When you play a CD there is 1.5-2.5 seconds silence between tracks. On Roon the tracks are backed up one on another with barely 0.5 seconds between tracks. The reason CDs are mastered in this way is that it produces a more pleasant listening experience. Please could there be an option on Roon to add silence between songs?
Does this happen when you play a ripped CD? Normally when you rip a CD, the gap at the end of a track is kept as part of the track, unless you instructed the ripping software to exclude this. Or with gapless CD’s of course.
On streaming services, gapless playback is configured in the service’s settings AFAIK, not in Roon.
If I’m mistaken, I’m sure someone will correct me.
Actually, CDs are not made the way you claim. Any gaps between tracks are baked into the tracks themselves. Many albums are made with no gaps between tracks. Just listen to Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” and you will see what I mean. Having gaps would ruin the playback of albums like that.
In fact, “gapless playback” has always been an important feature for music players to support.
2 Likes
I think the OP is referring to the phenomenon you get with streaming services. I’ve noticed that the “baked in” silences either aren’t there when streaming from Tidal or are shorter than on the CD.
There are no “baked in” silences with Qobuz or Tidal. You are playing the actual tracks off of albums just like they are on the CD. Roon should be playing them “gapless” or albums like “The Wall” would be ruined.
Not so sure about that. Streaming services don’t hand out info on their source material.
BTW: have a look at the waveform of a ripped audio file. You’ll see the flat wave form at the end of the track (assuming the source CD has silences between tracks of course).
We don’t get to see the waveform of Tidal files, so we can’t know if there is a silence at track end, except by listening.
It’s not about Roon playing gapless either. It definitely should or truly gapless albums would indeed suffer.
The OP however seems to experience lack of separation silences while streaming. Totally different animal…
So which is it, @Frank_Daman, are the tracks from Tidal and Qobuz gapless or not??? You can’t have it both ways…
I’ve no idea. That’s what I’ve been telling all along. There are no end silences on tracks from continous playing albums like “The Wall” not on the original album and not on Tidal, which is as it should be.
As for tracks from non continous playing albums, who knows what Tidal streams? I’m listening to an album streaming from Tidal that’s in my local library as well and the pauses between tracks are noticeably shorter. Not by much but still. It doesn’t bother me. It seems to bother the OP though.
Who knows which edition Tidal supplies? Only Tidal does.
This is somewhat of an inane discussion though. I don’t get what got your knickers in a twist.
He’s naturally like this…nothing new.
Frank, do you actually think that Qobuz and Tidal sit down and figure out which albums have tracks that need to be gapless? Of course not. They let the albums flow as they were distributed by the record company. Come on…
I answered your question…