Gapless Playback

[music lover]

Hi Folks,

This is my very first post on the Rockbox Forums, so - hello everyone!

Having just installed Rockbox version 3.5.1 on my Sansa Fuze (version 1), I was keen to see how it handled gapless playback, which was my main reason for installing Rockbox.

I had already transferred Mike Oldfield's Music of the Spheres to my player when running the Sansa Fuze firmware; this album is gapless. When using Rockbox, I am aware of a faint click between some of the tracks. With the Fuze firmware, it was more noticeable but I was expecting the track transitions to be completely free of clicks with Rockbox. To be fair, some of the tracks have no clicks but many do. Is there anything I can do to overcome this?

Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

ml

[saratoga]

Rockbox decodes albums with precisely the number of samples as the file specifies.  If you encoded the files with gaps, they'll be gaps in rockbox.  If you encoded them without gaps, there won't be in Rockbox.  If you're hearing gaps, it sounds like you didn't encode them gaplessly, which is certainly possible if you used an encoder that didn't support gapless.

[music lover]

Hi saratoga,

Thanks for your reply. You helped me on another forum very recently.

I used Windows Media Player (WMP) 11 to 'rip' the tracks from the original CD. I'm so new to the world of digital audio (having been brought up on the analogue stuff) that I wouldn't know if WMP supports gapless encoding. Perhaps I need to use a different encoder - Foobar?

I need your expert advice.

ml

[saratoga]

WMP is not gapless.  Either use lame or (I believe) iTunes based encoders.

[Vague Rant]

foobar2000 actually uses the LAME dll for encoding, so yes, you should be able to encode your music using foobar to get working gapless tracks.

[bluebrother]

WMP is not gapless.  Either use lame or (I believe) iTunes based encoders.

Vorbis is also a codec that supports gapless.

[saratoga]

Almost everything is gapless now, except the WMP built in encoders.  lame, itunes, ogg, mpc, flac, etc.

[music lover]

Hi Guys,

Thanks very much for your help.

I'll check out and use one of the other encoders that you have mentioned.

ml

[music lover]

Hi Folks,

What can I say?

My Sansa Fuze now has a new lease of life! I was so disappointed when I bought it just over a year ago and it made a mess of gapless recordings. I used dBpoweramp, which implements the LAME MP3 encoder and Rockbox and the gapless playback is just great - no artifacts at the track transitions.

I can't thank you all enough for your advice.

ml