and you don't have to set it. It's only there to disable the crossfader in iTunes for those tracks. (And presumably the crossfader in future iPods if Apple ever add crossfading to the iPod... Very strange that it isn't a feature, especially considering there are two ARM CPUs in every iPod, but not something I care about since I rarely use random play.)

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MrCookie989 2006-09-30, 14:30 #113

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I say it is not "true" gapless because many people on head-fi and other forums raised the point that in order to acheive gapless on the iPod you must have iTunes analyze your music library, but players like the Karma or iriver/iaudio/ipod rockbox'd just plays audio back gaplessly without any ties to a proprietary software. A better way of stating that would have been "It's tied to iTunes and not purely hardware", since I agree with you that the new Nano's hardware DOES have gapless capabilities built into it. It's just that those capabilities cannot be utilized without having to use iTunes.

nudel 2006-09-30, 15:10 #114

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I don't see what difference it makes.

Since you can't even get music on the iPod without iTunes I don't think it makes sense for them to raise the point that it "can't do gapless without iTunes", whatever that actually means.

Do those same people claim that it doesn't display song titles in hardware because it relies on iTunes to create its database of track names?

(Not that I'm defending having to use iTunes or a program which emulates it in order to load the device with music. I think USB mass storage for music is a great thing and I wish more players did it, but I don't understand what anyone means when they say there's something wrong with the way the iPod does gapless, or that iTunes is doing it rather than the iPod itself. The track-length information used to do gapless is no different to the track name information used to display song titles. It's also just like the LAME tag and Vorbis equivalent which most gapless players use to do gapless. iTunes reads and converts the LAME tag info into its own database, if it finds it on a file.)

(There's also the "DSP method" of detecting a sudden drop to silence in the last frame but that isn't completely reliable, is a bit of a hack, and simply isn't needed with properly encoded music, so I don't think it's worth having anymore.)

Bit the shed again. Typical.
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LycoLoco 2006-09-30, 16:26 #115

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Since you can't even get music on the iPod without iTunes I don't think it makes sense for them to raise the point that it "can't do gapless without iTunes", whatever that actually means.

Actually, yes, you can. There are countless plugins for different programs that allow you to load music on your iPod without using iTunes, so your logic is flawed.

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radish

2006-09-30, 17:00 #116

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Quote by MrCookie989:
I say it is not "true" gapless because many people on head-fi and other forums raised the point that in order to acheive gapless on the iPod you must have iTunes analyze your music library, but players like the Karma or iriver/iaudio/ipod rockbox'd just plays audio back gaplessly without any ties to a proprietary software.

All the "analysis" does is write the itunes/ipod specific length tags to the files - in most cases just reading them from elsewhere in the file (e.g. the lame vbr header) and converting the tag format. That's it. If you're defining gapless playback as "reads lame vbr headers" then fine, it's not gapless. But I define gapless playback as "plays tracks without gaps between them".

The Karma reads the lame headers, the iPod reads the itunes tags - I really don't see any difference.

A better way of stating that would have been "It's tied to iTunes and not purely hardware"

It's never hardware. Players these days are typically just general purpose CPUs running embedded software which handles things like tag parsing, playback control and UI display. The iPod hardware is perfectly capable of gapless by any definition (including the "must not use iTunes" definition) and has been for a while - rockbox being the proof of this. It's just the Apple software which wasn't up to the job until recently.

nudel 2006-09-30, 17:54 #117

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Quote by LycoLoco:
Since you can't even get music on the iPod without iTunes I don't think it makes sense for them to raise the point that it "can't do gapless without iTunes", whatever that actually means.
Actually, yes, you can. There are countless plugins for different programs that allow you to load music on your iPod without using iTunes, so your logic is flawed.

You're just being pedantic. The other programs do the same thing as iTunes. I didn't think it was worth saying "iTunes or something that emulates iTunes" as I figured that went without saying and, either way, it has nothing to do with what I was arguing.

The iPod does do proper gapless and I think it's silly to say it's not proper gapless, just because it relies on data written by iTunes (or some software which does the same thing as iTunes), because you can't actually get music on the device without using iTunes (or some software which does the same thing as iTunes) in the first place.

Happy now? :-)

(Or is my logic still "flawed" because I didn't clarify that you can copy music files to the device without using iTunes (or some software which does the same thing as iTunes) so long as you don't mind not being able to play the music (without copying it off to a computer (or other device (provided it can read a USB harddrive (and you've got an iPod cable handy (and electricity (...))))))?)

(The only relevant point, IMO, is that the iTunes alternatives may not yet write the information required for gapless playback into the iPod's database given how long the alternatives lag behind Apple's ever changing database formats and firmware updates. That doesn't make the iPod's gapless wrong, though. Gapless is gapless is gapless.)

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This post was edited on 2006-09-30, 17:56 by nudel.

RubenNYC 2006-09-30, 18:05 #118

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Quote by nudel:
Gapless is gapless is gapless.

QFT. Everything else is static.

Nordburgh 2006-09-30, 18:53 #119

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The feces is piling up since this thread has become so ANAL!

iPod does gapless, accept it. My Archos OTH burps out of it's anus between tracks.

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mrk (Moderator) 2006-09-30, 22:55 #120

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K, I'm wanting one. This am suck. Current problems with it:

Equalizer? Have there been any improvements, third-party or not?
Interface? How does Rockbox compare to the stock firmware? Any other interfaces that work well?
Headphone output? I know that the 5g is the best-sounding full-sized iPod yet, but it still doesn't compare to the Karma, in my eyes. Along the same point, the E4s haven't too much synergy with the iPod, from what I've heard personally.

Blahglahblargh.

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?