Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website

Posted by: furtive

Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 17/10/2004 16:25

Any idea why not? Trying to convince a friend to buy one, but he needs convinicing that it does gapless playback, but the website doesn't seem to mention it
Posted by: DeadFire

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 17/10/2004 20:53

I'm not sure which portable you're talking about, but the Karma's manual mentions crossfading as a feature designed to seemlessly transfer from one track to the next. I just called my friend who owns a Karma, and he confirmed that Ogg Vorbis files (which are natively gapless), do in fact play back gaplessly on the Karma.

The specific transition discussed was Tool's Parabol to Parabola, from the Lateralus album. It's one of the more difficult gapless transitions I've had to deal with using gaplessly encoded MP3s on my empeg.
Posted by: peter

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 18/10/2004 08:13

Quote:
I'm not sure which portable you're talking about, but the Karma's manual mentions crossfading as a feature designed to seemlessly transfer from one track to the next.

Crossfading fades the next track in as the current one ends. It's not really the same thing as gapless -- and it's not what you want for albums such as Sergeant Pepper or Community Service, where the tracks were designed to flow together each-to-the-next.

"Gapless" just means that such albums are played without having extraneous gaps between the tracks inserted by the player. Unless you've tried to listen to Sergeant Pepper on an Ipod, you might be surprised to learn that, while Karma can achieve this, no other portable, and precious few PC-based MP3 players, can.

The OP was right that it's kind of a shame that we don't make more of a thing about gapless in our advertising. Someone on Riovolution suggested a TV advert set in a nightclub: lots of people, mostly with white headphone cables, dancing, then suddenly the music stops abruptly for a couple of seconds and only the one girl in the Rio shirt keeps moving, then the music starts again and the white-headphone crowd can start dancing again. And you could do another one with the same premise showing a line of rock guitarists on stage, all but one wearing white headphones, all but one stopping playing for a couple of seconds. I think that would rule.

Peter
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 18/10/2004 11:15

Yeah, that would be cool, but (1) you're making the assumption that enough people would know what you're talking about, and (2) then you'd actually have to support that feature, and it takes a lot of jiggery-pokery to make it work with MP3s. Maybe you could just tell people who want that feature to use Oggs. Or does the Karma support Ogg?
Posted by: Cybjorg

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 18/10/2004 11:42

Gapless playback was a feature that was recently missed in a review of the Karma in the September issue of Maximum PC. I brought it to their attention and they addressed it in the most recent issue.
Posted by: peter

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 18/10/2004 11:54

Quote:
Yeah, that would be cool, but (1) you're making the assumption that enough people would know what you're talking about, and (2) then you'd actually have to support that feature, and it takes a lot of jiggery-pokery to make it work with MP3s. Maybe you could just tell people who want that feature to use Oggs. Or does the Karma support Ogg?

It's jiggery-pokery that we already do on Karma (reading the Lame tag and everything). And yes, as well as supporting Lame MP3 accurately gapless, and other MP3 heuristically gapless, Karma supports Vorbis and Flac inherently gapless.

Peter
Posted by: daPyr0x

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 18/10/2004 16:49

I had a thought over on one of the riovolution posts of that sort to really poke fun at iPods; take one of their classic commercials (with the bright background and a sillouhette dancing with the white headphones) and after a few seconds just stop, the sillouhette looks, puzzled, at their iPod, and then it starts back up and they try and get back into the music. Then a nice splash screen showing the Karma with a voiceover saying something along the lines of "Gaps ruin the music" or something kinda intruiging like that....

But, ya know, with the way Rio advertises we'd never see anything like that, eh peter?
Posted by: rob

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 18/10/2004 20:59

Such a commercial would require an investment in marketing - a show of confidence in the potential strength of the brand, the quality of the product and the manufacturers ability to meet demand. Sounds like something Apple would do.

Rob
Posted by: pgrzelak

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 18/10/2004 21:06

<gasp> <choke>

I completely agree!!!
Posted by: boxer

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 19/10/2004 08:06

I've not bothered with all that, I just have a playlist with all the complete live albums and gapless ones like Sgt. P to listen to them as entities. Then I put the divided up tracks, or at least the favourite ones, separately in a playlist designated for shuffling/random. Takes up a bit more space, but serves the purpose better.
At one time, in the age of L.P.s, broadcast copies of these albums were made with gaps inserted, I remember seeing a white label pressing of Stephen Stills Manassas in this form, but I suppose that it's not necessary for CD's.
Posted by: ninti

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 20/10/2004 18:31

Quote:
Such a commercial would require an investment in marketing - a show of confidence in the potential strength of the brand, the quality of the product and the manufacturers ability to meet demand. Sounds like something Apple would do.


Hehe, yep, Rob is no longer working for Rio.
Posted by: daPyr0x

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 24/10/2004 20:46

yeah...that was good.
Posted by: msaeger

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 24/10/2004 20:57

I wonder why apple doesn't spend some of that money trying to sell it's computers. I don't think I have ever seen an apple computer ad on TV but I see the ipod ones.
Posted by: Cybjorg

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 25/10/2004 08:28

Quote:
I wonder why apple doesn't spend some of that money trying to sell it's computers. I don't think I have ever seen an apple computer ad on TV but I see the ipod ones.


Oh, come on! Remember the commercial of the mesmerized clones watchine the large movie screen and the athletic chick comes running in with a sledge hammer and throws it through the screen, destroying it? Back in 1984, I think it was.
Posted by: tman

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 25/10/2004 12:17

We get Apple computer adverts every so often on UK TV. They've had complaints as well because of the claims made in the advert. I really can't stand Jeff Goldblum
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 25/10/2004 12:30

Yeah, we had those same ones. It's always the low-end machines they seem to be touting, though. I guess people who are going to spend $4000 on a computer already know what they want.
Posted by: Roger

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 25/10/2004 13:38

Quote:
Yeah, we had those same ones. It's always the low-end machines they seem to be touting, though. I guess people who are going to spend $4000 on a computer already know what they want.


Anyone spending $4000 on a computer could buy 2 PCs .
Posted by: wfaulk

Re: Gapless playback - not mentioned on the Rio website - 25/10/2004 15:21

Okay, I exaggerate. Apple's costliest preconfigured machine is $3000. The cheapest real machine $1500.