Apple Music gapless playback not working in iOS 17

I do encounter serious Gapless issues, too. My biggest concern is with the Qobuz Music Streaming Service, running their iOS App (i.e. a third-party app) on my iPhone 14 Pro Max 512GB with some of the latest iOS16‘s, then 17.1 (I sat out on 17.0), and now 17.1.1.

My report is here:

https://audiophilestyle.com/forums/topic/46611-official-qobuz-issues-thread/?do=findComment&comment=1260295

and what follows thereafter.

Let me ask: Could someone here educate me what it takes to make gapless replay possible and prevent those nerve-wrecking moments of silence?

I‘m looking for an "in principle explanation".

Like:

Gapless music replay is often touted by the software developers in their AppStore description of their music player.

• Does such software need special programming (like reference to certain APIs, provide its own buffering?) ?

Gapless breakage is often reported in reference to certain iOS versions.

• Does Apple have to contribute certain code in iOS to make gapless possible ?
• Thus, is the gapless capability down to Apple only, down to outside software developers only, or to both in combination ?
• Finally, when Gapless gets broken, who should we look at ?

Thanks!

Try turning off Dolby Atmos in Settings > Music (as opposed to Automatic or Always On). This is the only thing that worked for me to get back gapless playback.

This is with streaming albums on the $17/mth service. I don’t keep music on my devices taking up space. They need to fix it. And I shouldn’t have to dance around the settings.

Apple please fix this! It is pain in my ears listening to gapless albums on my apple devices but have a break or click or noise during every transition of tracks.

Ah, Foobar2000. That’s working perfectly and is now my default player. Thanks!

Dolby Atmos on or off makes no odds if you don’t pay to use Apple Music, I tried it once it totally screwed my entire library never again will I pay for it.

it’s extremely frustrating that this issue still hasn’t been resolved. i just want to hear the transition from Chromatica II into 911 and i continue being denied such a majestic experience .

So, first off, yea.

I had the same issue before

I'm posting this solution here because even though it's an extremely weird fix, it really seems to work. I had the issue with my downloaded m4a files and the music app was not pre-loading the next song so there was a gap in between the songs etc etc, you already know the struggle, and basically the album "hypochondriac" by Brakence (which I was gently and innocently listening to) heavily needs to be played gapless and, no, I could not be satisfied with putting crossfade at 1s.. really not. I disabled "show apple music" in Settings>Music>Show apple music and the gap magically went 6 feet underground. I know it's weirdly simple, and I know it seems impossible that it fixes it, but I was desperate and I was really tired that apple music kept adding a whole lunch time break in between my songs so I did it anyways and ever since I did this I never had the issue again, maybe it is a pure coincidence and that's why I waited before posting this answer but It's been turned off for 5 days now and I have restarted my phone since and it still works, everything is gapless.

It really might not work for anyone who reads this because, honnestly, why would that fix the issue?? but in case I'm not just lucky, and in case what I did actually helps with the issue, I'm putting it here hoping everyone can fix it just like I did.

Have a good evening, take care, drink water that's really good and I really hope that helps!

Plus countless Classical recordings as well as EDM... It just ruins the art (but we have learned in recent days that art is not a high priority at Apple). Please fix this ASAP.... It's a horrible experience

I just used my very old ipad air 2 iOS 15.7.2 I have it for more then 10 years and listen the music on it and works perfectly without gaps so smoothly when changing between song's.

Thats one of the reasons wy I use ipad instead android tablet, know Apple as released the new ipads with an impressives and powerful models and too sadly we have to experience this issue for soo many years and still going on.

So many people are begging for fix this issue and nothing, It is very disappointing.

If the issue its too complicated to fix I suggest to apple to change on the music settings on cross fade and make 2ms and that will the solution for the rest of the updates forever

The actually range now its 1 second that it too much, please change it to less then that to 2 milliseconds, please.

Thanks for adding some clarification to the thread rmhunt1970,

Is playback of tracks on an album more seamless if the album is downloaded, relative to it being streamed?

The following page offers steps you can use to test this: Add music to iPhone and listen offline

Cheers!

I noticed this issue quite early on. I raised the question on the forum("AVQueuePlayer" has gaps when pla… | Apple Developer Forums), but nobody took responsibility for following up and resolving it. I submitted this feedback issue to Apple with the feedback ID FB13266188, but the problem remains unresolved and the status is still open.

I have a fix for albums ripped from CD. It’s a bit of a faff but it’s worked for me.

1. Disable iCloud library sync on computer and iPhone
2. Delete offending album from iPhone
3. Physically connect iPhone to computer old skool style with a cable.
4. Select and sync the album you deleted.
5. Disconnect iPhone from computer.
6. Enable library sync on both devices.
7. Presto, your album should now have gapless playback!

I found a workaround. If you check "convert to (any bitrate) AAC if higher" in the general tab on sync settings, the converted music will have gapless playback as expected.

A couple gotchas:

• Since the conversion creates brand new files, all of your music will have to be synced again with your iPhone. This can be a pretty lengthy process depending on how large your music library is (it took me a bit over three hours to resync 62 GBs of music)
• The highest possible bitrate you can convert to is 256 kbps, keep that in mind if the loss in quality might bother you