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Author Topic: A way to "selectively" play gapless?  (Read 4891 times)

krmasson

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A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« on: October 28, 2015, 02:46:52 am »

Hello everybody,

I have a rather large (>1500 albums) music collection, mostly consisting in classical music. Of course I use JRiver to play it at home.

I have enabled gapless playback, because some tracks of some albums are intended to be played wthout interruption, but there are not so many (can think of half a dozen albums, probably no more than a dozen).

Conversely, many other albums have been spliced in tracks while taking gaps into account : when playing gapless, the interval between two tracks is often, IMHO, too short.

So I was wondering of there is a way to activate gapless playback selectively, on a album by album basis?  Or would it be possible for MediaCenter to "guess" when gapless is required (one track starting suddenly, at the same level as the previous track ending suddenly)?

That would be a great feature...
Thanks in advance for your response(s)
CM
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AndrewFG

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #1 on: October 28, 2015, 04:41:47 am »

See Audio, Alternate Mode Settings (ALT + M to toggle)..
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krmasson

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #2 on: October 28, 2015, 05:49:00 am »

That could indeed be the beginning of solution. But this forces me to switch the mode before playing, and wll not work if I drive MC through JRemote or use it as DLNA server (most of my usage).

What I would like to do is to select this gapful / gapless mode once for all for a given album, when ripping or downloading the album.
Would be there a way to associate the Alternate Mode to an album or particular disk folder(s) ?
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AndrewFG

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #3 on: October 28, 2015, 06:20:19 am »

Sorry but I don't think that is possible.
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mojave

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #4 on: October 28, 2015, 09:34:00 am »

Do you have "Do not play silence (leading and trailing)" unchecked? With this unchecked the natural gap established when the album was mastered will be used and will vary from album to album.

You can create two zones:  one for gapped and one for gapless playback. This doesn't help with a playlist that needs gapped and gapless, but you listen to full albums anyway so it shouldn't matter. You can switch zones in JRemote or even setup a Zoneswitch rule to do it automatically.

Once setup you would pick an album and play it - it will automatically go to the correct zone. Pick the next album and play it - it will automatically go to the correct zone. What you can't do is pick the next album and select Add to Playing Now if the current zone is gapped and you want to play the next album gapless. You could have a gap tag that shows if the album should be played gapped or gapless. Show this tag in JRemote when selecting albums to help you select albums of the same type when adding to playing now.

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blgentry

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #5 on: October 28, 2015, 09:41:19 am »

Conversely, many other albums have been spliced in tracks while taking gaps into account : when playing gapless, the interval between two tracks is often, IMHO, too short.

I don't understand.  Are you saying that 99% of your albums are mastered wrong with teeny tiny gaps between songs?  That seems unlikely. 

Maybe the poster above me is on to something with the "do not play silence".  That setting "got me" at first too.  I noticed WAY too short intervals between songs, even missing a word or two.  Once I turned that setting off, everything played as I expected it to.

Brian.
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mwillems

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #6 on: October 28, 2015, 02:37:39 pm »

I don't understand.  Are you saying that 99% of your albums are mastered wrong with teeny tiny gaps between songs?  That seems unlikely. 

Maybe the poster above me is on to something with the "do not play silence".  That setting "got me" at first too.  I noticed WAY too short intervals between songs, even missing a word or two.  Once I turned that setting off, everything played as I expected it to.

Brian.

Ditto.  I've always thought it was odd that that box is checked by default.
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krmasson

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #7 on: October 28, 2015, 04:01:31 pm »

You can create two zones:  one for gapped and one for gapless playback.

Looks pretty much like what I need. Give me one day or two to understand all the steps :-) and try it. Seems very promising, and I really love the idea of tagging the gapless albums in order to send them automatically to the right zone.

Thanks, and will keep you updated.
CM

PS The option to suppress blanks at end of tracks is already *unchecked*, as you suggest, I have just had a look on it.
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krmasson

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #8 on: October 28, 2015, 04:10:30 pm »

Are you saying that 99% of your albums are mastered wrong with teeny tiny gaps between songs? 

No, not all of course, but a significant part. The "typical" blank at end of the track (part of the track) is, say, about 2 seconds. When followed by a gap of 2 seconds, that is a correct separation of 4 seconds. When played gapless, 2 seconds are not enough: the next movement of the concerto starts before you have realized that the previous one was to end.

But I also have some albums with longer silents of 3-4 seconds, that sound perfectly when played gapless :).

I haven't measured the exact durations, but you get the idea.
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AndyU

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #9 on: October 29, 2015, 01:35:59 am »

I mostly listen to classical music, including a fair amount of opera for which gapless playback is imperative. I have the "Do not play silence .." option unchecked, and am happy with the gaps I get between movements in symphonies, etc. They seem to me similar to the gaps that were on the cd, and it is just a fact of life that they are much smaller than the gaps you would get in a concert - you don't get the musicians retuning on a cd either! But I can see why you might want longer gaps, so what I would do is use concatenate the tracks of each of your half dozen gapless works into one track.  Then these will then have no option but to play gaplessly, and you can have whatever gaps you like for other works. Keep the original "tracks" if you want them.  Here are some ways to join up FLAC files, not sure if JRiver has an option too.
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krmasson

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #10 on: October 29, 2015, 05:27:59 am »

Thanks AndyU,

I was also considering this option. I would be glad to have a general solution, like the one mojave has suggested. If it appears too tricky to get working, I will solve it the hardway, by merging the few offending tracks.
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krmasson

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Re: A way to "selectively" play gapless?
« Reply #11 on: November 06, 2015, 03:12:58 am »

You can create two zones:  one for gapped and one for gapless playback. You can switch zones in JRemote or even setup a Zoneswitch rule to do it automatically.

Hello,
I began to create my second zone last night, and to change the gapped/gapless settings. But doing that, I discovered that the audio settings seem on only apply to "normal" zones, I mean the ones associated to the audio output, not the ones associated to DLNA renderers.

On the other side, when I use MC as DLNA server, it has always played gapless.

So I am wondering:
1) By which sort of magics are my flac files served gapless? Does it depends only on the "Enable SetNext support" option, or does it depends only on controller/renderer settings ?
2) Is there a mean to enable 2 zones or 2 sets of settings when using MC as DLNA server?

Thanks
CM
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