Determining Gapless Playback Information

Hi everyone, well I finally solved this for myself but I don't think you're going to like how I did it much!

In my experience, it seems that iTunes and Apple really "likes" AAC files and not mp3 etc. etc. so much. So, I converted ten tracks of mine per day manually ( I couldn't find a way to do them in "batches" )

Here's the routine. Highlight a track and right click it. Scroll down and click on Create AAC version. Click on this and very quickly iTunes creates an AAC version of the track underneath the track you just converted. Go back up to the original format track and right click it. Go down to Delete, click on Delete, click on Delete Song and then click on Move To Trash. The original song will now be in your trash. Secure empty your Trash after converting all the titles you want to in that session and then when you open up iTunes again the titles you converted to AAC format will not flash off in the display bar at the top of iTunes. Labour intensive yes, but it does fix the issue once and for all. Also, as a benefit, audio files thus converted work much smoother when used in other applications such as iMovie.

Hope this helps all of you out there! I'm running a MacBook Pro with Mavericks and iTunes 11.2.1.

Drumbeater wrote:

Hi everyone, well I finally solved this for myself but I don't think you're going to like how I did it much!

In my experience, it seems that iTunes and Apple really "likes" AAC files and not mp3 etc. etc. so much. So, I converted ten tracks of mine per day manually ( I couldn't find a way to do them in "batches" )

I have a far better idea!

Instead of converting a bucn of files, simply remove the MP3 files from iTunes, quit iTunes, restart it and add them back.

Well converting them to AAC definitley works for me but then you have to convert them back to mp3 to put them on mp3 CDs for the car or mp3 memory sticks for the other car etc etc. Such a pain. You can easily convert all mp3s to AAC at once though by highlighting all of them in iTunes and then going under File to Create New Version. It doesn't have to be done one at a time or by removing and re-importing.

6 years later and people (including me) still have this problem. PS - guys, transcoding your entire library from mp3 to AAC is the most ridiculous 'solution' I've ever heard! Please learn a few things before trying to 'help'!

Sigh its simple , select iTunes > Preferences > Playback > Crossfade, uncheck Crossfade. Gapless playback ( Crossfade ) on iTunes allows one song to immediately begin after one ends. and thats the way the cookie crumble... 😝 FIXED!!!

Have you connected the brain?

How is possibile that after so many times nobody found the solution? What is the difference from a file to another that makes one a problem with gapeless information at every startup, and perfect for another?

The only one working solution that I found, without re-encoding all the files with the problem is adding to the library LISTENING to the file.

I try to explain better: instead to drag&drop the files in itunes, just double click on each mp3 and let itunes reproduce the file and add to the library.

I'm doing this to all the audio files with the problem. Delete the album from the library mantaining the files, go to the music directory, find the right album and double click each mp3 just to open in itunes and add the item in library.

This did not work, my crossfade was already unchecked.

My library is over 40,000 files. I have 301 that go through this gapless playback nonsense every time I start iTunes.

I have a 2008 Mac Pro 8-core, 22 Gb RAM, Yosemite 10.10.2 and iTunes 12.1.0.50. This only started happening a week ago. Since then I have formatted my hard drive, and installed everything from scratch, and the problem persists. ALL my files, every single one, is an AAC file.

Maybe I could do something with the offending files, like delete and convert and re-import them, if only I knew which ones they are. Their names flash by on the iTunes status bar when iTunes opens, far too fast to read what they are. Any ideas on how to find out what the offending files are. I have seen one or two and none of them seem to have anything in common.

Thanks.

I just updated to Windows 8.1 with iTunes 12 and I suddenly had the new 'gapless playback' delay. I tried your solution - and it worked! I took a Slo-Mo video of the iTunes status bar with my iPhone, so I could register what songs were causing the problem and I was able to fix those songs. Thank you!

Happy it was useful! I also used the slo-mo with the iphone to find the affected songs :-)

I tried it, but it didn't work for me. My guess is, that something in the "itunes library.itl" is broken, because when I let itunes create a new library (rename /user/Music/iTunes to iTunes_backup) and then put the files back using drag & drop, it works perfectly fine. No "determining gapless playback information" anymore.

My next try is to rebuild my whole library by importing the .xml file... but it needs a lot of space :-)

This is bloody awful

I recently downloaded a Dick's Pick - Grateful Dead live concert. You would expect a "gapless" rendition of the show. If this was a CD this would not be an issue. In the past downloads did support "gapless".

Apple now refuses to acknowledge or issue any type of refund for this obvious quality issue with their products. As a matter of fact, everyone I've communicated with doesn't seem to even understand what the issue is. They keep referring me to their Terms of Service.

Oh, and in case there's no xml file, turn on 'share itunes xml' in the itunes->preferences->advanced page.