Streamers and the lack of gapless playback?

[Soopafly49]

In two minds about wheather rip all my discs and start streaming because of this problem. How do people with streamers that dont have gapless playback get on generally, Is it really annoying or is the fact that all yours tunes are in one place make it bearable?

 

[MajorFubar]

I'm sure some streamers must do it, especially if you rip to a lossless format.

On the software side of things, both iTunes and WMP have no issues with gapless, but I'm guessing you mean actual physical streaming devices and not software on a computer.

 

[Gusboll]

In two minds about wheather rip all my discs and start streaming because of this problem. How do people with streamers that dont have gapless playback get on generally, Is it really annoying or is the fact that all yours tunes are in one place make it bearable?

I would imagine that it's really irritating but for not a lot of money a Squeezebox Touch solves the problem!

 

[amcluesent]

Does most of your music actually need gapless?

IMHO when gapless capable players are out there, why buy one which falls short?

 

[Soopafly49]

My favourite studd does yes. And i think the ones that do tend to be more expensive plus i like the idea of controling them fgrom a decent app. If you have any ideas?

 

[MajorFubar]

Yes: rip to a computer and use an app on your smartphone to control it.

 

[nads]

Logitec squeezebox touch is the answer.

 

[CnoEvil]

Linn DS have gapless playback on lossless files, as discussed here:
http://forums.linn.co.uk/bb/showthread.php?tid=5435

 

[Soopafly49]

Yes: rip to a computer and use an app on your smartphone to control it.

But that means having my computer plugged into the system and having it on everytime i want to listen to music not sure i want to do that.

 

[scene]

If your music has been ripped to FLAC gap less, or you've got mp3s and use something like LAME to make tracks gapless, then a sonos system should play it back gaplessly, iirc. Take an USB full of gapless flack down to your local dealer to confirm - they should be happy to help...

 

[Soopafly49]

Logitec squeezebox touch is the answer.

sounds interseting as does the linn DS. Can the squeeze box touch be used with a tablet or do I need some other logitech device?

 

[Anonymous]

The gapless part is dictated by how the music was ripped. I use (and would reccomend) DbPoweramp, I rip to FLAC lossless. The following is coppied from the DbPoweramp web site. As you can see near the bottom, it supports ripping using gapless support.

FLAC is a lossless codec, meaning no audio quality is lost whilst compressing (unlike lossy codecs such as mp3 which throw audio data away), audio compressed to a lossless codec will be decoded identical to the source, think of it as zip for audio. All lossless codecs compress around 2:1 or 4:1 at best, a 3 minute audio track will be around 18 MB.

Supported by this Codec

• Encoding: Yes [.flac]
• Multi-processor Encoding: Yes (with dBpoweramp reference)
• Decoding: Yes [.flac .fla (optional)]
• ID Tag Reading: Yes [Vorbis Comments, id3v2, id3v1]
• ID Tag Writing: Yes [Vorbis Comments (default), id3v2, id3v1]
• Unicode Tagging: YesSupports Album Art: YesGapless Encoding & Decoding: YesExplorer Audio Popup Information: YesExplorer Columns: YesUnicode Filenames: Yes

I would highly recomend ripping to a NAS/Streamer, however, don't forget that network technology was not designed for sending/recieving music/video. You will encounter other issues unless you buy an all in one unit that stores the music locally. I use a Marantz NA7004 coupled to a Synology DS212j, the Marantz has a lot of good features, but if I navigate the menu away from the "Music Server" part, I can no longer see the NAS. I then have to turn both devices off and on again so that they will talk to each other.

I still love playing my music in this way though and I hope you will too.

Good luck.