Changing a non-gapless album into a gapless one in iTunes 8

GO TO ADMIN PANEL > ADD-ONS AND INSTALL VERTIFORO SIDEBAR TO SEE FORUMS AND SIDEBAR

Skrimir

New member
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
66
Points
0
Location
Canada
I'm just wondering if selecting a whole album and right-clicking "get info" and ticking the "gapless album" into a "yes" will turn a non-gapless album into a gapless one. I realize it didn't work in previous versions of iTunes and I'm just curious if it works now. Besides re-ripping the CD as a gapless album.
 

rockmyplimsoul

Active member
Joined
Jan 3, 2006
Messages
5,483
Points
36
Location
In the Pub
Website
www.last.fm
Contrary to popular belief, the gapless setting you see in iTunes does not turn an album into a gapless album. The "Part of a gapless album" setting in your tags only tells iTunes that you do not want it to use the cross-fade feature on the album, just in case cross-fade is enabled. That's all it does and has ever done -- it was never intended to make the album gapless. Furthermore, it only works in iTunes and not on the iPod since the iPod does not have a cross-fade feature (though the new Nano does, so maybe this setting works on the 4G Nano with respect to cross-fade).

Gapless playback is determined when you rip a CD (or add pre-ripped songs into iTunes). If an album is not playing gaplessly, you can try re-ripping it, or supposedly you can check the "Part of a gapless album" setting and then un-check the setting to force iTunes to scan the album again (not sure if that really works though). Also, if you are ripping CDs that were burned from iTunes or some other media player, it is possible that the burning process inserted a short gap between songs, and that gap cannot be removed if you try to re-rip the CD.
 

Skrimir

New member
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
66
Points
0
Location
Canada
So essentially, the "gapless album" setting only applies to the crossfade feature? Does this mean I should stop ripping gapless albums using the gapless album setting when right-clicking the CD and selecting "get info"? Or should I continue doing so in case future iPods other than the 4G nano support crossfade?
 

S2_Mac

New member
Joined
Oct 24, 2006
Messages
4,876
Points
0
Location
About 3 feet in front of the monitor
So essentially, the "gapless album" setting only applies to the crossfade feature?

Almost. When iTunes is "determining gapless playback" it is doing some fairly fine-grain examination of the first and last few "frames" of music in each file (to learn when the "music" truly stops, to best know how much info to cache, etc.) so that the segue between tracks is as seamless as possible.

Telling iTunes to rip gapless just gets the analysis out of the way during the rip, and tells iTunes to set the Gapless flag for you. You can ignore that option when ripping; if you later mark the album as gapless the analysis will be carried out then.
 

rockmyplimsoul

Active member
Joined
Jan 3, 2006
Messages
5,483
Points
36
Location
In the Pub
Website
www.last.fm
S2_Mac said:
So essentially, the "gapless album" setting only applies to the crossfade feature?

Almost. When iTunes is "determining gapless playback" it is doing some fairly fine-grain examination of the first and last few "frames" of music in each file (to learn when the "music" truly stops, to best know how much info to cache, etc.) so that the segue between tracks is as seamless as possible.

Telling iTunes to rip gapless just gets the analysis out of the way during the rip, and tells iTunes to set the Gapless flag for you. You can ignore that option when ripping; if you later mark the album as gapless the analysis will be carried out then.
My understanding is that the gapless analysis is always done when music is added to the library, regardless of how you set the "Part of a gapless album" option. Setting that option before you rip only sets the option in the tag for you, much like changing the genre before you rip a CD.
 

Skrimir

New member
Joined
Jan 6, 2008
Messages
66
Points
0
Location
Canada
So in short, would it really matter to rip an album as gapless or not? 'Cause I know many of the albums I own have one or 2 songs that transition into each other, but the rest of the album is not gapless. Is it still worth tagging/ripping it as a gapless album?
 
Top