Gapless Playback (2 Viewers)

[tourettes]

2 small extracts to help reproducing the issue:
- the last 5 seconds of a track : 01.flac
- the fisrt 5 second of the following track : 02.flac

Those samples can be used to trigger the issue on MP side. With Foobar the track change is seamless.

 

[DragonQ]

I find it incredibly frustrating that even at version 1.4.0 MediaPortal doesn't support gapless playback. There is a "gapless playback" tickbox but it does nothing. There should be no gap or fade between tracks with gapless playback - see any other player that implements this properly!

Pure Audio does it properly but I doubt it works with 1.4.0 and it has limitations (I can't get it to output surround sound).

 

[hwahrmann]

I also find it incredibly frustrating to be reminded about that every day. See above: I want to investigate that.
Real life prevents it for doing it faster and i have other things on my list, which have more priority than this.

Why don't you talk to the author of PureAudio that he removes this limitations?
I did a lot of changes to BASS for 1.4, like WASAPI support, replaygain, Resume functionality, etc.
This is taking for granted, but the nagging about gapless never stops.

I do it in my free time and it is done, when it is done.

 

[DragonQ]

I also find it incredibly frustrating to be reminded about that every day. See above: I want to investigate that.

Real life prevents it for doing it faster and i have other things on my list, which have more priority than this.

Why take what I said as a personal insult? If you're the only one that works on this then I didn't know that but even so, it's not personal at all. Everyone appreciates developers have lives and jobs, there is no need to remind long-time users and posters of this whenever an issue is raised.

Why don't you talk to the author of PureAudio that he removes this limitations?

It hasn't been updated since 2011 and when I posted about the surround sound problem a while back there was no reply. In any case, if MediaPortal's Music player worked correctly then PureAudio would be superfluous.

I did a lot of changes to BASS for 1.4, like WASAPI support, replaygain, Resume functionality, etc.

Yes, this is the primary reason I upgraded to 1.4.0. WASAPI and ReplayGain are very nice, although I haven't tried it on my main setup yet. I also appreciate the "skip steps" option because I'm sure someone decided at some point that it wouldn't be implemented, which was a crazy decision - what use is "fast forward" for music??

This is taking for granted, but the nagging about gapless never stops.

So people have been "nagging" about gapless playback for a while then? Doesn't surprise me - it's a very basic feature I would expect from an audio player. Indeed, far more basic than WASAPI or ReplayGain. The strange thing is that there's even an option for it, which suggests someone attempted to implement it long ago but, as far as I know, it's never worked. :/

 

[hwahrmann]

I don't feel personally insulted. i am just bored being always reminded.
I don't need gapless playback at all. i do cross fading of 1,5 seconds.

The release was on Area51 for quite some time for testing and not very much people tested it.
Maybe my ears are too old, but i hardly can hear a gap.

 

[DragonQ]

I don't feel personally insulted. i am just bored being always reminded.
I don't need gapless playback at all. i do cross fading of 1,5 seconds.

The release was on Area51 for quite some time for testing and not very much people tested it.
Maybe my ears are too old, but i hardly can hear a gap.

There are plenty of albums where one track continues to the next without any gap (even if it's just a cross-fade) and for those you need gapless playback. If you only ever play shuffled tracks then it probably wouldn't matter to you but that doesn't change the fact that it's a vital feature of any half-respectable music player.

It's hard to tell if there is actually a gap being created or if it's just the fade out and fade in that causes the lack of continuity. Disabling this unnecessary fading might be enough to fix it (again, the "Fade-in on start / fade-out on stop" tickbox seems just as useless as the "gapless playback" one - even with this unticked, there is a fade at the start of every track, which is horrible when tracks start immediately).


EDIT: I was right, for some reason cross-fading is set to 200 ms when gapless is chosen. This is incorrect as there should be no cross-fading at all:

case (int)PlayBackType.GAPLESS:
				Config.CrossFadeIntervalMs = 200;
				type = "Gapless";
				break;

	public void SwitchToGaplessPlaybackMode()
	{
	  if (_playBackType == (int)PlayBackType.CROSSFADE)
	  {
		// Store the current settings, so that when the album playback is completed, we can switch back to the default
		if (_savedPlayBackType == -1)
		{
		  _savedPlayBackType = _playBackType;
		}

		Log.Info("BASS: Playback of complete Album starting. Switching playbacktype from {0} to {1}",
				 Enum.GetName(typeof(PlayBackType), _playBackType),
				 Enum.GetName(typeof(PlayBackType), (int)PlayBackType.GAPLESS));

		_playBackType = (int)PlayBackType.GAPLESS;
		Config.CrossFadeIntervalMs = 200;
	  }
	}

Change Config.CrossFadeIntervalMs to 0 and it'll probably be fixed.

 

[hwahrmann]

yes i knew that the 200 ms is there.
It was a left over from testing.

As i said to me gapless is of no use, so it slipped through my testing and most probalby i don't have this type of music.
The majority of my songs that i am playing has natural pauses anyhow at the end, so you don't notice anything

 

[DragonQ]

Right, a lot of tracks have a gap at the end anyway (and some at the start too) but not all.

The cross-fades look hard-coded in some places, surely this isn't right considering this meant to be user defined with the slider (and completely off if unticked)?

 

[hwahrmann]

This is a left over from the previous version.
it couldn't be set to zero, since it was causing crashes.
i'll see what i can do, when back home.

 

[DragonQ]

Does the Config.CrossFadeIntervalMs = 200; line even need to be there? The cross-fade should be either set or disabled elsewhere in the code, right? If those lines are removed then I would expect gapless playback to work correctly if both "gapless playback" is ticked and "fade-in on start / fade-out on stop" is unticked.

I'm not that familiar with the code though, I'm sure you know more than me.