[OT] Switching mains using Chromecast?

[Bob Latham]

I will try to answer it but I don't claim to be an expert.

The situation AIUI where the CCA fails to do gapless is where it has been told to play a number of tracks from a music source. The source being a computer or NAS containing (for arguments sake) flac files. The CCA doesn't ready the next track ie. open it, until the previous track has finished. Only one file open at a time, which means there will be an unintended silence between tracks.

I cannot remember at the moment the name of the call but there is a software function that BubbleUPnP server uses to find out if the player can do gapless playback. This fails with CCA.

In the constant stream model, the CCA isn't fetching music from the server, the server is pushing a stream of data to the CCA as though it were a USB dac.

I'm not an expert and I'm fully aware there is more to it than I have written.

Cheers,

Bob.

[Andy Burns]

OK, I'm not using it with e.g. a local DLNA server but with Google Play Music on a tablet, streaming from the internet.

[Bob Latham]

If that suites you then it's fine.

Bob.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Of at least a millisecond..?

There must be. It doesn't make sense to me as written, and I am a software audio and networking engineer.

Switching from one file to another is not the same really as taking a record off a turntable and putting another one on, in time delay terms.

[Bob Latham]

You've obviously not experienced it then. It is far more than that on the players I've heard with the problem often well over a second. It is probably linked with having to read from the queue what the next track to play is before it fetch data from it. I believe better players store the queue on the player whereas others store the queue on the tablet/phone.

Oh thank you. I pretty sure it is not that far from what happens.

Well you should be able to explain it then.

You might also explain why players from many japanese big names could not do gapless and got heavily criticised for this in the audio press. So much so that they had to fix it. This is going back 3 to 4 years.

I would suggest you experience what happens when you use a network player that doesn't support gapless and then you would understand.

Bob.

[Bob Latham]

You've obviously not experienced it then. It is far more than that on the players I've heard with the problem often well over a second. It is probably linked with having to read from the queue what the next track to play is before it fetch data from it. I believe better players store the queue on the player whereas others store the queue on the tablet/phone.

Oh thank you. I pretty sure it is not that far from what happens.

Felt the need to pull rank when you obviously haven't any experience of the problem?

If you're a software audio and network engineer you should be able to explain it then.

You might also explain why players from many japanese big names could not do gapless and got heavily criticised for this in the audio press. So much so that they had to fix it. This is going back 3 to 4 years.

I would suggest you experience what happens when you use a network player that doesn't support gapless and then you would understand.

Google it, plenty of articles on there and way, way more than 1ms.

Bob.

[The Natural Philosopher]

Dunno mate. I have a DNLA server, though I never have bothered to use it to stream continuous audio. Telly uses it to play videos.

All my music is on the server, but I would normally stream via an NFS mounted volume. The players I use seem to simply stop one track and then just go on to the next.

But then they are of the 'shiny new thing make everything better*' type. They are competent bits of open source software running on Linux.

[The Natural Philosopher]

That should of course have read 'they are *not* of the 'shiny new thing make everything better* type'

[The Natural Philosopher]

No, its apparently mostly about using compressed formats that have to be unscrambled before you can begin the playback process...

So you need to have opened the next rtrack and decoded a bit of it before the previous oine comes to an end.

It all goes to show that certainly for audio, compressions is more trouble than its worth, and you can curse Apple for the I-pod.

I couldnt believe the sorts of prices heavy duty streaming boxes are.

£900 for quality that is several steps back from a CD player you can get for £50???

[pamela]

Can someone advise me because I think I'm not quite grasping something here.

Is gapless audio the same as hearing a series of music tracks with no silence for a few seconds between them?

If so then why is it so important? Vinyl albums and CDs nearly always had gaps between tracks and that's what I grew up on, so gaps seem normal to me.

I don't want to be an old fogey but is the removal of those gaps going to make much of a difference to the listener?

Is there more than this to gapless audio that I'm overlooking?

[pamela]

I'm looking into something very similar. Thanks!

[The Natural Philosopher]

A bit apparently. Ive not much knowledge of it directly, cos I never was an MP3 person, sticking to CDS. But some players will finish one track, then load a bit of the next track, decompress it and then start playing and that is a reasonable delay apparently, depending on the actual stored format and the machine., There are sometimes apparently clicks in between

[Adrian Caspersz]

On 24/05/16 10:35, pamela wrote: someone advise me because I think I'm not quite grasping

Yup.

Folks may rip entire club music CDs to multiple MP3s, them that contain music with tracks that normally transition into those following. A

2-second silent space appearing between them would be the equivalent of putting on the handbrake while changing lanes on the motorway...

If that doesn't apply to your style of music, then the whole gapless concept is a non-issue.

[Bob Latham]

Almost. No *unintended* silence between them.

"Nearly" is the key work here.

Ever listened to one of the best selling albums of all time Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of the Moon? That album has very few if any intended gaps between tracks. I mention DSOTM simply because most people have heard of it at least.

Classical music if full of recordings where there is no gaps between tracks and I can easily think of quite a few recordings that would in my opinion be seriously degraded by unwanted silences within movements.

Not if you don't listen to music that requires gapless playback no.

No.

[Bob Latham]

A very wise choice, mp3 and m4a music files are the work of the devil.

Nothing wrong with flac.

Bob.

[Bob Latham]

I was about to moan about MP3 horrid things but then realised that for club music mp3s are probably good enough, just.

Absolutely.

Just don't start listening to classical.

Bob.

[Max Demian]

Tracks running into one another was all the rage at one time, with prog rock and concept albums. For example Marillion and Misplaced Childhood, which is two continuous tracks corresponding to the two sides of the vinyl album. I ripped the CD as two tracks for the purpose.

[Bob Latham]

OK.

I've just looked on Amazon, that disc has 10 tracks.

So if you've ripped it as just two, how have you titled the tracks?

I think you've lost information by doing that and if your player did gapless there would be no advantage at all.

Bob.

[Max Demian]

The information I've lost is the division between the original tracks.

Playing the original tracks through Amazon Music isn't gapless, and downloading them from Amazon and playing them through ES Music Player isn't either. I haven't tried any other players.