James Zubb

My understanding is that neither player can playback gaplessly. The Rio Karma is the only hd based player right now that can do this.

Great player, but no third party support. You can't even get a decent case for the thing.

Paul McGowan

anyone here tried the iriver flash players??

imported_Brian L

iPod can play gapless, but you need to select "join tracks" when you rip the CD. And doing so loses individual track indexing....iPod treats it as one large track.

I have done this on live CD's and various other stuff with no gaps between tunes. Not perfect, but workable.

BGL

Michael St. Clair

I'm not willing to give up track indexing, ever. For some people this may be a workable solution.



All I need is my TuneBelt (perfect fit) and my screen protectors and I am fine; the rest of the time a case is just extra weight in my pocket.

But that's just me, and some will disagree and definitely will want a case.

I really want the iPod and others to address this gapless issue so that the next time I buy a player I will have some real choice.

Jeremy Deal

I don't have a portable music player yet, but one of these two would be my choice right now. The feature I am really waiting on is WIFI for one of these players, but I am not sure how far off it is. I think they are missing a very good feature here. How cool would it be to be able to be able to sit anywhere in your house, outside, wherever and control the music that is playing through your speakers. You follow me? Basically you are turning this thing into a portable Digital Audio Reciever. Somewhat like the wireless DAR creative labs has, but this would be lots better. I think with the airport express or airtunes or whatever it's called apple is heading that way. Let me know if anybody's got any thoughts, or if their is a jack leg way of accomplishing this now.

imported_Brian L

What kills the Airport for me is the lack of control. My PC is not in the same room, or even on the same floor as my HT rig. Just having music streamed from the PC is not very useful if I can't pause, stop, start, choose different selections, etc.

From an iTunes standpoint, the Roku Soundbridge (assuming it is not really vaporware...the jury is still out on that) will be the ticket. That is the product I wish Apple had built.

Not sure I see the need to have the player also be wireless. Then again, a lot of new technology appears useless to me at first.

BGL

charles white

That's precisely how I use the iTrip attachment for my iPod.
The iTrip never worked well in my car but I keep the 'Pod next to the computer upstairs and by using the iTrip transmitter, I can stream my music to my home theater.

Seth_L

iRiver is working on adding gapless playback in their next firmware release to their HD based players.

Angelo.M

imported_Brian L

Angelo,

Have you tried to use the "join tracks" feature when ripping? One things that I found odd was that, if you join all the tracks of a given CD, it does not provide any track names, and lists the track titles as whatever the CD is referred to at Grace Notes. It does play without gaps, but no track indexing.

But, if you only want some of the tracks, you will get the track names, scrolled together when you play them. Still no indexing, but you at least see the track names scrolling by.

I discovered that accidently when ripping the Deep Purple Live on the BBC SACD. I joined all the live tracks, but also ripped the two bonus tracks separately. When playing the live tracks, all the titles scroll by on the screen.

Seems like, if they can do that, how much harder would it be to allow indexing?

BGL

charles white

The downside of "joined" tracks is that it will cut down on the charge time of the iPod's battery. If the music file can't fit inside the internal cache, then the hard drive is spinning more often just to play the track.

Angelo.M

Michael Hein

I hope they manage to do this and their firmware release isn't six months from now