Does anyone care to divulge the unmentionable cosa nostra secret about gapless playback in roon?
I don’t want to start a revolution or enlist soldiers and for an illegal coup d’état in a 3rd world country, I would simply like to have gapless playback between my local library tracks and Qobuz albums…
Thanks for your advice.
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Gapless should just work, that’s why there is no setting for it. And there’s no secret, it just usually seems to work for most people, which is why there is no uproar about it on the forum. What are you using as the audio output?
That said, quite a while ago I started out of the blue to experience a gap at the start of Qobuz tracks if they come from different albums, apparently caused by buffering at the start of the track. I reported this in Early Access but as of yet no resolution.
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What are you using for endpoints?
Chromecast is/was broken for gapless on my Chromecast Audio but WiiM Pro seems to be gapless via Chromecast.
Airplay is gapless
Roon Bridge is gapless
Direct from core to DAC is gapless
Qobuz has had a wee issue with gapless but I seem to not experience it.
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@AMT Thanks. Using roon core from a NUC to Naim streamer on wired network. Everything works correctly, but was hoping/attempting to minimize or eliminate gaps between songs during album play.
I don’t think so. It should work and it’s not 100% OK that it doesn’t seem to for me. It did in the past. I don’t have the issue in albums but in some playlists with Qobuz tracks - not in all of them. When the user jumps unpredictably from track to track, it’s inevitable that there must be a short time of buffering when the new track starts, but in a playlist it knows what comes next and it shouldn’t delay the next track by buffering at its start. I hope Roon finds out why I have that in some playlists
And there simply shouldn’t be any - and I don’t have them within a Qobuz album despite my issue. I also have a Naim (NDX2) wired. Sounds like your issue is something else than mine.
Naim as endpoint should (and my Uniti Atom HE does) play gapless.
So it’s here another problem like stressed core, wrong settings (e.g. buffer settings) or a network problem.
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Have you got an album in mind on Qobuz for me to try?
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I same as others I use a nuc to a naim and gapless is fine.
No, not at all. It’s all albums, anytime anywhere and all the time. For me it’s simply not gapless.
Ah, some albums aren’t specifically gapless.
One of my favourites is
https://i.imgur.com/nKSOc7G.png
The tracks seamlessly blend with each other - gapless
Some albums are just track after track without continuity.
If you suggest an album I could attempt to hear what you meant.
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Yeah, well anyway, after 4 full years of full-time successful roon use on a fiber optic hard wired network into my various systems in the house, you’d think would have a modicum of experience at this point.
Perhaps the question is the exact and precise definition of “gapless” in order to set expectations. This is my understanding and I may be dead wrong.
- Songs or tracks on albums are typically numbered as individual recordings with a short small silent space (gap) between them.
- Removing or greatly minimizing these silent spaces (gaps) between tracks, in order to hear more of a constant flow of tracks, minimally separated by a silent gap, is my definition of gapless.
- For many years now, I always have a small (normal duration, not long…) gap between tracks like CDs did when we used to listen to them.
So, my “gap” is not long at all and it appears to be quite normal, but since IT IS THERE I assume that gapless playback is not occuring.
Of course, I may be simply expecting the impossible (you know, like gapless playback). Thanks.
Thanks for trying to help but there isn’t anything I can propose you listen to. There are always normal-sized gaps on each and every album I listen to, whether they come from my local library or via Qobuz. Anyway, this isn’t much of an issue at the end of the day.
Thanks but the SQ with Qobuz has proved superior to Tidal in my system.
We need specific examples. Most albums actually have silence embedded at the end of tracks, to create the duration of silence that the artist intended. They are not meant to be gapless in the first place.
Other albums like the Orb album mentioned by @AMT or Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon are gapless, i.e., although the track changes there is continuous sound.
If you want to simulate a continuous flow even though a track includes silence at the end on purpose, you need to enable crossfade. This means that the new track starts playing before the previous track ends, and they are mixed together. You can enable that here:
Side note @AMT: I have this Orb album in its original release vinyl glory with the black synthetic cover that was bonded shut and the pretty posters 
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But you can listen to albums that are known to be gapless, like the Dark Side of the Moon or that Orb album. If those have gaps in the music between tracks for you, something is wrong. If the track progression is seamless, then gapless works and what you hear in other albums is the intent of the mastering.
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That’s not how “gapless” is defined. Gapless playback means there are no added gaps between songs on an album. For example, Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” has most of the tracks with no break in between. In other words, songs run from one track to the next with continuous music. If playback were not gapless, there would be artificial gaps between the tracks.
It seems you want intended gaps between songs removed. Who even does that?
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Thanks, that may indeed clear things up.
Sounds like you don’t actually have any gapless albums to begin with. Gapless albums are an artistic production choice it’s not something you can just create. Gapless playback means that albums have been produced as a continuous piece of music with each track blending together playback as such. Not all software can do this even in this modern day, but Roon does and always had by default.
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