Last Updated on May 29, 2021
Gapless Playback
Gapless playback is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks, such that relative time distances in the original audio source are preserved over track boundaries on playback. It’s an essential feature if, like myself, you listen to classical, electronic music, concept albums, and progressive rock.
Implementing gapless playback is not trivial, and many Linux music players lack this functionality.
By default gapless playback is not enabled. But it’s available by clicking the gapless playback button or from the View menu. Either action inserts a pane below the playback buttons.
Gapless playback works flawlessly with ALSA. But using Pulseaudio didn’t offer flawless gapless playback on my Ubuntu and Arch test systems. I’ll need to investigate further as it might be an issue with my setup.
To close the pane you must click the radio button in the top right hand corder, as clicking the gapless toolbar button again doesn’t perform an action, which is counter-intuitive.
You’ll see there’s also crossfader functionality with a slider that lets you configure the crossfading length. I see gapless playback as indispensable, whereas a crossfader is more of a nice to have.
Pages in this article:
Page 1 – Introduction / Installation
Page 2 – In Operation
Page 3 – Playlists
Page 4 – Gapless playback
Page 5 – Internet
Page 6 – Frippery
Page 7 – Other Features
Page 8 – Memory usage
Page 9 – Preferences
Page 10 – Summary