Disable iTunes Gapless

[teknovision]

Hi all!

I would like to disable gapless, I have +7000 tracks and at this rate it will take days to determine all tracks. Any ideas on how I can disable it, it was fine gaspful?

Many thanks,

Philippe

[ThreeDee]

I am not sure what you mean by 'gapless'. I don't know of any 'gapless' feature in iTunes. Do you mean cross fading?

EDIT: Just got a software update notice on iTunes. Will update and see if there is a 'gapless' feature.

EDIT again: Woah! iTunes really changed! The 'gapless' thing took less than 3 mins with about 750 songs.

EDIT: They took the visualizer menu out?

[teknovision]

Welcome back ThreeDee! ;)

Now, anyone know how to get rid of this gapless determination which takes a little longer with 10x more songs on a NAS.

[ThreeDee]

:/ Can't you click the little X in the song title/status thing on top?

[guardian34]

iTunes didn't try to make any of my songs gapless…

[pixelpirate]

whats gapless :s

[Mikey-San]

1. Just let it sit and finish scanning your library. Go get a cup of coffee. Trust me, it's worth the time it takes to finish the gapless playback scan.

2. The visualizer is now here in the menu bar:

View > Visualizer > [stuff]

3. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback

[e_shaman]

Just what is iTunes "determining" anyway? I think there are only a small number of my albums that need to be gapless, I can probably handle choosing them manually. Is it really necessary for my entire library to be analysed with no option to say no?

[Mikey-San]

Apple has millions of customers with different skill levels, amounts of free time, and amounts of patience. Additionally, Apple's also got a finite support staff. Math break:

POTENTIAL SUPPORT QUESTION * (USER POOL - N) == SUPPORT LOAD

N is the small quantity of users who are capable of doing this on their own, don't mind doing it on their own, probably want to do it manually, and actually will do it manually. What's left is what Apple's got to deal with.

It's better overall if iTunes does it automatically for everyone.

The operation happens once and doesn't last a month and a half. If this is the biggest problem you can think of, you're doing pretty well. Seriously. :)

[guardian34]

Well put, Mikey. :)

[e_shaman]

Point taken, still left with the question of "what" it is actually doing?

I wasn't trying to point out some major flaw in the software, merely adding to the discussion about Apple's implementation of the new gapless feature in iTunes.

[Mikey-San]

It's probably doing some sort of analysis on the last X samples of each song to determine how to connect tracks in real-time. Gapless playback isn't as easy as it seems.

Random guess. I've never done that sort of work before.

[teknovision]

Just got up, want to play some tunes - just like last night when I got back from work and wanted to listen to tunes. :mad:

iTunes ran throught the night and still it crashes whilst it's trying to do something I don't need it to do. 'Use gapless playback' tick box would have been appreciated in such a major technological break-through.

[Mikey-San]

If iTunes is crashing, you have other problems that you should be working on, rather than worrying about a checkbox for turning a feature off.

[stevebr]

Here's a "me too" in the hope that somebody at Apple has a look here. My own experience was that it took about 9 hours to go through my library & iPod and it crashed 2x along the way. Like Teknovision, I keep my music on a network share.

Tecnovision: if you're still having trouble, you may be interested to know that on the next go after a crash, it appears that it picked up where it left off. So, you shouldn't have to wait for it to redo the analysis on files already done. Also, now that it's complete, everything is working fine.

Even though it's no longer a problem for me, I'm looking for relevant threads in Apple's support discussions. So far, I haven't found anything but will report back if I do.

Like others here, I would have appreciated a warning during the install or first run or better yet, an option to manage this manually. They did it for album art, after all.

[teknovision]

Thanks Stevebr. Mikey-San don't think we are on the same wave-length on this one, thanks for your help though.

I let it run all day and pleased to say that it completed!!! The reason I let it go all day is because CPU was running between 0.5 and 1% so I guessed it must have been doing something as it went through +200gb of tunes!!

[fatbex]

I have experienced the same problems with a network drive.

First it crashed during song 361/6181 (a couple of times)
Now I'm stuck on 363/6181

1. Start iTunes
2. CRASH!
3. Force quit
4. Back to square one

Grrr...

If this is the only remedy, it sure does take a lot of time and manual laber. I've probably gone through 10 crashes and gone through 5% of my library.

Thanks for the tips guys, since I would have given up long time ago.

[fatbex]

Ok, I gave up! About 30 restarts and after deleting 2 albums. I have to find another solution to this.
Probably try to find an answer from the downgrading tips or something...

[hayne]

First it crashed during song 361/6181 (a couple of times)
Now I'm stuck on 363/6181

1. Start iTunes
2. CRASH!

Launch the "Console" application (under /Applications/Utilities) and look for relevant error messages. Note that messages are labeled with the date & time so you can use that to locate the part of the log to look at. Copy & paste the relevant messages back here so we can see them.
Be sure to look at system.log as well as console.log (Use the "Logs" button (top-left) to see the various logs available - note that you will probably need to be an "admin" user to see the system.log)

If the log refers to a crash log, press the "Logs" button (top-left) and go into the ~/Library/Logs section to find that particular crash log. Copy & paste back here the last portion of that crash log - the part that gives details about the last crash (or preferably attach it as a plain text file, using the "Manage Attachments" button at the bottom when you reply).

[Bitzomondo]

Damn you Jobs!! What the hell is this new iTunes 7??! I don't like the new 'blue' iTunes icon! Bring back the green!

MAJOR PROBLEMS with this Determining gapless playback

Ok, to turn it off you just have to click on the X sign in your iTunes display window. And it stops.

BUT: When I restart iTunes it starts again with this gapless thing[. Is there anyway to stop it for good? I have 10,000 songs for crying out loud and its taking aaaages. This is torture.

pixelpirate: whats gapless :s

Do you know when certain albums have tracks where they continue unto the next like live concerts or say Pink Floyd music? well the gapless playback ensures that you dont get the 1-2sec skip when the track changes to the next, but rather proceeds smoothly into the music without any silence in between.


Now I read somewhere that the iTunes gapless processing kind off "stitches" the tracks together. Does that mean that it is an irreversible process?


And I dont like the fact that everytime I start iTunes a window pops up with a progress bar showing "loading iTunes library".

And why in my playlist window the track lines don't have alternating blue and white lines? Its all white.

I have never been so grumpy

[fatbex]

Thanks hayne for the tip. First time I ever watched osx log files.
see the system.log

Sep 16 12:41:29 kernel[0]: smb_maperr32: no direct map for 32 bit se
rver error (0xc0000185)

This starts repeating when iTunes stalls. So it is a samba issue. iTunes loses the connection to the samba share, since finder can access it normally. This has not happened to me before with previous versions of iTunes. Automatic volume level setting has gone through the complete library with no problems.

If I can't find a solution soon, I will move my music to an external HD.

Any ideas?!

[hayne]

Sep 16 12:41:29 kernel[0]: smb_maperr32: no direct map for 32 bit se
rver error (0xc0000185)

This starts repeating when iTunes stalls. So it is a samba issue. iTunes loses the connection to the samba share, since finder can access it normally.

You should report this problem to Apple:
http://developer.apple.com/bugreporter/bugrptform.html

[teknovision]

Speaking from my experiences. iTunes doesn't actually crash/freeze, the whole GUI becomes unresponsive but it's still working in the background - look in activity monitor, on my mac mini it remained at %1-2 and all of a sudden it will go to %80-90 and unfreeze itself.

Just leave it do it's thing, it took me a whole night and day for +7000 tunes. With regards to the loading library it's a pain (takes a few minutes for the beach ball to stop spinning) and the way around that is to never switch off itunes.

[teknovision]

Well, not sure about anyone else but looks like latest update didn't fix problem at all?

[spacepirate]

Apple has millions of customers with different skill levels, amounts of free time, and amounts of patience. Additionally, Apple's also got a finite support staff. Math break:

POTENTIAL SUPPORT QUESTION * (USER POOL - N) == SUPPORT LOAD

N is the small quantity of users who are capable of doing this on their own, don't mind doing it on their own, probably want to do it manually, and actually will do it manually. What's left is what Apple's got to deal with.

It's better overall if iTunes does it automatically for everyone.

The operation happens once and doesn't last a month and a half. If this is the biggest problem you can think of, you're doing pretty well. Seriously. :)

This logic is quite simply wrong.

POTENTIAL SUPPORT QUESTION means what ? Lets review some options.
1. The number of software bugs that are likely to be found in the product during its release.
2. That there is the potential of their being a software bug to occur at all based on lines of code, no of users, no of different configurations, etc. This would be based on some form of historical correlation.

In either case the logic appears to be incorrect.

Support load is a product of ...

1. The maturity of the product (based on historical stability, new features, code base, quality control, no of testers and developers, and product compatibilty features).
2. The homogeneity of the user base (degree of conformity of the machines, software, etc).
3. The size of the user base (no of workstations, etc)

Apple are trying to do the impossible to some extent since they would like to...

1. Have a win32 and OSx version of iTunes which is as similar as possible.
2. Ensure that the product is released quickly
3. Ensure that a reasonable amount of bugs are removed before shipping.

The above are mutually incompatible to varying extents. In any case, if apple spent a little more time with rigorous testing they would not encounter as many bugs in the product after release. Therefore support load would decrease. In addition, if they actually admitted faults that too would allow them to offer more comprehensive support to IT professionals which would in turn reduce the support base. Its not simply good enough to say "The operation happens once and doesn't last a month and a half. If this is the biggest problem you can think of, you're doing pretty well. Seriously". This is not a helpfull comment on your part at all. If any day to day task took a month and a half I expect the value of your device would drop exponentially. You are clearly not somebody who has the slightest idea of software development, beta testing, quality control, or acceptable usage levels.

There are a great deal of actions that can be taken by both the developer and the beta testers to ensure a better level of quality in the closed source software that is released upon unsuspecting users. Seriously.

[macnetadmin]

I was also experiencing the gapless crash issue. Here is what I did to fix it.
1. Search on the word itunes (command f not spotlight). This will make things easier.
2. Find all of the itunes plist files and trash them then delete the trash.
3. Next find all itunes library files. Trash them and empty trash.
4. Launch itunes.
5. Go through the setup. I would allow for itunes to search for files.

I know this is really lousy but it is the only way I was able to get my iTunes functioning again.

[jslmg]

Yep, indeedy! "Gapless playback" is NOT YET READY FOR PRIMETIME!

So why in heck did Apple release it? Darn, I'm p***** about this.

It's quite simple: It binds up iTunes so I can't even get a song to play on demand. Beachball spins, then about, oh, 10-30 seconds after I select a song, something happens.

I cannot use iTunes this way.

The only way to turn off "Gapless playback" is to click the the little X to the right side of the titles window and ... wait... about 10-30 seconds.

[MBHockey]

I disagree. Gapless has worked fine for me since 7.0.0

A great addition, IMHO :)

[Spongy]

I am also having problems with 'gapless playback' - when a track finishes and a new one begins, there is a short freeze where the song stops, perhaps about 5-10 seconds into the new track... is anyone else having this problem?

I don't 100% know that it is gapless playback, but seeing that it is probably the only major difference between iTunes 6 and 7, would suggest it is... :(

[Myte Luze]

I see a lot of negative replies here, and really no solutions or answers to your problem. I also had this problem (which is actually more of an annoyance rather than a real problem). Check out this:

http://forums.winamp.com/showthread.php?threadid=255561

I think you'll be pleased. Explains a lot.

[skeevee]

Apple has millions of customers with different skill levels, amounts of free time, and amounts of patience. Additionally, Apple's also got a finite support staff. Math break:

POTENTIAL SUPPORT QUESTION * (USER POOL - N) == SUPPORT LOAD

N is the small quantity of users who are capable of doing this on their own, don't mind doing it on their own, probably want to do it manually, and actually will do it manually. What's left is what Apple's got to deal with.

It's better overall if iTunes does it automatically for everyone.

The operation happens once and doesn't last a month and a half. If this is the biggest problem you can think of, you're doing pretty well. Seriously. :)

What a bunch of crap. I'm sitting here (computer savvy or not) watching my darn iTunes (that I was forced to upgrade in order to download a certain episode of Galactica) doing some ***** with my music collection (gapless nonsense). After half an hour, it arrived at 3 out of 8947!! Finally, I clicked the cross and it stopped and surprise surprise, I could actually use iTunes!!
Browsing through the preferences, I had to realize that there is no option to turn this stupid functionality off. And of course, next time I started iTunes, it went back into the infinite gapless gap. Man, this release of iTunes really sucks!!

[skeevee]

Started up iTunes again this morning to listen to some tunes. Now it just sits there unresponsive and doesn't even start the gapless stuff. 20 minutes later, it actually does start the gapless scan, I click the cross and about 5 Minutes later, I can finally use iTunes. This is ridiculous. Every time I want to use it, I have to wait half an hour? Since nobody here seems to know how to disable it, I guess there are only the following options:

- Downgrade to a previous version and don't purchase new Apple videos (because of incompatibility -> latest TV shows force the upgrade)

- Let it do the gapless scan -> at present rate, this will take forever

- Get rid of iTunes -> Not really an option because of huge collection only playable with iTunes (purchased stuff)

Man, I really hate it when software forces users to do a certain thing. It should be the other way around. Does Apple move closer to Microsoft's practices now?

[hayne]

I think you are merely the victim of a bug related to something unusual in your iTunes library or your system in general.
Apple didn't think it necessary to provide a means to disable this scan since they didn't foresee this kind of bug causing a problem. It should be a one-time thing that is almost transparent for most users.

Given the fact that you are one of the few (out of millions of iTunes users) that is experiencing this particular bug, it unfortunately falls to you to do the necessary troubleshooting to either figure out what is going wrong or fix the problem.

Start by ensuring that the problem isn't related to some deeper systemic problem by trying the standard troubleshooting suggestions:
http://www.apple.com/support/mac101/ (see the "My Mac needs help" section)
http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=2004011205473937
http://forums.osxfaq.com/viewtopic.php?t=7269
http://www.thexlab.com/faqs/faqs.html

In particular, be sure to try logging in as a different user to see if the problem exists there. (Create a new user via the Accounts preference panel if you only have the one user account so far.)

Also be sure to do "Repair Disk" (different from "Repair Disk Permissions"!) in Disk Utility when booted from the Install CD/DVD. I.e. you restart from the Install CD/DVD, then run the version of Disk Utility that is available from one of the menus there.
See this Apple doc:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106214

After that, start troubleshooting the iTunes problem by trying to figure out what it is about your iTunes library that is causing the problem.
E.g. try moving half of your songs to some other folder and then re-launching iTunes. Does the problem still occur? Then move half of the remaining songs to the other folder and try again. Etc.
Or try removing all of your songs from iTunes and then re-importing them again.

[ThreeBKK]

To skeevee:

Have you tried the steps listed in post #26? macnetadmin found some steps that worked for him.

[jslmg]

The problems I cited are simply that I have a huge music library, about 60 GB of music and old time radio shows. About 10,000 tracks in all.

Eventually, I was able to find a break when I could just let iTunes run without wanting or needing to do anything with it. iTunes was finally able to finish its scanning without trying to argue with me about who/what got priority usage--the user or the software.

Once it finished its scan, it started to run nearly as efficiently as it always did pre-7.0.

However, there are other things happening. These aren't bugs, just significant differences in the way iTunes is now programmed to behave. Whereas pre-7.0 iTunes opened this huge library without any noticeable delay, it now shows a message window saying "Loading iTunes library," which remains for about 15 seconds, followed by another 15 second delay before the iTunes browser finally appears.

I'm beginning to wonder whether Apple has enhanced iTunes' databasing capabilities so that it registers much more information than before, hence the long loading times.

This is not necessarily a bad thing. "Professional" DJ softwares like MegaSeg or SAM3 use huge databasing programs (Like SQL in SAM) that take ages to load.

Once we all adjust to these new designs and routines, the new iTunes should be a much better piece of software overall.

[djeric_austex]

i have almost 45,000 mp3s in my library, it is contantly determining gapless in my itunes

i have let it do its thing all the way through, then if i close and re open it starts all over again

believe me it doesnt do it once and then stops, its NON STOP! well unless i stop it using the x, but it freezes up itunes and its waste of time

Eric
Austin TX

[cogscilibrarian]

I've let it set gapless playback twice on my 20 gig iPod. Takes 30-45 minutes each time over firewire. I let it go once, and then twice, but the third time it tried I got mad.

hope there's a way to disable it.

[trumpet_999]

the real question is this: why has is taken itunes until version 7.x.x to create gapless playback in it's player and at the same time create such a fuss over the issue and royally screw it up?

I drive an old Toyota, it has an old cd player in it, it has played my pink floyd cd's whilst driving with gapless playback too many times to count, without ever a skip, jump, GAP, or anything, yet when Apple release a 'finely' tuned piece of intracate programming, they can't get it right?

Gapless Playback is of prime importance to me as a musician and listener. When will apple realise that many paople enjoy listening to ENTIRE ALBUMS, not just singular pop songs!@!@!@!!

[stonneway]

ARGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

I have over 5000 tracks, and each and every time I load iTunes it does the whole gapless thing, iTunes slows to a halt, doesnt respond for periods of time. If i click the X its fine, but then the next time I reload it, it starts all over from track 1 again !!!

God there has to be a way to turn this off.

S

[hayne]

See posts #33 and #34 above

[44enviro]

I have 47000 songs from 3500 CDs ripped by me and placed on a 500GB drive. All rips are of the highest quality VBR rip. The Music drive in question is a network drive so that the people in my home can access and use it as they desire.

The problem lies within the collection of gapless playback info from itunes 7. It will take days to collect this information for just one computer let alone many computers or user profiles. This propogation delay is primarily because it is on the network, but alas we live in a networked world.

What were the developers thinking. You would think that the developers would have considered all possible sources of music data, ie; local, usb, network, etc... At least give us an option to shut this off!!!!!!!
I certainly cannot use this product because of this limitation. If anyone has any clue as to shut this off i would appreciate this. i have tried the 1 second crossfading.. it does not work!!!

Regards,

james
james@tridelsolutions.com

[Kevin Peterson]

Sometimes they can't think of everything... Hopefully there will be some sort of update or patch. I've been in the same boat.

Kevin S. Peterson
Backup To The Web
Online Backup Made Easy
http://www.backuptotheweb.com

[ak3141]

After avoiding iTunes since the update, I've been forced to click on that dreaded icon in order to update the tired music on my iPod. I searched for a solution to disable the rather annoying gapless playback feature and came across this thread.

It's interesting to read the many soapbox replies explaining why this feature has been added without an option to disable it and the few replies that actually address the issue raised in teknovision's first post. I never had a problem with iTunes crashing before this update and I'm guessing that this is the case with many other users, therefore logic dictates that it is the program itself that is causing the issue.

The only solution I could find was this one (http://i.nconspicuo.us/2006/11/16/itunes-determining-gapless-playback-information/), which incidentally didn't seem to work for me but I'm posting it as it may be of some use to other readers.

After much frustration, the only solution I could figure out was to delete all the music in my iTunes library and to add only the songs I wanted to transfer to my iPod. Unless you already have them backed up, make sure you move the songs you'd like to keep out of your iTunes Music Folder before doing this. This seems to have worked wonders for me as iTunes is no longer crashing each time it scans the same songs for gaps and I can now use iTunes.. without my library of music! :rolleyes:

[EGibbs]

To all those who say it's not a bug in iTunes, I've got the "determining gapless" freezing into unresponsiveness issue, and I need to trash iTunes system files and rebuild the library weekly, sometimes not getting above 200 or so songs (G4, 10.3.9) so I know it has nothing to do with library size. I have left it for hours when it happens and it's still hung up. It wouldn't be so horrible if it just left incomplete gapless info, or prevented this great "feature" from functioning, but I have to force quit out of whatever I'm trying to accomplish (converting, downloading podcasts, etc) constantly. What happens is that although I can clear it up by doing a get info and unchecking the box, eventually a new file gets added that hangs iTunes again.

Even if it worked I can't stand having to wait the 20 seconds from launch until iTunes responds to the user. I would go back if it weren't for another family member whose new iPod requires it.

New re-installs both system and iTunes. Chalk me up as one of the annoyed. How can there not be a patch to fix this? I use iTunes waaaaay less than I used to because of it.

[teknovision]

EGibbs/all, there are two issues with latency that affect the experience; launching/openeing itunes and transfering/adding new tunes.

Even if files are stored locally there is still some latency (would imagine the quicker the machine the shorter the latency) but this latency is even worse if files are located on external device (my files are on a RAID via airport), I have to pre-plan wanting to listen to tunes and transfer tunes when I'm not listening to tunes!!!

[sbebble]

tek,

Jeez, if I were on airport RAID here I'd probably drink twice as much coffee (during the waiting time), and that's got to be avoided.... : )

I've just got them the old fashioned way, the stone age way, before all your newfangled wireless ideas started getting in all the kids' heads. : ) Internal drive, not start-up one. Loading the library doesn't take long, but updating the iPod again (yawn) and determining gapless (yaaaaaawnnn) means iTunes is no longer used for instant gratification.

One thing I've noticed also is that after I've cleaned everything out and started fresh, and I've brought the library back up in size (I optimistically creeped up to 6,000 songs), a library that has previously been OK will start hanging on a song that had passed the gapless determination fine previously. So now I'm thinking it's not hanging on a particular song for any issues it has with the song file, but rather that the process is faulty.

What's painful is that iTunes has gone, for me, from being one of the bulletproof, fun apps to one of the real problem ones.

[brendo234]

I'm running iTunes on a PC, and this worked fine for me, I hope it solves everyone else's problems too, because I too know what a pain in the a$$ gapless playback is and I'm glad I was finally able to turn it off!

http://i.nconspicuo.us/2006/11/16/itunes-determining-gapless-playback-information/

There are a lot of helpful comments on that page too... it sounds like a few of the users had a problem with disabling, but it worked for me with ~4,000 songs.

Good luck!

[teknovision]

FINALLY!!!!

The latest release of iTunes 7.1.1 fixes the original problem, no lag in launch with NAS and wireless/airport. Some performances in adding tunes has also been noticed.

[widgetphreak]

I urge everyone that has had a problem with iTunes since the update to version 7 to open up iTunes, click on "Itunes, Provide Itunes Feedback" and write Apple a feeback message that goes a llittle something like this:

"Looks like a new iTunes patch has been released... (7.4.1) and still no solution to this problem.

Seriously... how many people have to complain in writing before you guys make a little check box in the advanced section for people who don't want their library scanned for gapless playback.

Some people have 500+gigs worth of music... and some of these people have them on network shares. Do you have any idea how long it takes to scan that?

I know... I know.. there's a little X that you can click on to stop it from scanning, but I shouldn't have to click on that every single time I drag an mp3 over to my ipod.

On top of that... not only do I have to click on the x... but after i have dragged a new track over to the iPod I get a spinning beach ball of death for about 3 minutes before it even presents me with the X to click on.

The feature is horrible. This feature should be something you have the option of not using if you don't want to... and Itunes should come with it disabled by default.

If you don't believe that this is a serious issue just read some of this
http://i.nconspicuo.us/2007/07/06/disabling-itunes-determining-gapless-playback/

or some of this
http://forums.macosxhints.com/showthread.php?t=60679

I don't want to have to use a 3rd party app like songbird to manage my ipod... I should be able to rely on the company that made my iPod.. and my computer (Intel Macbook) to provide me with the best tools for using the products that I've purchased from them."