No more gapless playback option in iTunes 12?

Not sure what happened with your .xml file, but I searched mine, and albums which are supposed to be marked "gapless" are, and others aren't. I recently imported a group of files, (crank calls), which I wanted to play back gapless. I knew Apple removed this useful setting in iTunes 11, and was disappointed to see it still hadn't been replaced in iTunes 12. I'm not sure why, but Apple seems to want to make iTunes more difficult to use with each new iteration. It's probably just a coincidence that this began after Steve was gone. Nevertheless, you can insert the line:

<key>Part Of Gapless Album</key><true/>

into your .xml file, and it seems to work. Just open up the '~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Library.xml' file in a good text editor, search for the album you wish to make gapless, and insert this line in the entry for each song between the sample rate and the artwork count. It will look like this:

<key>Bit Rate</key><integer>320</integer>

<key>Sample Rate</key><integer>44100</integer>

<key>Part Of Gapless Album</key><true/>

<key>Artwork Count</key><integer>1</integer>

<key>Persistent ID</key><string>CF7A2C287954B2C4</string>

It's a pain, to be sure, especially if it's a lot of tracks, but if you really want an album to play without Crossfade, this is what we're all stuck with now. I'm sure there's a good unix way to do this, but I haven't worked it out yet.

Obviously, when these tracks are played in a shuffled playlist with other tracks, the gapless flag won't be respected. Then again, if all the tracks were flagged as gapless, then it might. I haven't tested this.

sudont wrote:

Not sure what happened with your .xml file, but I searched mine, and albums which are supposed to be marked "gapless" are, and others aren't. I recently imported a group of files, (crank calls), which I wanted to play back gapless. I knew Apple removed this useful setting in iTunes 11, and was disappointed to see it still hadn't been replaced in iTunes 12.

It doesn't (and didn't) need to be there to play gapless.

It's a pain, to be sure, especially if it's a lot of tracks, but if you really want an album to play without Crossfade, this is what we're all stuck with now

My gapless albums don't crossfade.

iTunes doesn't use the .xml version of the library file. It creates it solely so other application have a library they can read. Editing it will do nothing to iTunes unless you use it as a basis for building a new iTunes library.

musicgman770 wrote:

for each song?!!! PEOPLE... JUST USE MUSICBEE !!! I did and I don't think I'll be going back to iTunes any time soon.

Why are you telling people on an iTunes for Mac forum to use a Windows application?

Limnos; Perhaps Apple will see the dissatisfaction of its users and make the appropriate changes. I have been using Apple products and systems since 1992 and they seem to have lost touch with its users on several occasions. Nevertheless, they still do have a great support team and I hope they are listening.

What is Gapless Playback? - http://support.apple.com/HT201644 [dead link] - No longer available as of iTunes 11.

A Space Between - http://dougscripts.com/itunes/scripts/ss.php?sp=aspacebetween - "This applet will play each track in the selected playlist and will wait (one might say insert but that's technically incorrect) a user-set number of seconds between each. Play can commence at the "top" of the playlist or from a selected track."

I recall reading about this and gapless determination is now purely under control of iTunes. Another "improvement".

http://dougscripts.com/itunes/2012/11/itunes-11-loses-gapless-track-feature/

Read the link off the above link.

I don't know your source of the live tracks. If ripped from CD I know XLD offers the option to omit the padding around tracks to omit gaps.

The "gapless playback" was always something of a misnomer, since it never added or suppressed gaps between tracks. Rather, it works/worked in conjunction with the crossfade function, such that even if the latter is enabled crossfading is not applied between consecutive tracks from an album that's classified as "gapless".

The ability to set this property was removed in iTunes 12.0. As far as I can tell from analysis of the iTunes Library.xml file all albums are now classified as "gapless" (at least in my library with 5000+ albums) - though I'm not sure that this is an automatic setting as I have seen a "Determining gapless playback information" message during some imports ... though I'm not sure I've seen this appear in any recent releases.

This results in two (apparent) issues:

• Albums that should play continuously (e.g., "live" albums, those with segues between songs) that play back incorrectly, i.e., with an audible gap between songs. I would assume that such gaps are not the result of any iTunes process but are the result of short silences at the end of each track. Without knowledge of the source of the music concerned its difficult to say why this should be the case, though there is one specific scenario where this can occur - where the files in iTunes are the result of import from a CD-R copy of an album that's been burned with gaps between tracks (some older CD burning s/w has this as a default setting). Of course it is also possible that your library may differ from mine and contain albums that have the "gapless" property unset - if you load your iTunes Library.xml file into a suitable editor you can search for:
  <key>Part Of Gapless Album</key>
  In my case there are no instances where this is:
  <key>Part Of Gapless Album</key><false/>
  i.e., every single track has this set to true, but finding something different would be interesting ...
• When playing tracks from different albums, or out of the original album sequence (via a playlist and/or using Shuffle), and with crossfade disabled, some users find the lack of a gap between tracks disconcerting - the applet that Limnos's post refers to will add gaps in such cases; for the case of playlists, introduction of short "silence" tracks between songs may also be a solution.

If you can provide more details of what you're trying to achieve and the specific album that you want to play then further advice may be possible.

Interesting ... if iTunes behaves as it should then crossfade shouldn't be applied when you play a single album in sequence and that album has the "gapless" property set. If you search your iTunes Library.xml for the tracks from DSotM what is the Part of a Gapless Album property set to? It is possible that the current / recent releases of iTunes no longer handle the crossfade/gapless interaction as described (either by intent or as result of a bug) ... I'll have to check this as I never use the crossfade setting and never use either shuffle mode or playlists that aren't made up of complete albums 😉

I just spot-checked several live albums and both DSotM and Wish You Were Here - even with crossfade enabled and set to 6 seconds, playback was continuous, as it should be. Shuffling from a playlist (abhorrent as that is) did crossfade between songs. I'm on Windows not Mac, so maybe someone using 12.3.3 on OSX could test this as well. I'm still wondering, though, what you're hearing is a result of a different setting of the gapless property within your library, It may be worth deleting the album from your library and then re-importing it to see if that sets the gapless property correctly.

You don't need to change any internal settings. As I said, it may be worth deleting and re-adding one of the albums affected, as follows:

• select the album in your library (not a playlist) and delete it - on the second prompt click Keep Files (which means that the media files stay in your library folders)
• select File > Add Folder to Library ... then navigate and select the folder containing the album you just removed from the library
• then see if by doing this the gapless property has been reset - I'm confident that the current version of iTunes should play albums continuously even if crossfading is enabled, unless the gapless property is set to False

Doing this will lose any ratings or playcounts associated with the albums songs, and you'll need to add it to any playlists that it was previously part of, but you will at least determine whether this is an effective resolution to the issue you've encountered.