Gapless Playing NW-A1000 ?

[bensh]

Hey buddies,

I just got a new NW-A1000 and uploaded all the Tracks on the Device (converted in Atrac3Plus) and then I wanted to listen to a mix-cd, that needs gapless playing and I noticed that between every track there's a small gap, maybe half a second! Is this normal? because I read in the Forum, that the NW-A1000 supports gapless-playback in Atrac3Plus!!

Would be nice if someone could give me an answer!!

Thx

Bensh

[FenderP]

How did you import the tracks? If you did it via CD, it should be gapless. If it came from files on your hard drive, it may not be.

[bensh]

ok.. that may be the problem.. thanks!

[bensh]

is there no way to fix that kind of problem??

[FenderP]

It's the way SonicStage works. If your source is a WAV file, maybe, but if you're transcoding MP3 or something to ATRAC, no. I also wouldn't transcode lossy to lossy as you will lose fidelity.

[CoyBoy]

I just bought the new My Chemical Romance album from the Connect music store and the first song leads right into the second song. A perfect example for gapless playback. But there is a tiny gap in the audio both in SonicStage 4 and in my HD1 player. Is Sony not ripping from the source? Or do I have to enable gapless in the menu? I'm a bit confused...

[kerfuffle]

Probably not ripping from the source.

No such thing as 'enable gapless playback' in SonicStage. Unlike iTunes, SonicStage doesn't need a checkbox for gapless playback.

[JustAnUnCoolCat]

Simple answers to clarify

'gapless' in the ATRAC Walkman implementation means, it plays seamlessly.. but this is only an absolute for ATRAC encoded audio, in other words.. if it's ATRAC it'll be played seamlessly (literally meaning the audio tracks will be played as though they are appended to each other in one continuous audio stream, if there are trailing and leading gaps in the audio segments/tracks that make up the stream, they'll also be present).

Seamless type 'gapless' playback means literal playback - so if you encode a set of audio tracks where there was intended to be intermediate literally pauses that are not part of the encoding (for example, CD's with 2 sec track gaps), then when the audio is ripped/encoded, the non-internal gaps will be lost. However, if the source was literally seamless, such as DAO style CD's (aka the type of mastering such as concerts and many classical suites, where one track leads straight into another, or say dance/DJ mixes - then the audio as heard in it's ATRAC resulting encoding will be as seamless as the source).

WAV sourced audio, and likewise WMA Lossless, imported and converted to ATRAC will also play seamlessly with no added artificial gaps if they were seamless to begin with. Any empty non-content artificial audio frames (pure digital silence) each end will be (if they existed in the source) maintained.

MP3 sources, as these have trailing null frames, will (when transcoded to ATRAC) still have the trailing null frames content in the ATRAC versions - if you dont remove the nulls, you wont get seamless playback less those nulls.

So if you want MP3's to transcode to ATRAC, and lose those nulls that would be included before and after encoding, you'll need to decode to WAV or other lossless format, go in to the resulting decodes with an editor, and strip the unwanted null frames and resave to WAV or WMA-Lossless to then be able to reinsert these (by import) into SS for subsequent ATRAC encoding.

If you have Sony edit software such as Sound Forge, you can do the edit/decode direct in there, and using the ATRAC plugin, directly output the edited results into ATRAC form ready to import into SS after changing the output filename extentions to .oma or .omg

It's pretty much that simple

As for NW series decks and their handling of WMA's, MP3, AAC - well, it feels like the A series handles WMA's properly and seamlessly where the audio is seamlessly cut to start with but i am basing on non-technical testing (must add that to the to-do list). MP3's will be handled as-is, and hence there will be a pause due to the inherent null frames in MP3 audio when relying on playback of MP3's sent as MP3's to the decks. No idea re AAC at this stage, but i suspect they will act like WMA's sent for native decode/playback on the A series since AAC's dont usually have trailing empty null frames unless they were part of the source audio the AAC's were created from. Clearly, if the source had nulls on the end and the source was AAC encoded, then they'll act (in seamless terms) much like mp3's do when sent for native playback to the A series.

Hope this helps.., and over the weekend, i'll sit down and do all the testing to correct/confirm the unknowns here.. and hopefully by Sunday night, may be able to submit a proper conclusive tested outline.

But as i recall from the D-NE series, re mp3 playback, and i suspect this maybe the case for the NW flash and hdd units too, you'll probably find the artificial pause between MP3's in transition to be notably less than occurs with most mp3 supporting decks.

In fact, with the D-NE series (2nd gen & 3rd gen), there is an artificial gap still on playback, but it's so markable reduced in durations vs that of most mp3 decks, that for the most part all you'll ordinarily notice is the the trailing nulls of the outgoing track plus possibly one or two frames worth of nulls (which adds up to bugger all).

Clearly. mind, where you have instances or retained null frames in the audio (any format supported) and/or artificial handling transitional gaps/pauses inserted by the deck (MP3/WMA/AAC formats played natively usually), if you are listening to audio that was intended to be seamless in transition at the original source mastering, then no matter how small the nulls/transistional gaps are, you'll hear a perceptable drop out as when you hit the null frames and/or the whatever degree of inserted transisional gap sourced from player handling.

Hope that helps..

Be Cool Always

'Tom Kat'

[Coolhellfire]

Hi. A solution that perfectly works with me:

-If you have mp3´s or other codec , and are ripped correctly, you can use Nero (I use 6 serie) and create a music cd image. In Nero there is an option (in Properties) of removing gaps putting 20-30 frames (my experience: the best is 22-23 frames) of crossfade between songs. Burn the cd and then load the image in the Nero virtual drive.

Go to SonicStage and import the cd image... Perfect gapless in a 99,5 % ;-)

Sorry for my english...

Regards from Spain.

[CoyBoy]

Thanks for the info. I was just thinking that since I bought the album from Sony, the music would be encoded to take advantage of Atrac's capabilities. No big deal though. I'm sure if I ripped it straight from CD it would sound gapless.