Gapless ....apologies first!

[aob9]

Okay, I apologise for this question in advance but I notice there has been a lot of discussion on this subject recently. I require only a brief answer.

When you refer to gapless playback do you mean the seamless advance to the next track ( e.g in LIVE recordings )?

Is it true that Sony devices are unique in the ability to play tracks like this and this feature is not in the new NWZ series?

[navsimpson]

Yeah, gapless does mean seamless transition with, umm, no gap Sony players are definitely not alone in this respect, as since the iPod 5th gen update, iPods have been capable of gapless when playing MP3s. I think there are some Samsung players that do this too.

As for the NWZ, it seems that everyone who's tried it can't get gapless to work regardless of format.

-Nav

[p0rkch0p2007]

IMO this failing absolutely sucks, i understand that sony might only be concerned with people who want to fill up a player with random tracks (hence the small memory on the players i believe), but surely sony MUST release a firmware update so they can enable gapless playback, i have many albums that are gapless and not even live and when i first went looking at daps this was one major feature i looked out for, and ended up settling on the nwhd3. and i have continued to go sony because of 2 things 1. sound quality, and 2. gapless playback.

Edited September 13, 2007 by p0rkch0p2007

[Akai Kenshi]

Sony Walkmen could only do gapless either with ATRAC files or (in the case of the S7** series) SonicStage-encoded AAC files (which were of dodgy quality). The new Walkmen use neither of those things, and in my experience with drag-and-dropped Nero AAC files, they do not play gaplessly. A tad annoying, but not a dealbreaker for me. I'm hoping that new firmware or use of Sony Media Manager (with its possibly special tags or databases or whatever) can fix this.

But yeah, I think I'll start voicing my concerns to Sony Customer Care about it.

[tman]

How long are the gaps with the new players? A 1/10 of a second blip, or longer? (I think I could live with a split second, but if they made these gapless they seem like they'd be perfect.)

[Akai Kenshi]

It's...quite noticeable.

[Zizone_]

Maybe when "the Media Manager for Walkman" is released, they might support gapless (the software is supposed to come out soon and free with RSS (podcast), video, picture and of course audio files support).

Edited September 14, 2007 by Zizone