I just saw this somewhat worrying YT video claiming that increasingly, new CD players, including expensive models from some major manufacturers, are incapable of playing CDs without gaps. I had no idea there were ANY CD players that couldn't do this, it's such a basic and fundamental feature of the format. As the guy says in the video, imagine trying to enjoy side 2 of Abbey Road with gaps between each track! Obviously second hand players are so abundant that this doesn't seem like a big issue at the moment, but this won't always be the case.
The problem has been around for a while. This is a thread from another forum I visit - the forum is DIY centric Tangent CDII....Nice. - audio-talk
Most can't do gapless anymore. Even my 2005 Pioneer DVDP, which has long been retired and relegated to a secondary system, does gapless no problemo, so it's beffudling at the very best. My Oppo does gapless, but only with cds, not with audio files though. Not horribly irritating for files, yet unnaceptable for CDs.
This has all really shocked me, I had absolutely no idea it was an issue. I'd have thought gapless playback was written into the CD standard. I remember my first ever time hearing a CD player in the 80s, it was playing Dark Side of The Moon seamlessly and I remember watching the track numbers change and thinking "but how does it know?!". Why is it now so hard to do?
That's ridiculous. It should be a basic feature of a CD-capable player. If new players no longer stream continuously but load each track separately, then there should be a buffer which guarantees that there is no playback gap between two tracks.
I used to listen to CD rips on a hard drive attached to an Oppo and stumbled across gapless playback one day. If I remember right, you have to hold your finger on the track for a few seconds and then a window would pop up which would allow me to choose gapless. This is done through Oppo's control app.
I think the gapless issue has come around because nobody is making CD only mechanisms any more. The majority of optical mechanisms today are capable of reading a number of different formats. It is still possible to get a player capable of gapless, as this Marantz player shows Marantz CD6007 (Black)
I do much the same with my Oppo, but unless I'm missing something, this is only possible with FLAC files. I set up gapless prior to spinning an album, with the remote, via the button below and left of the navigation cluster. Or ANY music playback tool. JRiver plays back everything perfectly on my separate 2-ch system. I'm considering the Eversolo streamer for the 5.1 system (esp for its ability to stream/play ripped 5.1 files), but I now wonder if THAT box is capable of gapless. Yes, gapless, and other simple music playback function issues, having been going unaddressed for decades now. Probably started with the growth of home theatre products, whose users wouldn't notice or complain about music-oriented issues. Screwed again. .
Whew. I frantically grabbed my gap-o-meter CD - Gino Vannelli Storm at Sunup - to see if my Rega Apollo will betray me. There is an excellent transition between Storm at Sunup and Love Me Now. It plays gapless just fine. If not, it would be in the lake as I type this. Clearly I have not used it enough to inherently have known that answer. Sounds pretty good!
I guess the logic is that folks listen to songs, not album sides anymore. I own the Marantz 6007 so relieved to learn that it manages. I’ve never noticed a problem with my CD-C 600 changer. Hope the new 603 is not an issue.
Video guy has since got a Cambridge audio axc25 which features gapless playback, kinda like it should have been all along but they made it a feature. The gapfull player in the vid is an older azure. It's annoying but nothing to worry about. Could have been raised at any point in the last 10 years.
Wow that's new to me; thanx! But my Oppo doesn't "see" my home network with the supplied dongle. I use the display exclusively. Afraid that firmware updates might make me loose feaurures anyway so it's only connected to a TV via HDMI, for concert video media. There's another way to play gapless according to the manual but it involves the TV on, and I cover it with an acoustic panel during my listening sessions.
As far as I am concerned a CD player that can't playback CD's gapless is faulty and not fit for purpose. Why would anyone buy one?
Wow, I did not know about this. Although, I can't say that it really surprises me too much as CDs are technically an obsolete technology which is dying fast at this point. So, the fact that that manufacturers are no longer bothering to provide some of the basic features of the format anymore should not come as shocking. It's not all that different from tubes back in the late 70s. Tube demand was falling off a cliff at the time, and so tube quality started suffering as well.
It’s just cost reduction. Cheapened down by leaving out basic features. Why are people surprised by this? We’re in the middle of a recession resulting from many years of economic downturn…
Wow I guess I was lucky when I chose the Atoll DR200 transport. It's gapless. Although, I was choosing between that and the Rega Saturn, and I see someone mentioned that the Apollo is gapless, so maybe the Saturn is, too?
Annoying but nothing to worry about? I probably have 1,000 CDs that are continuous plays. That’s a little more than annoying and it’s tons to worry about.
Kate Bush, The Beatles, Pink Floyd or any continuously mixed dance CD with gaps? Watched this a couple of nights ago and couldn't believe what I was hearing. Gapless playback has been a feature and selling point of CDs since their introduction, has it not? This is totally unacceptable. I probably shouldn't be surprised though, considering the abuse audio quality and the CD format has endured for the last 25 years. The cost cutting and dumbing down continues unabated. Another nail etc...
I have some classical CDs on which movements of a symphony are split into tracks, even where there is no pause. Or recordings of Rachmaninov's Paganini Rhapsody which have a new track for each of the 24 variations of the tune, although these are played continuously. This wasn't necessarily a good idea by the CD mastering engineers (better use indexes for that purpose), but it shows that CD makers assumed that every CD player would support gapless playback. These CDs are unlistenable with gaps. It sounds like a faulty disc.
The thing the guy's wrong about is that Blu Ray players play gapless. When my CD player gave up I used a Blu Ray and it put a half a second gap between every song. I've recently bought the above Rotel that plays perfectly, My car CD play skips gaps completely so if you play The Who Live at Leeds you miss out on all the witty introductions.
Alternative title, One guy discovered his brother's ten year old obsolete cd player doesn't play gapless and makes outrage out of it.
