How Gapless Playback changed my playlists
Tuesday, April 28, 2009 at 9:39PM 
Getting ready for work this morning, I picked up my iPod and put on the latest addition to my collection: Chromeo's Fancy Footwork. Being my first time listening to the album, I was amazed at how smooth the transitions between songs were.
Something that has always impressed me is an album put together as an album rather than a collection of songs. Whether it was Pink Floyd, Dream Theater, Tool, or Cut Copy, it seems more creatively-impressive to hear something that sounds like it was written with purpose. LPs were designed to listen to straight through, and the same seemed true for cassettes. With the advent of the compact disc and the ability to easily jump from track to track, the album seemed to lose its meaning.
This became very evident as soon as we were able to burn our own CDs. For the first couple years, every CD you burned on your own computer had a 2-second gap between tracks, no matter the source of the files. This absolutely ruined the listening experience on a lot of albums. This atrocity carried over into digital music players. While the gap shrank, any pause between songs on these albums was distracting.
Alas, September of 2006 brought the introduction of iTunes 7 and the new "Gapless Playback" feature. For years, iTunes (and WinAmp, for that matter) featured crossfading to give the listening experience a more DJ-like feel. With Gapless Playback, albums could once again make a comeback. Users began to notice that each time they imported a new album to iTunes, the software would spend an extra few seconds "Determining Gapless Playback Information" - a few seconds well-spent.
With upgraded iPod software to boot, we can now enjoy gapless albums on the hardware that has replaced physical media. The changes in iTunes have helped me be less of a spastic mixtape listener and more of a once-over album aficionado. Has Gapless Playback changed the way you listen to music? Comment away!
Reader Comments (1)
I usually listen to songs in "shuffle" mode. but when I do listen to a whole album the yes its so much better when the songs "flow" into each other