Bugzilla – Bug 18063
AAC-Files are not played gapless although tagged correctly
Last modified: 2014-01-03 10:40:47 UTC
I'm unhappy with gaps appearing when listening to gapless sound files directly from USB-device. A few hints, I've already found out on the net: The files - as they are from the ITUNES-Store - are AAC-encoded m4a-files and play gapless on i-devices where needed, e.g. some tracks of Boston's Third Stage. Due to the fact that AAC-encoders do not work "really" lossless, the gapless-info is stored in the ItunSMPB-Tag. (As far as I read under bug 4513, since vers. 7.7.3 they are ignored in the server's tag display, but also in playback??? Luckily I can still see them in the SBT's tag info to proof that they are really there.) A work-around of cause is to transcode the AAC-Files to wav, aiff, flac or apple-lossless, they are really played gapless then (so obviously my transcoder seems to use the tags I luckily still can read in the SBT's tag info). But I would be very happy with a solution to use the files as they are without addition, ineffective efforts for transcoding, transmission and storage. I did not test this when playing from a Squeeze (Logitech) Media Server on a PC, so I'm not sure whether my request for "tag-based gapless AAC-playback" is an enhancement only to the firmware or also to the server. Kind regards
Just two additional comments: From my point of view in 4513 it was no bug to show - let's say - unusual tags. I would have classified it as a feature request. The other point is a technical one: Debian-users have reported some experiences with "good and bad" combinations, what resulted in a bug-report for libmad. I could read that gapless tracks a played well by libmad if they are encoded by faac, but not, if iTunes or Nero did the job.
Hi again, the more I about this, it's more or less a normal bug, category enhancement was wrong. Kind regards