[wazoo2u]

Originally Posted by geniusanyway

Conversely, even if one encodes to WAV there will still be gaps (split second pauses) between tracks, so no live recording will sound seemless as it does on a CD or on a Karma.

This is not true. The skipping in between mp3 or aac tracks has nothing to do with the player and everything to do with the file formats themselves. The beginning of every mp3 or aac file is where the info for that file is stored (this is why when you download some mp3s and play them in itunes or winamp, certain information is automaticly displayed. This is what causes the gap no atter where you play them - ipod, rio or a burned cd. Not so with wav. Wav files will play seamlessly on an ipod, rio, etc.

I don't believe this to be correct.

There are gapless output plugins for WinAmp or Foobar that handle all the file formats. Assuming that your WAV files don't have sector boundary errors prior to encode, you'll have gapless playback regardless of the headers. What we're talking about here is the ability of other HARDWARE (iPod, Karma) to handle gapless playback, and THAT issue is a function of the FIRMWARE coding.

The point made above is that the iPod can't play back ANY file format without a gap.

This is a VERY, VERY complicated issue, and if you're interested, there's been a bunch of dicussion about it in the NeurosAudio forums www.neurosaudio.com . Rio Karma supports gapless playback for FLAC playback, but I'm pretty sure that it offers gapless playback of ALL it's supported file formats.