iTunes11: what happened to the "gapless album" option?

It looks like it has been removed, which is unfortunate. I used that for all my albums.

Looks like iTunes is gapless by default now but the problem I have with this is that I don't want gapless tracks used in smart playlists and at the moment I can't see how to now ensure these aren't included (i.e. if the playlist is the top 50 most played tracks, I don't want any partial tracks in that playlist). Anyone set up playlists like this in iTunes 11 successfully?

What exactly do you mean by "gapless tracks?" I used the gapless album option on all the albums in my iTunes library and used the tracks in smart playlists all the times with no trouble. Now, by "gapless tracks" do you mean albums with tracks that literally have no gap between songs? If so, it's relatively easy to keep those tracks out of certain smart playlists. I put the text "(no sync)" in the comments section of the albums I did not want in the smart playlist then excluded that text in the criteria of the smart playlist. Works great, although it is a bit of a manual process.

Doh! Actually I remember now... iTunes never let you filter out gapless in a smart playlist (although it should have). I remember my workaround was to set up a unique genre and then exclude that genre. Thnaks for the response though.

You're welcome.

I just ripped a live show with iTunes 11. It made it gapless by default which was something I was worried it would not do. I like live music quite a bit and that would have been a big negative.

Not only did Apple remove the Gapless Playback checkbox from the options, but Gapless Playback no longer works properly on the iPod Classic.

I've been using Gapless Playback on my two iPod Classics with Apple Lossless files for many, many years... but ever since the new iTunes 11 update, the feature is now broken. All of my previously perfect Gapless albums have audible breaks when the track number moves to the next track.

My iPhone 5 and ipad still playback correctly with Gapless. This seems to only affect my iPod Classics.

When you RIP a CD, iTunes checks if it is gapless. If it is gapless, it always plays back gapless.

The ONLY thing the gapless checkbox does is keep consecutive songs on the same album from crossfading over each other when Crossfade is enabled.

Album 1 song 1 will play gapless ONLY if the next song is Album 1 song 2 and Album 1 is actually a gapless album.

See this -> What is Gapless Playback?

"Gapless Playback in iTunes

Gapless playback is always on in iTunes version 7 or later, unless the Crossfade feature is turned on. If Crossfade is on, only audio files that have the "Part of a gapless album" option checked and are capable of being played gaplessly will play with no gaps"

You guys can keep repeating that, but it doesn't change the fact that after the new iTunes, my iPod Classic will not actually playback gapless. There are now brief pauses between tracks on all of my Gapless albums, when before they played perfectly. These are the same files that worked before, and now don't. I did not re-rip them, change tags, or anything else. And these exact files still work flawlessly on my iPhone 5 and iPad. It's only on my iPod Classics that I'm now having problems.

it's stopped working on both my classic & on a square nano, & there doesn't seem to be any way to restore the functionality.

apple, let's get one thing straight here: I DON'T WANT it to be automatic, depending on whether the source files are gapless or not. I want it to be back how it fecking was.

regardless, if the setting was set by me in an earlier (better) version of itunes or was that way on the CD, you have now broken it, & the check-box is gone.

you plainly now have some sort of dipsheet in charge of itunes development. I am seriously considering going back to minidiscs.

sort it the fack out.

duncan.

Chris CA, with the greatest of respect.

<Edited by Host>

Let's play nice together.

And let's not let the annoyance of iPod users who were abandoned with the change in features take over the thread. That is a done fact, and griping here will not reach Apple or serve any purpose. I bet there are better threads for that. Apple has made it (somewhat) clear about iPods for which gapless in iTunes 11 is now broken:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1797?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

It may be correct what Chris CA and MrChris wrote. quote:

When you RIP a CD, iTunes checks if it is gapless. If it is gapless, it always plays back gapless.

The ONLY thing the gapless checkbox does is keep consecutive songs on the same albumfrom crossfading over each other when Crossfade is enabled.

Album 1 song 1 will play gapless ONLY if the next song is Album 1 song 2 and Album 1 is actually a gapless album.

See this -> What is Gapless Playback?

"Gapless Playback in iTunes

Gapless playback is always on in iTunes version 7 or later, unless the Crossfade feature is turned on. If Crossfade is on, only audio files that have the "Part of a gapless album" option checked andare capable of being played gaplessly will play with no gaps"

Let's keep the threads about clarifying the behavior and options available, not griping about what decisions Apple already made. OK?

fair enough, but can you wind back your slightly proprietorial & patronising tone?

I use my apple-ID to post on here, so it's only fair to assume that some of this stuff finds its way back to them.

if it doesn't, then we're all wasting our time.

a measure of adult frustration seemed reasonable to me, under the circumstances.

the statement quoted above ("The ONLYthing...") is inaccurate, but in any case, that's not all there was to the functionality.

"gapless" was a nice option for slightly-more-expert users, to be able to control the flow of audio.

useful in audio books to give you time to reach the ipod & stop it before it runs onto the next chapter.

useful in music in respecting the wishes of the artist who has segued two or more tracks together.

& yes, some of us want our albums to play gapless when they weren't that way originally.

the facts are these-

the option has been removed for the end-user to control the gapless function.

also, loading music from a CD that didn't have gaps in its audio onto different devices now has a default behaviour (depending on the source files & the vintage/software of the device), which may or may not be gapless but which is certainly now out of the user's control.

several CDs which I *made*, which are gapless in the CD player, have been copied onto my nano (the small square one with the display, MC694, v1.2mac) with gaps.

so my personal issue with this, quite apart from having the paid-for-audio experience spoiled, is that I prepare MP3s of *my own music* & want to have control over the playback, gapless or with gaps, to emulate the experience of the people who will eventually (one hopes) buy the music as files or on CD.

this, for me, is an important part of "sequencing" an album. it may be a specialised use, but I don't think it's unusual.

since I can't now reliably run two tracks together as a segue, I have reverted to an earlier version of itunes (10.7, which is still available, mercifully) & rebuilt my library.

duncan.

So, help me out: are you asserting that the below is inaccurate?

"Gapless playback is always on in iTunes version 7 or later, unless the Crossfade feature is turned on."

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1797?viewlocale=en_US&locale=en_US

I myself have not verified one way or another. I'm still open in attempting to understand this. I had stayed at 10.7.

Also I realize that the above statement by Apple is not satisfactory to some people who want both functions.

But, this article makes some assertions that gapless option never did what we thought it did, and explains how it works currently.

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/articles/comments/gapless-playback-in-itunes-11 /

If correct, we may not have lost much. But it may not be correct.

This thread makes assertions that might be reflections of the explanation of iLounge, or may contradict it.

https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4579792?start=0&tstart=0

My gapless recordings do not play in a gapless manner anymore on my iPhone. They work okay in iTunes on the computer. Now there are small gaps between all my tracks - whether there was supposed to be or not. This is a function that USED to work, and now it doesn't seem to work at all - and since this thread was back in 2013, it doesn't seem to be a priority to fix it.