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[krmasson]

Hello there,

my MC library is configured to play my music gapless, because of a dozen albums that need to effectively be played gapless. But conversely, without the standard gap of 2 or 3 seconds, some tracks often become played to early after the previous one.

Hence the suggestion: what about a intermediate mode, "auto-gapless" ? When a track ends suddenly (e.g. still non null level during the last 1/100 second), it would be chained gapless with the next track. Else (if some audible blank at end of track), a gap would be inserted before playing the next track.

Do you think that this would be possible? In such a case, I would migrate gaplessly to this new version :-).

Regards
Christophe

[blgentry]

What about the "use gapless for sequential album tracks" check box?  This only applies to albums that are played in sequence.  I can't imagine any case where gapless would play a sequential track "too early".

So all non-sequential tracks would obey your gapped playback setting, but album tracks, in order, from the same album would play gapless. Seems like that would do it.

Brian.

[krmasson]

I have actually lots of such albums, where the blank and end of track (or at beginning of the next one) is about only two seconds, mostly on old albums. Combined with the "standard" gap of the CD player (or MC), that makes a total gap of 3 or 4 seconds, which is enough for me.

Yes, of course, I have selected the gapless playback option.

However, w/o the automatic gap of 2 seconds, the remaining gap (1 or 2 seconds) is clearly not enough to separate 2 movements in a classical piece of music.
Not sure about the exact time values, but you get the idea.

[BillT]

I have actually lots of such albums, where the blank and end of track (or at beginning of the next one) is about only two seconds, mostly on old albums. Combined with the "standard" gap of the CD player (or MC), that makes a total gap of 3 or 4 seconds, which is enough for me.

Yes, of course, I have selected the gapless playback option.

However, w/o the automatic gap of 2 seconds, the remaining gap (1 or 2 seconds) is clearly not enough to separate 2 movements in a classical piece of music.
Not sure about the exact time values, but you get the idea.

I don't.

If you have gapless selected and play an album, the intertrack gap will be exactly the same as if you were playing the album off CD. Most classical albums have fairly long silences after the nominal track start and the start of the music to give the pause you want.

On the other hand, if you have "do not play silence" selected, that could alter the inter track pause.

[JimH]

It's not a great solution, but you could set up two zones, one gapless, one not, then use the gapless zone for just the albums that have the problem. 

The wiki has a topic on zones.

[krmasson]

the intertrack gap will be exactly the same as if you were playing the album off CD. Most classical albums have fairly long silences after the nominal track start and the start of the music to give the pause you want.

Clearly not on many of my albums. Maybe the information about the gap length to observe has been removed when I ripped my CDs, or by the vendor of files that I bought online?

you could set up two zones, one gapless, one not, then use the gapless zone for just the albums that have the problem. 

I already tried that, but the zones do not appear when I use MC as DLNA renderer. Furthermore, I do not always know in advance that an album should be played gapless: I know it for most of them, not all, and it is unpleasant to discover during the listening that the album should actuallu be played gaplessly...

All this seems to suggest that the feature could be useful, no?

[blgentry]

It doesn't make much sense that the gap info in the files would be inappropriate for listening.  This would mean that, when listening to the original CD, on a CD player, that you would think that the gaps were too small there too.  "This CD sounds bad, the gaps between songs are too short."

If *that* is the case, I'm not sure what to say.  That's rather strange.

Please *do* check this setting:

Tools > Options > Audio > Track Change > do not play silence leading and trailing > (is it checked?)

Brian.

[krmasson]

On many CDs, my CD player adds 2 to 5 seconds gap (displayed/counted from -5.00 to 0) before the effective beginning of the track. Combined with the silent at end of the previous track or at the beginning of the following track, that makes a long enough silent. W/o the pre-track gap, the silent becomes, imho, too short.

I haven't checked if my CD player always adds this gap, or if it depends on the CD (I use it only seldom now).
I haven't made stats, either, about which CD have to short silents: maybe older records had shorter silents at end of track because they would rely on implicit gap added by the CD player ?

This is obviously a matter of sensibility, but I often have this feeling of short silent when playing with MC, that I hadn't with the CD player.

Hence my suggestion about the feature.

And I forgot to mention it, but (triple checked), the checkbox to not play silents is unchecked (that is, silents are "played").

Regards
Christophe

P.-S. I have considered putting some kind of proxy on top of the MC server, or dynamically adding some blank in the FLAC data when they are loaded, but I already have 2 other projects which are already late :-)

[blgentry]

There's a CD feature called "pre-gap".  When you see the CD player counting down before a track starts, that's pre-gap.  I think.  I'm not an expert on this.

The ripping program I use detects and uses the pre-gap, so my tracks all seem to work very much like on a CD player.  Though, like you, I haven't used a CD player in quite a while.

Not sure what to advise you, so I'll just say:  Good luck.

Brian.

[krmasson]

Are you aware of any software that could allow me to batch-mass-process some already ripped tracks, in order to add them a gap ? With exception of the few albums that need to be played gapless, of course.

@MC team: any chance to get "my" feature implemented?

[BillT]

There's a CD feature called "pre-gap".  When you see the CD player counting down before a track starts, that's pre-gap.  I think.

Having been playing CDs since 1983, I'd never heard of this.

Wikipedia says

"The pregap on a Red Book audio CD is the portion of the audio track that precedes "index 01" for a given track in the table of contents (TOC). The pregap ("index 00") is typically two seconds long and usually, but not always, contains silence. Popular uses for having the pregap contain audio are live CDs, track interludes, and hidden songs in the pregap of the first track"

so it seems that it is only relevant to the first track.

The countdown to the next track is just a player implementation counting time to the end of the current track.

[fitbrit]

Having been playing CDs since 1983, I'd never heard of this.

Wikipedia says

"The pregap on a Red Book audio CD is the portion of the audio track that precedes "index 01" for a given track in the table of contents (TOC). The pregap ("index 00") is typically two seconds long and usually, but not always, contains silence. Popular uses for having the pregap contain audio are live CDs, track interludes, and hidden songs in the pregap of the first track"

so it seems that it is only relevant to the first track.

The countdown to the next track is just a player implementation counting time to the end of the current track.

I think you may not have understood that explanation on Wikipedia. It sounds to me that the pregap ("index 00") is on any given track, not just track 1. I think, and I may be wrong, that each track can have a pre-gap (index 00) and the track itself (index 01)

[blgentry]

I think you may not have understood that explanation on Wikipedia. It sounds to me that the pregap ("index 00") is on any given track, not just track 1. I think, and I may be wrong, that each track can have a pre-gap (index 00) and the track itself (index 01)

That's correct:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Track_(CD)#Indices

Indexes within tracks are a little known and little used feature of the CD.  I had an early 90s Denon CD player that had front panel and remote controls to select the index within a track.  I had maybe one or two CDs in my small collection (back then) that actually had a user selectable index.  I think I remember a classical piece I had on CD where each movement was an index within the track.

As I understand it, the negative countdown that you see on the front panel of a CD player, before a track, is the player playing the silent index0 in order to provide the kind of gap between songs that the producer wanted.

Brian.

[krmasson]

I remember that, too. The only two CDs I have ever seen that leveraged this feature were issued by... Denon.

That said, even if I am proud to have initiated my first hot topic on this forum, and beside knowing how, when, and why "my" gaps may have been altered or shrunk, the initial question remains:

do you @dev team think that this feature could be useful (I think so :-)), and most of all, feasible?

Regards
Christophe