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Topic: AAC Gapless playback information (Read 8037 times) previous topic - next topic
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Re: AAC Gapless playback information

Reply #25 –
Ok, the ultimate solution to get this to work:

1. Use beets to move my music into folders based on file type
2. Use xld to convert the FLAC files to AAC, which will write the proper iTunes tags for gapless playback
3. Drag songs into iTunes.
4. Sync iPod
5. Relax and enjoy music.

Re: AAC Gapless playback information

Reply #26 –
Yes, I was going to recommend XLD for batch conversion on macOS. It's also my go-to app for CD ripping. And for AAC encoding, it uses Apple's codec, which is arguably and verifiably the best to date at LC and HE/HEv2 encoding, even if it's now basically achieved stability and isn't going anywhere.

Incidentally, the gapless info typically can't be applied without a full re-encode anyway. While the encoder delay is usually fixed, the padding on the end is not, and the best you can "guess" for just generating tags for pre-encoded files is to read the length from the source file and tag accordingly. Better to just re-encode everything from scratch and do it the right way in the first place.

Re: AAC Gapless playback information

Reply #27 –
I noticed something else interesting today.  The songs on the iPod that I encoded with ffmpeg using fdkaac that SHOULD be gapless have an odd issue.

Yesterday I was playing the album Eye in the Sky by The Alan Parsons Project. The first two tracks, Sirius/Eye in the Sky, are gapless. When playing this track one would finish, and it would jump to track 3, completely skipping track 2.

I tried this on other gapless album and the same thing happened.

@kode54 , you are right.  I have a Mac.  It comes with the best AAC encoder. There is no reason I should not use that. fdkaac is a great library that makes great sounding AAC files.  But it came out long after the iPod. There's a chance it may be doing something that the iPod just doesn't like. I could continue to troubleshoot the issue, or I could just use XLD in batch mode and be done with it.

Now I need to figure out what do with all those MP3s I purchased off Amazon and Google. Luckily that looks like it's around 20 albums.  Getting CD "upgrades" to those files should not be too expensive.
 

Re: AAC Gapless playback information

Reply #28 –
I'd never expect an ipod or any apple software to play nice with files created using other tools. As well as choking on your fdkaac files I'd put money on LAME encoded mp3s not having perfect gapless playback. If you live in their ecosystem, you have to deal with it their way.