Disabling iTunes Determining Gapless Playback
July 6th, 2007 | Posted by in Tech/Web
Awhile back, I wrote this post: iTunes – Determining Gapless Playback Information and though it has worked for some people, I still get many complaints that it isn’t working for others. If this solution is not working for you, please comment on this post and include:
- The type of computer you’re using (PC or Mac)
- Version of the Operating System
- Version of iTunes
- Whether your songs are stored on your computer or on a network drive
- Any other information that might be useful
Together we’ll find a way to rid iTunes of Gapless Playback once and for all.
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I had this problem since I installed the abomination that is iTunes 7.x+ on a PC running Windows XP with my songs stored on my computer. The steps in the earlier post didn’t work for me as they simply reverted back to the default settings for playback, and the only solution I found was to uninstall 7.x and reinstall 6.x (I used 6.0.2.23, which is what my boyfriend has and he’s never had a problem with it). I still had all my files left over from the uninstall, so none of my music was deleted.
The only thing is that (assuming you’re running on similar settings) you’ll have to delete your library playlist and reload everything into a new playlist. The default playlist is in the My Music -> iTunes folder. You lose all the playlists you created as well as your default library playlist but at least you won’t lose any of your purchased songs or whatnot.
If you feel iffy about doing this BACK UP YOUR SONGS FIRST on some sort of external disk or another computer before you start. It didn’t delete any of my songs in my library or older folders but I don’t know how this will work on other computers.
Hopefully this helps the people that couldn’t fix the gapless playback issue the first time around.
that gapless is utterly maddening
i have to do what you suggested everytime i plug into itunes ver. 7
i have a mac osx
the songs are on my computer hard drive
AND i have an old ipod Photo 60g that everyone tells me isnt supposed to be effected by this gapless non sence thanks
You can just click the “circle x” in the digital readout area to stop it.
I thought you can select all and turn off the gapless playback in the song info area, but that doesn’t seem to be working. I usually just stop it as soon as it starts – seems to be the best solution.
OK, this is driving me insane.
I have iTunes 7.3 on a Mac OSX 10.4.10 and iTunes 7.3 on a Windows Vista machine.
The mp3 library is on a network drive. its ~70gb worth of music, over 13,000 songs, so the gapless crap takes hours. Both machiens point to the network drive for all music. Both machines do this check EVERY time you start itunes.
I’ve done the previous recommendation on the Mac, made no difference. I’ve run both machines to completely calculate the gapless information all the way through, but this information does not seem to be retained anywhere, since it ALWAYS does the check.
like i said, driving me insane. and the non-techy wife keeps asking “why does it do this stupid thing?”. itunes is making me look dumb.
i click the circle X to stop it, but thats an annoyance, and since i let itunes go through the entire library previously, i find it unnecessary.
I’ll see if I can dig anything up on a Mac solution. The solution on my other post seems to work fine on PC’s:
- Selecting the entire library
- Opening properties
- Setting all songs to “Not part of gapless album”
I’ll keep my eyes and ears out for you!
Hello, Glad I found you.
I have Itunes v7.4 running on a MAc OSX v10.4.9.
My music files are stored on an external hardrive – approx 45GB of info.
Every time I copy music over to my ipod it starts the determining………. message and crashes Itunes. The onyl way I can get out is by force quitting. I currently have the crossfade set to on. I tried leaving it but no joy – just crashes.
Any ideas???
Thanks!
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… 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.”
your gonna love this when i tried to send a message to itunes via the i tunes send a comment pull down i got a message telling me i was forbidden on the server, and i have a MAC running SAFARI! man this sucks and no end in sight they dont show you this side on them apple commericals
Finally, after about three months of being convinced I was going utterly insane and was no longer capable of operating my own computer, I have figured out why all of a sudden iTunes equals a death sentence to my operating system. I have to admit, it was the furthest thing from my mind to imagine that Apple’s own software “updates” were the menace behind the whole thing. Of course I’m one of the many people (mostly on Macs, it seems) for whom clicking the little “No” box next to Gapless Playback doesn’t work – or at least it reverts back to the default every time I restart my machine. I am pretty blown away by the fact that I have to TELL the program EVERY time I open it to stop the whole process since I thought that customizable settings were the standard in software development since…I don’t know, the 80′s? Does Apple not realize that for people with large libraries (and mine isn’t particularly large by most standards, about 3,100 songs) this “preference” actually causes the program to be COMPLETELY unusable? Not to mention it destabilizes the entire operating system. Absolutely blown away. I was a die-hard Apple devotee until now.
“I urge everyone that has had a problem with Itunes since the update to version 7 to open up Itunes,”
nice idea, one fatal flaw however – iTunes will freeze on being launched!
LOL, what a great feature. Thanks Apple.
Here’s my specs:
MAC OSX Tiger
Songs on external USB HD
I have tried turning all songs to “NO” gapless and the issue still persists.
I have a friend with the exact same setup and machine as me and he workz.
Go figure.
Nothing has worked. My iTunes hangs for ever (in excess of 30 hours so far) and continues to hang unless I force quit it. I have found a way to go back to 6.0.4 without loosing a playlist and can post that if you want, but now I can not use my new iPod because iTunes 7.4.x is toast. The gapless determination BS NEVER FINISHES… &*^# Apple… Anyway, here is what I have:
G4 Dual 450
1.25 gigs RAM
OS X 10.3.9
iTunes 7.4.2 (broken)
All music is stored locally in the Music\iTunes folder
Same issue with the following configuration:
iBook G4 1.2 ghz
1 gig RAM
OS X 10.4.x
iTunes 7.4.2
All music is stored locally in the Music\iTunes folder
Thanks….
Devin
Hangs for 30+ hours??? How many songs do you have???
1200. (1165 to be exact). All the MP3s in there have been ripped from a CD or purchased from the iTunes Store.
I was having this same problem with i-tunes which apparently has no easy solution yet. The typical start itunes –> try to analyze tracks for gapless whatever –> come across a tricky track –> itunes crashes = ( the only way to get out of the crash is to shut itunes down and open it up again, and it proceeds to do the same thing again.
Luckily, all of my files are stored on an external hard drive, so if I unplugged the drive, then itunes couldn’t scan anything (of course it also can’t play anything!) because all of the itunes library links couldn’t access the actual files.
I could remove the files from the itunes library (not deleting the files themselves) before itunes could try to scan them.
This way, by a rigorous trial-and-error method, I could start locating which files were causing the most trouble
(FYI–> Korn’s self titled album was the only troublemaker of my 6,000 + library, so it wasn’t so bad)
Once the troublemakers were located, then for some reason adding them individually worked better than in batches, and it worked fine.
I did what you recommended about selecting all my files and designating them as not part of a gapless playback album. My main problem is when I add new songs to my iTunes Library it immediately slows down iTunes and my computer so it can find album images. I’ll hit the ‘X’ once, and 15 seconds later, it’s still going, and slowly. Then I’ll hit ‘X’ again and it will, stop, then go on. So then I hit it about 7-10 times in a row and it stops, only to reveal iTunes is determining gapless playback info on my new songs and takes about the same amount of clicks on the ‘X’ button to get it to stop. By then I’ve wasted a good minute or more of my time before I can listen to my songs.
I’m slowly beginning to give up on iTunes as a easy-to-use music player. I liked it most for how it let you organize songs, but that’s slowly becoming less of a pull. Any suggestions? Here’s my info:
1. Computer: PC (HP Pavillion ze4300)
2. Version of the Operating System: Windows XP Home Edition Version 2002 Service Pack 2
3. Version of iTunes: iTunes 7.4.3.1
4. Whether your songs are stored on your computer or on a network drive: Stored on connected USB hard drive
If you’re on a PC, I’d just recommend using Folders to organize your songs. Then for tagging and album art, I’d recommend Tag & Rename (or any other MP3 tagging tool).
For some reason, iTunes always seems to be slow to load and run on a PC, I don’t know why.
A friend of mine just uses iTunes to put songs onto his iPod… HE DOESN’T HAVE A SINGLE SONG ADDED TO HIS LIBRARY! He simply opens iTunes in a small window, then opens up his files/folders that he wants to add songs from. He then drags & drops files from explorer to his iPod within iTunes. That solves his gapless playback issue.
Hope that helps.
I’ve tried every possible fix for this problem. Updating my IPOD is a chore!
Has anyone tried contacting Apple directly?
I’m sure a simple google on “itunes director” would turn up some names.
Reset the ipod wihout disconect it
Well, one thing is for sure that the problem is actually a ‘bug’ and there is no direct way of resolving it. The fastest way to get it done would be to hammer apple on this topic over and over till they get a hint and resolve the issue.
and guys, hitting the cross in the circle EVERYTIME you open itunes is not ‘solving’ this problems, that is living with it. I personally would rather use itunes 6 than to click that obnoxious cross all the time.
preet,
Don’t click on the “x” in the circle everytime you open iTunes. Do it once, then make sure that all of the music in your library is set as “Not part of a gapless album”… idiot.
What makes you think I didn’t try that already? and before you consider yourself an authority on this subject, let me tell you that it doesn’t work. Hope this time it will be enough to make you understand.
You guys have done so well with Itunes… it is a standard. The best out there– all things considered. Great work!
But, some things prompt more than a few of us to look for an alternative. Two of those things are: “Gapless playback” and lack of support for .FLAC files.
I have to say I agree with others that are complaining about Itunes scanning for “gapless playback”. We spend half of our “listening time” listening to a silent spinning ball—that you can’t interrupt.
When I look at my Hang Logs, Itunes accounts for 80% of my hangs. Sometimes the only way to get Itunes to stop so I can restart it and try and jump in before the “determining gapless playback” starts so that I can listen to net stations is to ‘cold shutdown’ since “force quit” won’t make it stop.!
I don’t even like “gapless playback”. Really, how hard is it for you guys to allow us to disable this “feature”??
The other issue I have with Itunes is that it does not natively support .FLAC files. It is the next best sounding thing out there -next to APLAC. Much of the music I listen to that is out there are .FLAC files. They sound SOOO much better than MP3′s and the rest. Yes there are hacks available, but, while I am competent enough to do the hacking, I don’t have the time. SO, I use PLAY for my .FLAC files. Shame…….
Please help us. Many of us proselytize for you guys. I spread the ‘gospel’ of Mac anything. We would really appreciate it. Keep up the good work otherwise.
Respectfully,
Derek
======================
” A WISE [MAN] WILL LISTEN, AND TAKE IN MORE INSTRUCTION”
MacBook Pro 17″ 2.33, 3GB, 200GB,7200rpm
Leopard v10.5.1, Itunes v7.5 (19)
My media is stored on a Terabyte drive Via USB to an Airport Extreme Base Station…..(whenever my connection drops, itunes has to be reset for library location and start the scans allover again—and this happens 2-7 times A DAY! AAAARGGGH!)
Dell Latitude D610 1.73, 3GB, 100GB 7200 RPM–WinXP Pro SP2
Dell runs Itunes also.
Workstation, 3.4GHz 2GB, 6 drives, etc, etc…..
Guys, I suggest using Yamipod instead of itunes. The problem is that Apple has a conflict of interest in this case: they want to sell you music via ITMS, so they no longer want to help you enjoy your music however you want, but instead to police you and manipulate you. Their interests are no longer aligned with yours, and as a result in itunes development they’re no longer serving the customer (you). That’s why programs like yamipod exist — it lets you copy your own music back off your ipod, an obvious need that Apple won’t provide because they think they own your music and can tell you what to do with it…
I’ve gotten so fed up with itunes that I just won’t launch it. Fortunately there are other great programs like yamipod, so I don’t have to! The key is to make sure never to launch itunes while your ipod is connected, and vice versa… I buy all my music legally from Emusic, so why should I put up with itunes’ misbehaviors (e.g. the “determining gapless playback” monstrosity) and its attempts to tell me what to do?
I’ll check out Yamipod. I’d suggest MediaMokey v3 for any Windows users… not sure if its supported on Mac. Check out my most recent post about MediaMonkey.
I don’t think they WANT to resolve that issue, that is why it is enabled default with no preferences.
I’ve experienced an increased dislike for Apple products when my iTunes spontaneously informed me that it was a damaged imtl file several months ago and lost all of my playlists and 1/3 of my music. We have been battling it out since then.
Gapless Playback is the spawn of Satan (Apple). I have regresses to iTunes 6 only to discover that I was unable to do anything without upgrading, I have uninstalled, reinstalled, deleted folders, moved folders, opened up the itml.xml and tried to bootleg Gapless Playback out of the program (no success) and then I discovered this site. I selected all songs, brought up the info, selected no Gapless Album and checked it, then waited for it to process. Immediately after processing eternally (did not even close iTunes) I checked to see if it had worked: nope! The checked box was unchecked and all was screwy as before. I even tried setting a Gapless Album to Yes, checked the box, and it had unchecked itself as well. The only working solution I’ve come up with is to hit the X while Gapless Playback is determining and pray that it continues to give you enough time before hanging up.
I have to get the headphone jack in my iPod checked out too.
Fuck this, I’m going back to CDs.
Elisabet -
That was a great comment… sorry that that you lost your playlists and music, but aside from that, I found your comment very entertaining.
I especially loved the “going back to CD’s” signature.
Good luck in finding a solution – I’d still recommend checking out Media Monkey
I don’t think I can revert to an older itunes – i just bought a new ipod, and had to update itunes to sue it. ARGH!!!!!!
Programs shouldn’t take over five minutes to be functional after you’ve launched them – this is a ridiculously bad bit of design.
I’m having this very problem, and it’s driving me crazy — it’s to the point now that I literally cannot use iTunes. It gets hung up on the very first song it analyzes, so there’s no way I can click the X button quick enough to stop it from freezing. So if I can’t even start the application, obviously, I can’t implement the solution you suggest.
Now, admittedly, my library (stored on an external drive) is pretty huge — over 50,000 songs — but reading the comments here, it doesn’t look like that makes much of a difference. Essentially, I have a media player that, due to a feature that has no practical value and whose aesthetic value is minimal, can’t be used to play media.
This is hugely frustrating. I’ve been a big advocate of iTunes since it was introduced, and have spent piles of money buying stuff through the iTunes Music Store, but unless they fix this ridiculous “feature” ASAP, I’m done with it.
Anyway, my info:
- Macbook
- OS X 10.5.4
- iTunes 7.7.1
- songs stored on an external hard drive
- library size approx. 52,000 songs
i figured out a way to fix this. figure out what songs/album its currently trying to do the gapless playback on, find that album/song in your itunes folder, and temporarily remove it, and upon opening itunes it’ll stop trying to gapless playback it because it can’t find it.
hahaha… bunch of idiots. gapless is a feature that should have been there since the start. I have no idea how you’ve all messed up your libraries so bad, I have over 10,000 songs with every single one set to gapless => “yes” and itunes doesnt stall or spend ages starting up. I actually found this page searching for a way to make gapless => “yes” the default for newly added music
Lucas – I guess you missed the point that several of us started having this problem AFTER UPGRADING iTunes – it is something that happened to SOME of us when iTunes was updated and not something WE did. I DO however agree that it is an issue with the libraries since on my other Macs it is not an problem with NEW libraries created with the NEW version of iTunes. BTW – Didn’t your mother teach you that name calling isn’t nice? Or, is that what you need to do to make yourself feel good? Heh heh…
Cheers
10.4.11
ituneless 7.7.1
gapless hell.
literally days with minimal progress… 52 of 12639? wtf?
beachball spins forever. can’t click cross (x). have about 2 seconds when it opens and then beachball of infinite agony.
i started to select the itunes dock icon when it opened and held down the option key or ctrl or both, i don’t know, lucked out and it asked me to create a new library… so i did. suddenly itunes opened, but with zero library. so rebuilding the library now…
BUT, how do i prevent this CAPITAL B Bullshit from happening again?
Just ensure the crossfade is on? it is, but funk, i can’t believe apple does not provide an option here, especially when there are so few albums/songs this influences.
cheers, beers and gapless playback fears…
I discovered the Gapless Playback Hell as well. I didn’t have such a problem with it before but now that I have all my CDs converted to MP3s and I use a network drive to access the music it’s bloody awful when it tries to determine gapless playback for like 5000+ songs and I hate that I have to click the X button really quickly before the colorful beachball appears. Messed.Up.
I’m in gapless playback hell right now. Window XP Pro, tons of free disk space (newly defragged). 571 songs in library – so far I’ve spent 5 hours and am about 110 songs into the library. Meanwhile, the computer is unusable for anything else. Does the uninstalling/reinstalling thing work? I am literally going crazy (and spent all of last night downloading the thumbnails which I don’t even want). HOW do I get back to a version of itunes that actually works??
How do i get continuous playback on itunes 8?
ive been trying to figure it out for ages… but still it stops after every song, even on playlists – HELP??
itunes is absolutely garbage, apple should let us transfer mp3s to the music folder and photos to the photo folder without this hassle….
indeed. i gave up on itunes to listen to music, i now only use it to manage my ipod stuff… for just listening to music ive gone back to windows media player – SO much easier and never fails me!
Lucas, you and inconspicuous can kiss my a$$. While everyone else here is working towards a solution, you take cheap shots. I bet you both work in the backroom of some giant computer store and think you’re top shelf….whatever.
To everyone else; keep speaking up and don’t let the snotty nerds hold you back. Thanks for all the input. I appreciate the posts.
dimsum -
Why can I kiss your ass? Am I not looking for a solution to this terrible problem? Oh wait, I am. And I’ve actually provided a solution too.
I don’t know if anyone else has found a REAL solution yet, but I’ve been looking at (and using) these two programs to manage my music collection now:
MediaMonkey
SongBird
Right at this moment I am watching itunes determine gapless playback on 41,979. How many of them need that? A few hundred? I bet I could do it myself. I tried selecting them all and checking the box, it always comes back. Here are a few other things that suck:
This particular box runs xp64 pro, I primarily model environments with large grids and many of the programs I use are native 64 so it’s fast for me and stable. Think you can just download itunes64, hah! Then when you do manage to download it (without having Vista) you need to modify the launch condition of the .msi file to even install it.
Watch folders. At least itunes folder watch for the pc works well, but there is no equivalent for the mac (and no, the scripting option does not wotk on a NAS). Why is this important to me? My work flow moves thusly-when I get songs I tag them the way I like them and move them into a local folder/internal drive. I then use pathsync to sync up a backup disc (external) and to a Synology NAS drive. The NAS drive serves up the music for the household. I use a macbook pro laptop and it gets the music from the NAS. So when I add 20 albums to the Synology what can I do? I have to open the music folder on the NAS, sort by date and add the new albums through the itunes interface – but it takes the macbook 45 minutes to even browse that directory, a Samba problem. The windows box takes about 45 seconds.
I have an ipod and an iphone and enjoy both, I do use Foobar and Winamp at times, although I do like the itunes interface when it’s working. So my plea to apple:
1) Let me choose the download
2) Do not make gapless come on automatically
3) For God’s sake, add a freaking watch folder like every other media player in the known universe
Oh joy-up to 13654 Determining gapless, it hasn’t even crashed yet-the only reason I am doing this again is because I installed an update and it torched my library…………
What i have done, using itunes 8 is just go
- Libary
– Select All
– Get Info
– options tab
– Set gapless album to no.
Problem solved – PERMINANTLY
Tried doing the highlight all and selecting no, doesnt work. everytime it loads… shoot, 45 up and 45 complete an hour later, shut it down. turn it back on and another 45 goes up. I HAVE 25K+ this could take forever. Help
PC
Windows XP
iTunes version 8.1.0.52
songs stored on computer
So I set the gapless album to no and waited several minutes for iTunes to scan through al lthe songs and when it finished. nothing happened. i selceted them all again and the box was unchecked. Anyone know ehy this isn’t working for me? Thanks
It looks like checking ‘no’ now just removes the ID3 tag entirely rather than setting it to zero. I have 13,500 files at work that I access from home over VPN. It takes about 2-3 minutes to do the analysis PER FILE on a remote server.
I’m going to try manually setting the COMMENT ITUNPGAP field to 0 using mp3tag.
Mac Mini – Longtime PC user new to the Mac
OSX 10.5.6
iTunes 8
4000 Songs stored on a network drive
Just dragged the songs in at first, clicked the “x” to stop the gapless search. Tried the crossfade and select all/uncheck ideas suggested above, but it still goes through the gapless routine every time I launch iTunes.
OK It’s a pain in the ass, but, after loading approx. 31’000 songs onto an external hard drive and seeing the “det gapless…” I found the only thing to do and it worked, was to just let it go through the process completely and then it solved the problem. I had to keep both the computer on and ofcourse iTunes, but now no more determining!!!!
Harry,
I appreciate the effort bro, but that is not a solution. Keep iTunes open forever?? Oooooo kaaaaaay. Glad that’s working for ya brah.
I have songbird but it’s garbage.
In the end I just have to click the x. It works after about 3 minutes of the pinwheel (it’s a pinwheel guys, not a beach ball. Get your cursors straight). Apple is just another corporate pimp. Don’t be fooled. Lesser of two evils (debatable).