Gapless Playback; Here or not?

[Ebuka Allison]

There are many people who complain of lack of gapless playback in WP8. However, I've noticed that on my 620 and 625, there happens to be gapless playback sometimes. Playing playlists or something. Does this happen to everyone or is it just me?

 

[JCtheGreat]

There are many people who complain of lack of gapless playback in WP8. However, I've noticed that on my 620 and 625, there happens to be gapless playback sometimes. Playing playlists or something. Does this happen to everyone or is it just me?

I never experienced gapless playback on my phone. How come you have it?

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Sometimes it plays without a gap. I was listening to Skillet and was expecting to hear a gap b/w songs, but nope. Seamless. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. It seems to be random, anyone else experiencing this?

 

[Guzzler3]

I have yet to experience a gapless play back with my L810 :angry:

 

[byobg]

Sometimes it plays without a gap. I was listening to Skillet and was expecting to hear a gap b/w songs, but nope. Seamless. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn't. It seems to be random, anyone else experiencing this?

The gaps aren't consistently sized - sometimes I get a big gap between album tracks, sometimes a smaller one. I've never experienced ZERO gap - i.e. a smooth seamless transition from one song to the next, on an album designed to sound that way. But the fact that the gaps aren't consistently sized, even on re-listens to the same material, suggests that it's not necessarily as simple as "finish playing one song, load the next, play the next" - that maybe there's some scheduling taking place, where the player tries to pre-load the next song so that it will start playing around when the current song ends, but just isn't particularly concerned with accuracy. This would explain why there'd sometimes be a big gap, sometimes a small one, and occasionally, if the stars line up just right and the player gets lucky, almost no gap.

Just a hunch. Regardless of where they come from, the gaps anger me, and make me love my phone less every time I (don't) hear them.

 

[distilledoreo]

What if it is gapless all the time, but some tracks have a period of time in the beginning of the song where no music plays?

 

[MikeSo]

I agree that the gaps seem to be uneven in length, but I've never had truly gapless playback. Reminded of this yesterday when I listened to Judas Priest's album "Defenders of the faith", the second to last song "Heavy duty" segues into the title track to finish the album... the gap was really short but still very noticeable, and really takes away from the impact of the music. Wish they could fix this.

 

[explosive0]

This one still beats me. If they don't fix it in WP8.1, I'm totally done.

 

[distilledoreo]

I just tested it out, and it turns out, the gaps are at the end of some songs. What everyone's asking for is crossfading, not gapless playback. If you watch the time on the songs you can see it instantly changes songs, but the song before has silence at the end.

 

[MikeSo]

I just tested it out, and it turns out, the gaps are at the end of some songs. What everyone's asking for is crossfading, not gapless playback. If you watch the time on the songs you can see it instantly changes songs, but the song before has silence at the end.

That makes no sense. I don't want crossfade, I want gapless playback. In the example I mentioned above, crossfading wouldn't help.

 

[Guzzler3]

The best example of an album to test with is; Pink Floyd - The Wall.

If you are familiar with the album, the lack of gapless playback will drive one insane. The entire 2 disk set has NO gaps between songs. The end of each song carries over to the next song.

Now, what's weird is in Windows 8.1 if you create a playlist of the entire album, and play the playlist in the old Windows Media Player in W8, it plays fine with no gaps. But, go with the Modern Music app, and play that same playlist, you get gaps.

And of course, in WP8 Music+Videos app, same playlist, GAPS.

AAAAaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
(it's one of my favorite albums)

 

[byobg]

I just tested it out, and it turns out, the gaps are at the end of some songs. What everyone's asking for is crossfading, not gapless playback. If you watch the time on the songs you can see it instantly changes songs, but the song before has silence at the end.

I'm not asking for crossfading - I'm explicitly asking for gapless playback.

What I see when the player switches between songs that should be gapless is this: first song's song timer counts down to zero, there's some silence, then the next song starts. If you're not trying this out on content that SHOULD be gapless (like the standard example, Pink Floyd's _Dark Side of the Moon_, or Neutral Milk Hotel's _Aeroplane over the Sea_, or any live album), then of course you're going to hear gaps between tracks, because they're supposed to be there. Crossfading would make non-gapless material play back gaplessly, but I don't care about that - I just want GAPLESS material to play back gaplessly, the way it does on literally every other competing platform.