Gapless Playback, when did it come?

[Ebuka Allison]

Gapless playback of music is one of the most wanted features of Xbox Music. I didn't realize how much I needed it till it came.
Wait what? This might only be for me or a glitch or may have already been there but. When playing music from my cloud collection on my 620, there is no gap at all. On song segues into another, its so disconcerting because,I totally didn't expect it. Playing music from SD card doesn't have the same effect unfortunately. Anyone else notice this?

 

[Pranjal Rai]

Gapless playback of music is one of the most wanted features of Xbox Music. I didn't realize how much I needed it till it came.
Wait what? This might only be for me or a glitch or may have already been there but. When playing music from my cloud collection on my 620, there is no gap at all. On song segues into another, its so disconcerting because,I totally didn't expect it. Playing music from SD card doesn't have the same effect unfortunately. Anyone else notice this?

Can you tell me how to put songs into cloud collection for listening, so that I can confirm what you just wrote?

 

[Ebuka Allison]

On the computer, I use the web app

 

[Guzzler3]

Sadly, that makes sense.

Streaming, you need to buffer the data so it's plays without jitters. So it makes sense that you can get gapless playback when you stream because it will buffer the next song and take out the gap. Where as with playing local stored you don't need to buffer (per say) and just open the next file when the previous file is done, but that puts a gap in.

I hate streaming, because I tend to be in areas where there is no data connectivity when I'm listening to music.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Playing of local music seems to have minimal gaps as well.

 

[byobg]

Gapless playback of music is one of the most wanted features of Xbox Music. I didn't realize how much I needed it till it came.
Wait what? This might only be for me or a glitch or may have already been there but. When playing music from my cloud collection on my 620, there is no gap at all. On song segues into another, its so disconcerting because,I totally didn't expect it. Playing music from SD card doesn't have the same effect unfortunately. Anyone else notice this?

I was pretty skeptical of this, but I just checked it out, and, well, I'm still pretty skeptical.

I have Neutral Milk Hotel's _In The Aeroplane Over The Sea_ in my cloud collection, and not on my SD card - I just tried playing it, and the gaps in the transitions are small, but DEFINITELY there. However, that MIGHT be just the well-known "burst of sound during song transitions" bug that's appearing in all music-playing apps - so there's a LITTLE hope that the "gap" I'm hearing consists solely of that unwanted artifact, and that once the larger OS bug is fixed, gapless will be gapless.


@Ebuka - are you on Developer Preview 8.1, or WP8? If on 8.1, do you experience the "pop" or "noise burst" between songs that (most, if not all) others are hearing? What particular music were you listening to that sounded gapless?


(Also, it's weird if they can do it streaming but not do it locally - I'd expect buffering local content to be easier...)

 

[Ebuka Allison]

8.1 Preview. I was playing simple plan while doing dishes via cloud. I listened really hard but didn't catch those gaps

 

[byobg]

@Ebuka, which Simple Plan album? Which tracks in particular are supposed to blend seamlessly? (I'm listening to _Get Your Heart On_ now - fun group!)


I checked this out on my way home yesterday, and yeah, there's something to what Ebuka's saying (sorry for my reflexive skepticism!)


First I listened to my "control" gapless album (NMH's _Aeroplane_), streaming. There were gaps, but they were about as small as I've ever heard them on a Windows Phone - 1/4 to 1/3 of a second, if I had to guess. Then I listened to my other control gapless album, _Dark Side of the Moon_, which I had downloaded to SD card. NOTICEABLY longer gaps - half second up to a full second, is my estimate.

If they fixed the "noise micro-burst" in between tracks (which I'm still hearing, on every single transition) and got the gaps just a little shorter, Xbox Music, for all my whining about it, would become my favorite single app on WP, and I would overlook all other flaws with a big smile on my face.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Grrr....maybe I'm imagining it. Normally I just pick an artist and shuffle. I can confirm that the gaps are still there on local music, but I honestly cannot hear the gaseous between songs when playing from the cloud

 

[byobg]

Grrr....maybe I'm imagining it. Normally I just pick an artist and shuffle. I can confirm that the gaps are still there on local music, but I honestly cannot hear the gaseous between songs when playing from the cloud

If you're shuffling, gapless playback isn't really a factor (except by chance, when your shuffled playlist happens to play two consecutive album tracks consecutively, AND those two tracks are supposed to have a seamless transition between them). Sure, there shouldn't be a HUGE silence between tracks, but content that's not intended for gapless playback has trailing silence encoded into the file, on purpose, and stripping that out (even if we could) would be just as jarring and wrong as inserting gaps where they shouldn't be.


Using _Dark Side of the Moon_ as an example - if you were listening to it on CD, or (gasp!) vinyl, or just about any portable device EXCEPT a Windows Phone, you wouldn't be able to tell where track 2 ("Breathe") ended and track 3 ("On The Run") started, unless you were watching the song timer - they just blend together, sounding like one long continuous song. Most live albums are recorded similarly - you hear a song, then applause and audience noise, then another song - but never total silence.

 

[Ebuka Allison]

Also on non-shuffle albums by Simple Plan (No helmets, no pads, just balls). It could be my imagination erasing the gaps, bit I can't hear any. Of course, the above could be right

 

[maverick786us]

I am facing the same issue. I have a non stop music collection, where one track is linked to other. In iTunes desktop, it works perfectly fine. But my Lumia XBox music, there are gaps between tracks, without shuffling. This is an album, if it comes across gap of mili-second, can spoil the whole fun.

 

[Koen C]

A week or two ago at the Build 2015 presentation slides confirmed that Microsoft has heard customer feedback well and has responded by making gapless playback a native feature. The playlist APIs will automatically provide gapless transitions.

"Playlist APIs automatically provide gapless transitions
Metadata + heuristics are used to provide the best possible experience
Metadata used for AAC and MP3 (if it exists)
Heuristics always available"

"Gapless audio, HLS, DASH, Customizable Controls and Closed Captions and natively supported"

 

[Koen C]

double post.

 

[maverick786us]

A week or two ago at the Build 2015 presentation slides confirmed that Microsoft has heard customer feedback well and has responded by making gapless playback a native feature. The playlist APIs will automatically provide gapless transitions.

"Playlist APIs automatically provide gapless transitions
Metadata + heuristics are used to provide the best possible experience
Metadata used for AAC and MP3 (if it exists)
Heuristics always available"

"Gapless audio, HLS, DASH, Customizable Controls and Closed Captions and natively supported"

That is the case with Windrows 10. Which is a long wait

 

[byobg]

That is the case with Windrows 10. Which is a long wait

Late is ALWAYS better than "never." I've been waiting almost five years for this - I can last another couple months