AAC vs. .WAV for IPod's

[rherron]

I think I misunderstood. You are correct -- iPod cannot play back, say, a live show without gaps between the tracks. However, the tracks themselves do not skip, regardless of the format. I thought the implication was that unless one encodes to WAV, the tracks will skip. That is not true. 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.

Rob

[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.

[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.

[feralicious]

I want a Neuros.

[willndmb]

Originally Posted by rherron

I think I misunderstood. You are correct -- iPod cannot play back, say, a live show without gaps between the tracks. However, the tracks themselves do not skip, regardless of the format. I thought the implication was that unless one encodes to WAV, the tracks will skip. That is not true. 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.

Rob

right
i was saying it "skips" between tracks
the songs do not skip but they play TAO in aac or mp3

I am not sure exactly how you're defining "skip." If you mean a brief but annoying pause while a song is playing, it could represent the iPod spinning up the hard drive and accessing more data from it to keep the music playing.

A friend of mine had to stop using his original 5Gb iPod to play back drum or bass tracks for live gigs because of that pause. Research on Apple's support boards found many users all reporting the same hiccup at something like 3:37 into a song. However, the rest of the circumstances and solutions varied greatly.

One solution was switching from big AIFF files to the much smaller MP3 or AAC files, which seems logical if the iPod is moving music data from the hard disk into RAM for playback. Exactly when the RAM gets flushed and reloaded from the drive, I'm not sure. (Between songs or at 3:37, whichever comes first?)

Switching to smaller lossy files wasn't an option in his case, once he heard how much better AIFF sounded. He ended up getting a minidisk player, which worked well except it was more clumsy to control on stage. (The iPod was velcro'd to the side of his standup bass.)

There were also people on the Apple board insisting they had identical circumstances and never, ever heard any sort of pause, hiccup, skip or whatever you want to call it.

[DoIFeelLucky]

Originally Posted by BassmanRon

Switching to smaller lossy files wasn't an option in his case, once he heard how much better AIFF sounded. He ended up getting a minidisk player, which worked well except it was more clumsy to control on stage.

That doesn't make any sense at all. MiniDisk players use Sony's proprietary ATRAC lossy audio codec to store everything. It doesn't matter what your source is, it's encoded to ATRAC when it is stored on MiniDisc. And forget what you may have heard from Sony's marketing spin doctors, ATRAC is one of the worst lossy codecs in existence. So really, he did switch to a lossy format (and a poor one at that).

Your friend would have saved space and ended up with better-sounding lossy files had he stuck with the iPod and used LAME to encode his MP3s using one of the "--alt-preset" or "-V" switches.

Originally Posted by DoIFeelLucky

That doesn't make any sense at all. MiniDisk players use Sony's proprietary ATRAC lossy audio codec to store everything. <snip> ... one of the worst lossy codecs in existence

If "minidisk" can only mean a proprietary Sony thing, then I used the wrong term. He had some sort of small unit that used CDs and allowed him to stick with AIFF files.

[willndmb]

Originally Posted by BassmanRon

If "minidisk" can only mean a proprietary Sony thing, then I used the wrong term. He had some sort of small unit that used CDs and allowed him to stick with AIFF files.

a discman??

at any rate i never heard of this prob with the old iPods
the only time i have heard of any "skip" is between tracks, ie playing TAO

Originally Posted by willndmb

i never heard of this prob with the old iPods
the only time i have heard of any "skip" is between tracks, ie playing TAO

A lot of problems exist that you never heard of. That doesn't mean I'm making things up. I researched the problem over a year ago, when my friend asked my help in solving it.

Just now, it took me about 25 seconds on Apple's support forum to find a post from April 12 referring to the same phenomenon: "i found with my ipod is that on some songs the music skips once or twice (momentarily stops playing and continues on like nothing happened). can't find any info on what thats because of, if you had any ideas let me know."

That's what made his iPod unsuitable for drum tracks, too.