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Gapless playback
I would like to see gapless playback in Spotify. (= no pause between songs). A lot of audio players have this (e.g. Winamp) and it's the only way to listen to mixed albums properly.
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This would be great for a lot of classical music. Symphonies, for example, that have descrete movements are no problem, but a lot of continuous music is split into tracks and the gaps are a bit of a pain. Operas are the worst....
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For gapless playback to work well, the player would also need to turn off "track gain" for album playback. For radio and playlist playback it is good that the volume of each track is normalized to a standard level. However, during album playback the normalization should be across the whole album.
The volume problem is easily heard on Marillion's Misplaced Childhood.
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Inappropriate?Not only mixed albums need this, several artists release albums with songs that is "mixed" together.
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Inappropriate?Not to mention that gapless playback is essential for any live album.
Spotify performs very well already, with virtually no noticeable buffering, so I think this feature will come soon.
I’m optimistic
1 person thinks
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Inappropriate?For gapless playback to work well, the player would also need to turn off "track gain" for album playback. For radio and playlist playback it is good that the volume of each track is normalized to a standard level. However, during album playback the normalization should be across the whole album.
The volume problem is easily heard on Marillion's Misplaced Childhood.
I’m sad
3 people think
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Good idea! But you might suggest this as a separate idea. And it shouldn't be too difficult either (apart from reprocessing all of the current audio). They could simply implement Replay Gain. -
I think gapless playback is the bigger one of the ideas.
I think that Replay Gain with both Radio and Album modes is much more necessary when gapless playback is also available.
But yes, I saw volume normalizing in another thread, too, and probably should subscribe to that as well. -
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Inappropriate?Option, sure. Gapless Music confuses me. (Dunno why but i find myself listening to somethign i dont like.)
I’m indifferent
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Inappropriate?This would be great for a lot of classical music. Symphonies, for example, that have descrete movements are no problem, but a lot of continuous music is split into tracks and the gaps are a bit of a pain. Operas are the worst....
8 people think
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And not only classical...
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Inappropriate?Like syturvy says, most players automatically support gapless playback now. When I rip an album in EAC the gap situation is dealt with by the software, usually by appending the gap as seen on the CD with a silent lead-in to the track - if there isn't a gap then the tracks blend seamlessly.
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1 person thinks
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Inappropriate?Me want! It really ruins the idea of listening to an album as a complete work of art having to listening to (very short) silences between songs...
I’m excited about the idea
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Inappropriate?I like this idea a lot, I really like listening to classical music...
I’m quite happy
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Inappropriate?It's a must. The gap/nogap metadata should be stored with the album. A wonderful album like Susanne Sundfør's Take One will give a better experience.
Susanne Sundfør – Take One: spotify:album:25DxUw2mRgtJNPLUjPagxo
I’m thankful
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Inappropriate?Gapless tracks are a must if you want to listen to opera. It's time that Spotify fix this - if there's another service offering gapless classical music then I'll switch to it.
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Inappropriate?I've always felt that it's "just ridiculous" that almost all digital playback systems subsequent to CD have introduced gaps between tracks. In my opinion it's a gross interference with the artistic intention - yet somehow it seems to slip by unnoticed by most system developers and consumers alike.
As we can see from previous posts, the drama of all types of music form classical opera to the DJ set is spoilt by unnecessary interruption - a sudden cut-off that can happen mid note or syllable because the tracks were never intended to be separated during playback when they were originally defined.
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I wonder how many other people agree with me that it's "just ridiculous" to have playback systems that insert arbitrary periods of silence in music? This is really what it all amounts to after all.
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Inappropriate?If I remember correctly, the historical problem with playing digital media (and why the iPod took so long to get gapless playback) was down to the fact that each 'track' is actually a separate file - the operating system software couldn't load the next file for playing until the last one had been closed (basic i/o procedure) - and in the process there was an audible gap.
Anyone who has ripped audio with EAC will also know it talks about gaps and even offers up a choice of where you want them - at the start of a track or at the end - it doesn't invent these gaps, as far as I am aware they are encoded into the CD format at the time of recording.
As this all gets set in stone at the time of encoding/ripping it sorts of explains why Spotify might be having a problem with gapless playback. This must be a nightmare for a service that can deliver both individual tracks in any order and complete albums as they were intended!
Having said all that, I wonder - has anyone here bought tracks on a one by one basis from say iTunes that they know are gapless on the album (something like Faithless?) if so when they play them back to back as intended in iTunes is there a gap? Is there a gap when they are played back to back with 'gapped' tracks? If the player knows what it is doing with gaps then the gap (or lack of it) must be hardwired into the track surely? I have tried it with my Faithless album tracks that I know are gapless and they are gapless whatever you play them up against - start and ending. Other tracks meanwhile seem to have there gaps at the end - can't say if this is normal as they are all ripped by EAC so it might have gapped or not gapped!! :-)
I’m unsure
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The big historical problem with gapless has been that not all audio formats can do gapless without some hacking. Compressed audio files consist of fixed-size frames, and the problem is that unless the length of the song is exactly the multiple of the frame length, there will be some empty (silent) space at the end of the last frame, thus making gapless playback impossible. Some audio formats allow last frame to be shorter than the rest, but MP3 is not one of them, so MP3 is technically inferior and can't be gapless without external hacks. That's why MP3 has always been more complicated with gapless stuff. Then, to add insult to injury, some MP3 encoders used to *add* additional silent frames both to the beginning and the end, so any possibility of gapless playback was totally destroyed.
Ogg Vorbis, which is used by Spotify, allows last frame being shorter, and thus supports gapless. So does AAC which is used by iTunes, with additional header. So do almost all other compressed audio formats, except MP3. By definition all lossless formats are always gapless. I don't know what's the archiving format used on Spotify servers, but if it's done correctly (i.e. all files are encoded as gapless and there are both album and track replaygain values calculated) there shouldn't be any too complex technical problems, beyond buffering the next song before the previous has ended.
Also, at the moment Spotify does replaygain (volume normalization) wrong for listening complete albums. Each track is volume corrected separately, which is the correct way for radio-like listening when there would rarely be two tracks from the same album back-to-back, but it destroys the internal dynamics of the album when complete albums are played. Quiet tracks are as loud as loud tracks. This is very clearly noticeable on most albums that have gapless tracks, volume can change mid-note if a track is changing. Yeah, there's always disabling volume normalization, but that's just stupid, because unlike some people think, volume normalization doesn't affect quality at all, and it could be done correctly as well. What I would like to have is a configuration option whether to use album or track based volume normalization... -
Inappropriate?That's really interesting, well let's hope Spotify can sort this soon as it must be the player
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Inappropriate?Can't see why it just doesn't "buffer" the last few seconds of a track, and then load that into memory while it gets the next track.
even my old Portable CD player used to be able to do it..
It was actually so good, I could actually Remove the CD altogether with the music STILL playing and put in another CD and then it would merge the next track together when the next.. [as long as you could put the CD into the player within 30 seconds]
and that was like 6 years ago. -
Inappropriate?this is a must - accross all platforms. I think the iPhone client has the longest gap, then android then PC. Please fix!
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Inappropriate?Any news for gapless play of gapless albums? It's very annoying listening to such albums and there are pauses between the tracks that should be played gapless! So please Spotify, give it a go....
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?It's actually worse than you think. Spotify doesn't just insert gaps, it actually fades tracks in and out over a fraction of a second at their beginning and end. Try 'If She Wants Me' (track 3 on Belle and Sebastian's 'Dear Catastrophe Waitress') which begins with an electric guitar strum. It should be clean and sudden, not emergent from silence. Totally ruined! What's curious is that if, while the track is playing, you press the rewind to start of track button, you hear the track from the beginning exactly as intended, without any annoying fade in.
Please, Spotify, even if you can't get gapless working straight away, please get rid of the fade in and out! It's totally senseless.
I’m frustrated
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Genius! I just confirmed exactly what you said here for myself. It pins down something that's been niggling me about the start of tracks for ages. I never could put my finger on it - but you've made it easy to reproduce. Thanks!
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Inappropriate?ho yeah, gapless play so we can enjoy lou reed's Metal Machine Music in all it's integrity... ;-)
for those who still don't know: http://open.spotify.com/album/2g4i8ti...
I’m confident
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Inappropriate?this is one of the biggest problems of Spotify where the alternatives put it to shame. please fix it as soon as you can, ok?
I’m waiting
