A list of Atmos mixes that require gapless playback

[Albert Dagger]

I've opened this thread to create a list of the Atmos mixes that require gapless playback. This list might be useful to users who want to rip their collection and choose to do so using MKA files with an associated CUE sheet.
I rip all my discs and I can only count a very few releases that would require gapless playback (and MKV or MKA ripping rather than an M4A conversion to individual songs/files).

My preliminary list:
Beatles, The - Abbey Road
Fripp, Robert - Exposure
Fripp, Robert - Discotronics/Under Heavy Manners (in theory, this should be gapless, but there's silence between tracks anyway)
Kraftwerk - Kraftwerk 3D, The Catalogue (ENG, GER)
Pink Floyd - The Dark Side of the Moon
Zappa, Frank - The Grand Wazoo & Waka/Jawaka Box Set

I have deliberately excluded from this list streaming-only titles because the gapless playback issue only applies to lossless rips from Blu-ray discs in M4A (with individual tracks/files). This can be solved using an MKV or MKA rip with a CUE sheet.

Please add all the titles I might have forgotten to this list. I think I'll have a bit of re-ripping to do in the coming weeks.

 

[HomerJAU]

Other gapless surround albums that come to mind (non-Atmos) that could do with a CUE fix for true gapless file playback @albertop

The Beatles - Love
The Beatles - Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Jethro Tull- Thick as a Brick
Marillion - Misplaced Childhood
Pink Floyd - The Wall (only upmix versions at the moment)
Pink Floyd - WYWH

I'm sure there are heaps of others.

Please add more.

 

[M-K]

Alan Parsons Project - Tales Of Mystery (5.1)
Pink Floyd - Endless River (5.1)
Pink Floyd - A Momentary Lapse Of Reason (5.1)
Pink Floyd - Division Bell (5.1)
Pink Floyd - Animals (5.1 between Pigs and Sheep should be no gap)
Steven Wilson - Hand Cannot Erase, 4 1/2 (5.1)
Porcupine Tree - In Absentia, The Incident, Stupid Dream, Lightbulb Sun, Deadwing (5.1)
David Gilmour - On An Island (5.1)
Roger Waters - Amused To Death (5.1)
Andy Jackson - 73 Days At Sea (5.1)
Kompendium _ Beneath The Waves (5.1)
Mike Oldfield - Tubular Bells 2003 (5.1); will be interesting how the new SDE release of TB incl. Atmos is split or not.
Opeth - In Cauda Venenum (4.1; there is a glitch between 9. and 10.)

as a first & fast overview fro m me. And many more for sure.

Almost everything that's a live recording: gapless is mandatory!

 

[par4ken]

Everything can benefit from gapless playback, we don't need extra long pauses added between any tracks.

Years ago I stopped using JR River on my computer because (at that time) it wasn't gapless, but Foobar was. I tried using JR River again more recently and was able to stream to my Oppo, as I recall it was gapless.

I stopped using JR River because it was replacing my folder (image file) with a hidden version and adding a small (hidden) art version as well WTF! In some cases it replaced my artwork altogether!

So I gave up on the network streaming option, at least for now. Plugging a USB drive or thumb drive into the Oppo works well but again is not gapless! IMHO gapless playback should be designed in right form the start, it's perhaps the most important parameter!
What were they thinking?!!

 

[Rango]

If it's not just atmos, then:

Geinoh Yamashirogumi's Akira Symphonic suite.

Some of the various parts of the soundtrack are mixed into each other to produce a single piece of which the component parts are sections. Having them gapped feels like the album has been pulled apart.

 

[Albert Dagger]

With Kodi, the problem at the moment is only with lossless Atmos mixes ripped from Blu-ray Discs, and encoded in M4A format. MKA and a cue sheet is required for gapless playback. No issues with 5.1 or stereo mixes in Flac.

 

[marpow]

Everything can benefit from gapless playback, we don't need extra long pauses added between any tracks.

Years ago I stopped using JR River on my computer because (at that time) it wasn't gapless, but Foobar was. I tried using JR River again more recently and was able to stream to my Oppo, as I recall it was gapless.

I stopped using JR River because it was replacing my folder (image file) with a hidden version and adding a small (hidden) art version as well WTF! In some cases it replaced my artwork altogether!

So I gave up on the network streaming option, at least for now. Plugging a USB drive or thumb drive into the Oppo works well but again is not gapless! IMHO gapless playback should be designed in right form the start, it's perhaps the most important parameter!
What were they thinking?!!

I having been using JRiver exclusively for at least 10 years now and will comment on a few items you mention. What I have to say below is in regards to ripped files only which is 100% of my library.

1. Regarding gapless playback, FLAC in any form, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.1, JRiver plays back gapless 100% of time.

2. Regarding gapless playback, ATMOS, plays gapless 100% of time if you have a ripped MKV video file. Any other version of a ATMOS rip will not play back gapless in JRiver, yet. I would think that there build wizards would have fixed/changed that by now?

3. Regarding album artwork, I have never had JRiver replace artwork I added. You have two choices, Use Internet: to get anything to pop up you need your tagged files to be native, meaning no added wording, like Waka/Jawaka and the internet option will work, if your tag says Waka/Jawaka 5.1 then nothing will pop up.
I use ADD YOUR OWN FILE 80% of time and mostly Discogs. Find the artwork I want, save image to my desktop, add image file to my JRiver and is there forever. The good thing also is when I add my own special artwork to the Folder/Files via JRiver it changes them in the NAS also.
So when I reformat a folder/file to play in my car, I get that same artwork again.

 

[par4ken]

1. Regarding gapless playback, FLAC in any form, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.1, JRiver plays back gapless 100% of time.

Yes now it does but years ago it did not!

3. Regarding album artwork, I have never had JRiver replace artwork I added. You have two choices, Use Internet: to get anything to pop up you need your tagged files to be native, meaning no added wording, like Waka/Jawaka and the internet option will work, if your tag says Waka/Jawaka 5.1 then nothing will pop up.
I use ADD YOUR OWN FILE 80% of time and mostly Discogs. Find the artwork I want, save image to my desktop, add image file to my JRiver and is there forever. The good thing also is when I add my own special artwork to the Folder/Files via JRiver it changes them in the NAS also.
So when I reformat a folder/file to play in my car, I get that same artwork again.

Did you check to see if your folders now contain hidden files "folder" and "small art"? It is an annoyance to have extra files added to my folders and absolutely no reason that it should be done! Even more annoying if the artwork is changed!

Not sure just what you mean that the files have to be native, no added wording. I'll name them anyway that I want and I don't want any software to change or have a problem with that! I use MP3Tag and get most of the information from Discogs by simply inserting the release number into the MP3Tag program, and edit as I see fit!

The Oppo seems finicky as well at displaying artwork, sometimes it does and does not at other times. I embed artwork into each file and would expect that artwork to be displayed! I also place the artwork into the album folder labeled as "folder" which seems to be common practice.

 

[HomerJAU]

With Kodi, the problem at the moment is only with lossless Atmos mixes ripped from Blu-ray Discs

Correct. Apologies for my last post here suggesting the CUE method on those non-Atmos albums, it’s not needed.

 

[SeeMoreDigital]

Personally speaking, I've been backing-up my audio discs as a continuous audio streams along with a .cue sheet file for years. They play fine with my OPPO UDP-203.

It's just a shame that more hardware playback devices don't understand what to do with a .cue sheet file. It's even more of a shame that they don't understand chapters in .mka contained files. Which would mean you wouldn't even need a .cue sheet file!

 

[ar surround]

Correct. Apologies for my last post here suggesting the CUE method on those non-Atmos albums, it’s not needed.

When I finally get around to finally installing MMH:
If I split the Atmos tracks into separate MKV files, will they play back with gaps?

 

[marpow]

Did you check to see if your folders now contain hidden files "folder" and "small art"?

I have no hidden files or small art. I have checked.

Not sure just what you mean that the files have to be native, no added wording.

Yes, I can see how I confused you.
When using JRiver there is a list that has many functions (names) Track, Artist, Dynamic Range, Last played, etc., many many things you can pick, one of them is also called Album, so lets say the album is called Moondance, you can right click and click Cover Art, which gives you many choices one of them being Get From Internet, click that and you will get an assortment of jpegs that you can use, easy. If at another time you want to change the album title to Moondance 5.1, it will not change your artwork, but say you want the actual DVD Cover from the actual DVD, go to Discogs, find it, right click save. Then go back to JRiver and do the process as stated above except instead of Get From Internet select Add From File and now your artwork is exactly what you want it to be.
If you name the album Moondance 5.1 right off the bat, Get From Internet usually throws a blank as there is no such album called ----5.1, maybe Ringo has one?

Hope this time I did a better way of explaining, and of course name them anyway you want, why wouldn't you there yours.
I am just trying to explain I have been using JRiver for a very long time and have no issues, I never feel it does not give me exactly what I want it to do.

 

[HomerJAU]

If I split the Atmos tracks into separate MKV files, will they play back with gaps?

Yes with gaps, not gapless. For Atmos you’d need to keep the MKV with chapters. Load that into MMH‘s Chapter Editor and create a CUE file. MMH creates a ’track’ in the cue for each chapter.

The tool also can find the song titles from its MusicBrainz online lookup, save the song titles to Chapter Names (and to the CUE file).

You can play any track by name from your Media Player. The next tracks will be gapless.

 

[par4ken]

I have no hidden files or small art. I have checked.

Yes, I can see how I confused you.
When using JRiver there is a list that has many functions (names) Track, Artist, Dynamic Range, Last played, etc., many many things you can pick, one of them is also called Album, so lets say the album is called Moondance, you can right click and click Cover Art, which gives you many choices one of them being Get From Internet, click that and you will get an assortment of jpegs that you can use, easy. If at another time you want to change the album title to Moondance 5.1, it will not change your artwork, but say you want the actual DVD Cover from the actual DVD, go to Discogs, find it, right click save. Then go back to JRiver and do the process as stated above except instead of Get From Internet select Add From File and now your artwork is exactly what you want it to be.
If you name the album Moondance 5.1 right off the bat, Get From Internet usually throws a blank as there is no such album called ----5.1, maybe Ringo has one?

Hope this time I did a better way of explaining, and of course name them anyway you want, why wouldn't you there yours.
I am just trying to explain I have been using JRiver for a very long time and have no issues, I never feel it does not give me exactly what I want it to do.

My complaint is still that it wants to create those hidden folder and small art files. I knew that something was wrong when a folder with ten songs and no artwork folder file visible shows up as having 12 files! Before running JRiver it had 10 audio files plus "folder" artwork. The artwork disappeared, replaced by the two hidden files. Not acceptable to me! Now I have "show hidden files and folders" enabled in Windows. I will not use any program that messes in any way with my files!

I had tried JRiver again based on others recommendations (maybe yours) and also because it provided an easy way to upload files to my Pono player. I was having the same artwork issue when running Windows Media Player. Media Player (or JRiver) was necessary or else steaming to the Oppo would not work. Things seemed to be working fine until I noticed the artwork issue. And yes
sometimes the artwork was completely replaced by something totally different!. It did not affect the embedded artwork but playback tended to ignore the embedded artwork anyway.

Edit: You say that you don't have those hidden files, could it be that all of mine came from Windows Media Player? I don't think so but I might give JRiver another spin perhaps on another computer to see what happens.

 

[Albert Dagger]

Yes with gaps, not gapless. For Atmos you’d need to keep the MKV with chapters. Load that into MMH‘s Chapter Editor and create a CUE file. MMH creates a ’track’ in the cue for each chapter.

The tool also can find the song titles from its MusicBrainz online lookup, save the song titles to Chapter Names (and to the CUE file).

You can play any track by name from your Media Player. The next tracks will be gapless.

How do I identify individual discs in a multi-disc MKV file? I'm referring to Kraftwerk's 3D The Catalogue, which is split into two discs (4 albums for each disc). It seems the only way I have to do this is to name them "disc 1" and "disc 2". thanks.

EDIT: I think I can split the individual albums using MKVToolNix, but it's probably better to keep two large MKA files (BR Disc 1 and BR Disc 2), and then create a cue sheet that combines both (use the same album title and progressive chapter numbers). I'll give it a try.

 

[Albert Dagger]

2. Regarding gapless playback, ATMOS, plays gapless 100% of time if you have a ripped MKV video file. Any other version of a ATMOS rip will not play back gapless in JRiver, yet. I would think that there build wizards would have fixed/changed that by now?

Kodi can play gapless MKA files, provided such files don't have chapters and there's a CUE sheet associated with the MKA file. A folder.jpg works for the album artwork.
However, Kodi doesn't accurately read the CUE sheet, as the time stamps on the file differ by a couple of seconds from the time stamps on the player. This is noticeable when skipping from one song to another because the first couple of seconds of a song are cut. Obviously, this problem doesn't exist if one plays the entire album from beginning to end.

I'm wondering if MKV files have the same issue. It can be a Kodi bug...

 

[barfle]

[QUOTE="par4ken, post: 688393, member: 6059”]
I stopped using JR River because it was replacing my folder (image file) with a hidden version and adding a small (hidden) art version as well WTF! In some cases it replaced my artwork altogether!

So I gave up on the network streaming option, at least for now. Plugging a USB drive or thumb drive into the Oppo works well but again is not gapless! IMHO gapless playback should be designed in right form the start, it's perhaps the most important parameter!
What were they thinking?!!
[/QUOTE]
I found that any time I used Windows Media Player or whatever they “upgraded” it to, that my music folders were cluttered with “hidden” files of whatever the rocket surgeons in Seattle thought should be the artwork.

Of course, playing music for music’s sake on my PC isn’t something I do. Most on my streaming collection is on a NAS and I play it through my Oppo 105 most of the time, although my Roku and my Marantz pre-pro can play them as well.

FWIW, my pre-pro plays gapless. But I don’t have Atmos, and it’ll be a miracle if I get it this year.

 

[marpow]

My complaint is still that it wants to create those hidden folder and small art files. I knew that something was wrong when a folder with ten songs and no artwork folder file visible shows up as having 12 files! Before running JRiver it had 10 audio files plus "folder" artwork. The artwork disappeared, replaced by the two hidden files. Not acceptable to me! Now I have "show hidden files and folders" enabled in Windows. I will not use any program that messes in any way with my files!

I had tried JRiver again based on others recommendations (maybe yours) and also because it provided an easy way to upload files to my Pono player. I was having the same artwork issue when running Windows Media Player. Media Player (or JRiver) was necessary or else steaming to the Oppo would not work. Things seemed to be working fine until I noticed the artwork issue. And yes
sometimes the artwork was completely replaced by something totally different!. It did not affect the embedded artwork but playback tended to ignore the embedded artwork anyway.

Edit: You say that you don't have those hidden files, could it be that all of mine came from Windows Media Player? I don't think so but I might give JRiver another spin perhaps on another computer to see what happens.

I wish I could help, but just don't have the experience.

 

[M-K]

Everything can benefit from gapless playback, we don't need extra long pauses added between any tracks.

Years ago I stopped using JR River on my computer because (at that time) it wasn't gapless, but Foobar was. I tried using JR River again more recently and was able to stream to my Oppo, as I recall it was gapless.

I stopped using JR River because it was replacing my folder (image file) with a hidden version and adding a small (hidden) art version as well WTF! In some cases it replaced my artwork altogether!

So I gave up on the network streaming option, at least for now. Plugging a USB drive or thumb drive into the Oppo works well but again is not gapless! IMHO gapless playback should be designed in right form the start, it's perhaps the most important parameter!
What were they thinking?!!

You're right. Even playing mp3s a gap is terrible. By using the right encoding and the right player this nightmare came to an end.
No need to have this again for surround files. Gapless is simply required and standard. Isn't it?

 

[HomerJAU]

However, Kodi doesn't accurately read the CUE sheet, as the time stamps on the file differ by a couple of seconds from the time stamps on the player. This is noticeable when skipping from one song to another because the first couple of seconds of a song are cut. Obviously, this problem doesn't exist if one plays the entire album from beginning to end.

Matroska files (MKV/MKA) use timestamps in milliseconds. Audio CUE files use ‘frame’ (60 per second I think) unit to measure less than 1 second. I suspect this could cause a slight difference if a chapter has a value with > 600 milliseconds in its timestamp milliseconds value. Kodi does store the correct value in milliseconds in its database.

Its also possible the ffmpeg (used by Kodi) attempts to find the next keyframe in the file from the exact timestamp provided, I don’t know…

Also, I‘ve also thought actual chapter times are often incorrect on BD discs.