Gapless: What is wrong with cowon?

[h1a8]

How can a mp3 player company that is striving for success not produce gapless plackback? Why doesn't the s9 have gapless playback? I'm getting very sick and tired of this. Do you know how many gapless albums I have?
Please everyone let's urge cowon to get gapless playback (at least for mp3).

Which one is the reason for no gapless playback in s9 (I don't know how to make a poll)?

1. It's too complicated and cowon doesn't know how to do it perfectly.

2. They don't like it.


If 1. is the case then they can just look at the source code of Rockbox to see how it is implimented (or just ask the developers of Rockbox or foobar).

2. should never be the case since gapless playback doesn't take anything away. Even if it did then just offer an option to turn it off.

[CrowdAds]

[sumx4182]

gapless isn't a dealbreaker for me...but no one is going to know the answer to your question because no one here works for Cowon. Anything anyone says is a guess and/or speculation.

[Juxxy]

Why is gapless such a big deal? I don't know why but I never really cared, the gaps on the S9 are less then 1/4 of a second anyway and it would only start bothering me if they were a second or more apart.

[WalkGood]

Originally Posted by h1a8

... ... Which one is the reason for no gapless playback in s9 (I don't know how to make a poll)?
1. It's too complicated and cowon doesn't know how to do it perfectly.
2. They don't like it.
. ... ... ...

Either of these two guesses would only be a speculative poll at best and most likely not the answer. A better poll would be if you want or don’t want to see gapless implimented and I think we all know the answer to that

[dfkt]

We all know Cowon's firmware programmers suck and the company doesn't really know what customers want - at least on the international market. Can't speak for their Korean market, since they certainly have different preferences (dictionary, anyone?)...

So far we have Rockbox, iPod, Zune, Trekstor, and Rio that support gapless on portable devices. We can only hope that it's just a matter of time until other companies catch up, or that Cowon hires better skilled firmware developers.

[The DarkSide]

If gapless were a deal breaker for me, even though I'd love it, I wouldn't have most of the players I posses.

I do wish they'd incorporate gapless into the S9, as well as my D2. This would make me say, IMO, that the Cowon players are the best available.

Look at my signature on the bottom of my post. "D2 Gapless Warriors" is a wish, unfortunately not a reality!!!

[joyounghoon]

Being a Rockbox user, I do love Gapless myself, but I can do without.

Although it would be nice, I don't really see it to be something so significant, or at least yet.

[dexterslabmi]

Gapless makes a difference with urban/neosoul music.... many "artists" include skits or tie songs together. This makes the changes between tracks even more apparent.

[Lawliet]

Because from a business point of view it makes very little sense.

Hell, like 80% of the people that own PMPs even know what a gapless playback is.

[covertrussian]

How many albums actually have tracks setup that would require gapless playback? Since it's probably not even 30% of all music out there, there is probably not enough demand for it, it probably sinks in the priority list even more when they look at how many development hours it would take to develop.

I've been thinking about this whole gapless playback, even though I don't bother with it since I always shuffle my songs on the player, the hardware support alone probably is a factor. To do gapless feedback, the player would have to preload the current song and the song after. Or it would have to have to load the next song sometime towards the end of the current song.

But then again, even Rockbox supports it, so maybe so maybe Cowon should open up the player to allow for user addable apps

[sumx4182]

Originally Posted by dexterslabmi

Gapless makes a difference with urban/neosoul music.... many "artists" include skits or tie songs together. This makes the changes between tracks even more apparent.

just because they are apparent, doesn't mean they are important. It doesn't make me enjoy music any less to hear a tenth of a second or less pause in the audio between tracks

[musichound]

As for me, gapless is a dealbreaker and this is the reason why I went to the iPod as my main player. If the Zune had gapless playback when I was shopping around, I would have most probably went for the Zune instead.

[Marvin the Martian]

Originally Posted by musichound

As for me, gapless is a dealbreaker and this is the reason why I went to the iPod as my main player. If the Zune had gapless playback when I was shopping around, I would have most probably went for the Zune instead.

I now leave all the gapless music on the computer, since MediaMonkey plays gapless. Would it be nice on my portable? Absolutely....but until then, I'll do it this way

[eswa]

I was wondering too why no company in the world dares to put gapless in their players..? You only reach more people when doing it and you don't cut in specifications for normal users...(ok, it might shorten batterylife a bit). Even in this S9, which focusses on musicplayback, so why no gapless/crossfading?
I used to have a Trekstor Vibez, and I really liked the crossfading and gapless function. Especially when listening to live-albums.
Don't get me wrong, it's not a dealbreaker for me, I'm almost certainly going to buy the 32gb version of the S9.

[Clubcard]

Originally Posted by dfkt

We all know Cowon's firmware programmers suck and the company doesn't really know what customers want - at least on the international market. Can't speak for their Korean market, since they certainly have different preferences (dictionary, anyone?)...

So far we have Rockbox, iPod, Zune, Trekstor, and Rio that support gapless on portable devices. We can only hope that it's just a matter of time until other companies catch up, or that Cowon hires better skilled firmware developers.

iPod and Zune support gapless? There's no justice in the world.

[dfkt]

Indeed. Those players are crippled in almost every aspect imaginable - but they do support gapless.

[The DarkSide]

Originally Posted by dexterslabmi

Gapless makes a difference with urban/neosoul music.... many "artists" include skits or tie songs together. This makes the changes between tracks even more apparent.

Not actually correct, as there's many a rock, pop, and dance group that produce gapless albums. You make it sound like it's not worth it, since your only familiar w/a limited number of genres. I own own quite a few cd's that were made to be gapless, and not 1 is urban/neosoul.

PS: The Zune is crippled?

[Clubcard]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

Not actually correct, as there's many a rock, pop, and dance group that produce gapless albums. You make it sound like it's not worth it, since your only familiar w/a limited number of genres. I own own quite a few cd's that were made to be gapless, and not 1 is urban/neosoul.

PS: The Zune is crippled?

The Zune is an offspring of The Man, therefore it's crippled.

[Andreas]

I use gapless myself, HOWEVER most people don't care. Out of a few million units sold of a player maybe 50-100 on this forum have it, so "what customers want" isn't exactly a term anyone should use without being able to prove it based on actualy customer base and not who screams the loudest. The obvious choice in the first post would be "3: it's not profitable". ipods and zunes are made in a completely different way, they are devices that are natural followers of existing ones, the same can be said for Sony although they don't have gapless. Players from the likes of cowon are completely new players each time they release them and they aren't organized in any way, just random player releases. Sure some of the model numbers might make it look like they are related but they really aren't. Point being that when a feature is there with sony, apple, microsoft, it's there for their next players as well. As such, the implementation of a thing such as gapless is a long term thing not a single player venture.

[dfkt]

Originally Posted by The DarkSide

PS: The Zune is crippled?

ZMTP, Zune Software, no mass storage, no EQ/enhancements, no support for any open source codec at all... do I need to go on?