Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

On 04/02/2016 09:36, Bob Latham wrote:
In article ,
RJH wrote:
On 25/01/2016 13:16, Bob Latham wrote:

There are 3 Sonos portable devices in our house and these use their
own app running on iPads and Samsung phones. Sonos is not UPnP it just
needs an SMB share from the NAS.

There is also a RaspberryPi player and a Linn Akurate DS (2015
variant). These all use UPnP and Minimserver and Linn's Kinsky and
Kazzo iPad control apps.


Ah - way out of my league. I just use the Cambridge NP30, and generally
use an iPhone to control it. Although the remote is fine as the
display's half decent.

I tried Minimserver - works great. The only problem (apart from lacking
DS Audio's features) is the gapless playback - still doesn't work.

That's interesting. We have a different view of what Minimserver does. My
RaspberryPi player and my Linn both use Minimserver as their source and
neither have ever had any difficulty with gapless playback.

I've had a very quick look at the manual for your NP30 and it does advise
the use of a UPnP server which is what Minimserver is and that will not
cause issues with gapless playback.

However, my map of the world is that minimserver is not control software,
surely that would still be the responsibility of the machine manufacturer
or other amateur writers.


Minmserver, Synology's audio server (Plex, Kodi Server etc) IIUC simply
communicate the content of the NAS to compatible devices. And these
devices need software to read that communication.

Your media server software obviously reads this communication properly,
and ensures gapless playback of gapless material.

For the NP30, Cambridge's software works fine in this regard - whether
controlling direct from the player, or using Cambridge's app. Other
software (such as the Synology app) doesn't work.

An alternative (such as that used by Jim Lesurf) is to access the files
directly, and use the NAS as you would an internal drive on a computer.
I've just given this a quick try, using VLC on Mac OS. And it almost (!)
works - a split second gap between tracks. Better than the Synology - a
good 2s between gapless tracks. it's not a playback route I use, but
I'll look into it . . .

What I don't understand is why Synology are so seemingly rubbish at
implementing what feels to be a trivial feature - gapless playback.

I have a feeling it's implemented in subtly different ways on different
hardware, so generic software (like the Synology app) can't flag gapless
playback, whereas the bespoke Cambridge software can.

So it looks like I'm stuck with Cambridge's rubbish software to play
back gapless material. They seemingly place a flag in gapless recordings
which the DS Audio and Minmserver don't?

This is very odd. If your player cannot play gapless from minimserver then
to my mind your player has faulty software not minimserver.


No, I think the problem is with the controlling software. The Synology
controlling software doesn't work. The Cambridge software (onboard the
NP30 or via their iPhone app) does.

In addition, what my I ask is a gapless recording? Never heard of one of
those before. Gapless is a playback issue for the player nothing to do
with either the UPnP server or the flac files provided they've been ripped
correctly.


Gapless recording is where, by design, there is no gap between tracks.
For example, live music.

The player can only respond to the information it's fed by the
controlling software, so I don't think Cambridge can be held to account
for non-performing 3rd party software.

Have you had a word with Cambridge about this?


The Synology forums have some mention of the problem.


--
Cheers, Rob

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

In article , RJH
wrote:
On 04/02/2016 09:36, Bob Latham wrote:
In article , RJH
wrote:


An alternative (such as that used by Jim Lesurf) is to access the files
directly, and use the NAS as you would an internal drive on a computer.
I've just given this a quick try, using VLC on Mac OS. And it almost (!)
works - a split second gap between tracks. Better than the Synology - a
good 2s between gapless tracks. it's not a playback route I use, but
I'll look into it . . .

Might be worth experimenting with VLC's buffer size/number settings. I
guess this can be done as it is so flexible, but I can't recall getting
into this.

I sometimes notice a delay in getting the 'first file'. I've wondered if
the NAS is wanting to load the files I've listed by dnd into RAM and so is
trying to get ducks in a row before going much further. Or if its the first
file(s) of the session that make it do some sorting out. Not sure for the
reasons I give below...

Gapless recording is where, by design, there is no gap between tracks.
For example, live music.

In practice I tended to assume this might happen anyway before I got into
playing audio files.. So when generating files from Audio CD I usually make
'contiguous' tracks into one long flac file. Became a habit I found
convenient anyway. However in practice, when I haven't, it doesn't normally
seem to give me a noticable 'gap'. So its not really been a problem here.
How lucky I've been, I dunno.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

On 25/01/2016 11:45, Brian Gaff wrote:
I've had no issues with the media from commercial sources, ie the
original Philips demo disc for my cd100 still plays perfectly, and it
has to date from 1983.

Hi Brian. Is that the Philips demo disc that has Level 42's '42' on it
amongst other tracks?

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 10:16:21 +0000, Java Jive wrote:

On Fri, 05 Feb 2016 02:20:20 GMT, Johnny B Good
wrote:

On Wed, 03 Feb 2016 20:05:25 +0000, RJH wrote:

On 03/02/2016 04:47, Johnny B Good wrote:
On Sun, 24 Jan 2016 09:48:15 +0000, RJH wrote:

There's no hard and fast rule regarding the use of spin down power
saving in a SoHo or home NAS box but, unless you're really only
making infrequent use of the NAS, it's always best to avoid lots of
spin up events per day (most home desktop PCs are typically power
cycled just one or two times a day which keeps the spin up event
count nice and low, assuming that distraction known as spin down
power saving in the OS has been completely disabled in order to
preserve the operator's sanity).

I don't think it's asking too much of any user to wait for a HD in a PC
or NAS to spin up when it's not been accessed for a long time. One just
gets used to it.

Or, as I presume they must say in MSFT's marketing division, "One just
gets habituated to the situation." :-)


It's worth keeping in mind that this is a *power saving* feature
(in
reality, an energy consumption saving strategy) with no thought to
whatever consequences there might be in regard of the drive's
reliability. Seagate must be the only drive manufacturer stupid
enough to confuse power saving with temperature reduction if their
FreeAgent 'specials' were anything to go by.

It is certainly true that saving power has to be considered along with
product life. The world is full of examples of electrical and
electronic products that are designed to run 24/7 - fridges and
routers, for example - and particularly with the latter switching them
off overnight may lead to premature failure, which, when the economic,
environmental, and energetic 'costs' of manufacture and disposal of the
products are considered, may be less economic and less ecological, than
just leaving them on 24/7 as they were designed to run.

However, I suspect that is not true of HDs, which were designed to spin
up and spin down to save energy.

Actually, they weren't designed for that use. The power saving spin down
is a feature added to laptop drives that then became a standard add-on
option in the larger desktop drives shortly afterwards.

In the case of laptop HDDs, such energy saving strategies do seem to
work without the same detrimental effects witnessed in their larger
desktop cousins (I'm thinking of the ten year old WD *IDE* laptop drives
also afflicted with the same 8 second head unload time out discovered in
the desktop green models circa 5 years ago with head unload cycle figures
of 3 and 5 million, a value that's a magnitude larger than the quoted
300,000 lifetime rating for those green models - durability in the face
of head unloading 'wear and tear' doesn't seem to scale very well in the
larger desktop models).

In fact, in the case of laptop usage, this 'insanely' short 8 seconds
head unload time out makes quite a lot of sense in that it vastly
increases the chance that the heads will be safely parked if the lid is
accidentally slammed down too hard or the laptop dropped too hard onto a
desk or it gets kicked off the desk onto a hard floor. Also, spin down
power saving in this scenario is more likely to offer a net benefit on
lifetime, not only for the drive itself but also on the rest of the
laptop's components.

The same is hardly true in the case of desktop drives and it's a pity WD
didn't rethink the 8 seconds default time out on head unloading,
especially as it only had a rather modest 300,000 cycles rating on the
Greens (600,000 for the REDs). Although the extra access delay is only a
matter of half a second or so, the 3 to 4 hundred milliwatt power saving
is a rather questionable benefit (unless you're looking for 'Kudos' from
the dumb assed reviewers for being just that little bit more "Greener"
than the 'Competition').


Spinning down a modern HDD typically reduces power consumption by
around
7 to 10 watts per drive as observed in the energy consumed at the
mains socket. Each watt year of energy consumed equates to about a
quid's worth on the annual electricity bill. That represents 8.766
KWH units of electricity used per year. You can check your actual
unit costs and calculate a more exact annual cost per watt's worth
of 24/7 consumption.

If you're running the NAS 24/7 and just using spin down power
saving to
minimise its running expenses, you can estimate just how much of a
saving this contributes by calculating the hours of spin down
'sleep' time each drive enjoys per day. For example, a pair of
drives allowed to 'sleep' overnight may get anywhere from 8 to 16
hours of repose per day, depending on how often you access the files
on the NAS box and the timeout period you've selected before the
drives spin down.

For arguments sake, I'll assume an average of 12 hours per day of
spin
down sleep for both drives and an effective energy saving at the
socket of 10 watts each, 20 watts in total making for a saving of
240 watt hours per day. this represents a total of 87.66 units of
electrical consumption saved over the year. Assuming 15p per unit,
this would represent £13.15 savings on the yearly electricity bill.

This doesn't strike me as a worthy enough saving to place the
drives
under the additional thermal cycling stresses introduced by such a
power saving strategy.

[snip]

I know because, barring silly manufacturing defects or system design
errors that expose the silicon to electrical stresses beyond their
design limits, thermal expansion/contraction introduces mechanical
cycling fatigue induced stresses on the silicon die as well as in
circuit board through plated holes.

[snip more of same]

Frankly, IME this is ********. I cannot recall a single HD failure in
the electronic PCB, every single one I've ever owned has failed due to
bad sectors developing on the platters. How many drives have you had
fail in the way that you claim? I'd be surprised even at a single one.

Sadly, googling "hdd spin down life rating figures" and variations of
this phrase in the hopes of being taken directly to a manufacturer's
spec sheet (or an article with such links) only produced discussions in
various web fora on the pros and cons of spin down power saving where
the only 'nuggets' were ill informed opinion best described as "Pearls
of Wiz-
Dumb"

Quite, so why are you helping to create/perpetuating yet another urban
myth? The facts on this particular topic are that there are no facts,

It's not that there are *no* facts, just that it's hard to track down
any published figures in this regard. There's absolutely no doubt that
temperature cycling is detrimental to the life ratings of all such
electro mechanical systems, it's simply a question of just how important
it is to a drive's useful life which, until recently could easily exceed
the 4 to 5 years it takes to "Outlive its usefulness" until the
manufacturers fine honed their "F1 GP race car design" approach to
minimise the expense of such 'over-engineering' which lead to the
"Outlive its usefulness" effect in the first place.

so you have no business peddling one viewpoint over another,
particularly when you're going against most users' experience,
including, I would guess, even your own.

I can't speak for others' experience but I can certainly remove the
guesswork from your presumption about my own which reinforces the idea
that the drives in a NAS box operating full time are generally best left
spinning 24/7 unless you have a very well defined usage pattern that
allows the time out period to be tuned to minimise the number of spin
down cycles per day.

As for the business of "peddling one viewpoint over another" as you put
it, on that basis neither do you. In fact neither of us can lay claim as
to which is the best strategy to use with any great authority but we're
certainly both entitled to offer our opinions (preferably, reasoned
opinions).


Now, I have looked at that - and changed the spin-down triggers to 1
hour.

That seems a more reasonable compromise between MSFT's choice of 20
minutes and my own of 2 or 3 hours.

My PC drives spin down after 5 minutes when running off mains power, the
laptops after 3 minutes when running off the battery. From memory I
think the NASes are the same as the PCs running off mains. I find the
resulting usability and reliability both perfectly acceptable.

I'm afraid a 5 minute time out would drive me crazy with its 10 to 12
seconds access delay almost every time I need to read from or write data
to disk. As I previously alluded, disabling spin down power saving wasn't
the only consideration in finding a balance between reliability and
'economy of energy consumption'. The other was in regard of my mental
health which helped decide the question as to whether or not it was worth
risking reliability for a modest saving in energy costs.

I had become rather habituated to 'instant gratification' with all of my
home built external usb connected drives so it came as quite a shock to
experience such delays perpetrated by a "Seagate Special" with the 10 or
15 minute spin down hard programmed into the drive controller's firmware
used in a Medion re-badged 500GB FreeAgent drive.

Browsing the various web fora where this 'annoyance' was discussed at
length failed to elicit a solution so, in the end, when the opportunity
arose, I was able to repurpose the drive as a replacement in a Vista box
where not only would it never spin down ever again, even better, it would
enjoy much better cooling and therefore stay safely below the 60 deg C
temperature limit it had managed to hit despite my precaution of using a
room cooling fan during the more protracted backup and restore sessions.

A five minute time out on a typical single drive windows PC is unlikely
to show any effect other than perhaps with older versions of windows such
as win2k and possibly winXP. From (the ironically named) Vista onwards,
system disk activity more or less guarantees that such a long time out on
spin down never gets a chance to kick in. :-)

Of course, when extra drives are used for data storage, these are more
likely to be left alone long enough for the spin down to kick in. Whilst
a couple of GB's of write cache can mask the effect on write accesses,
read accesses still remain at the mercy of such spin up delays so can
still be a source of frustration when accessing large media files for
playback or further processing.

Obviously, when it comes to such a trade off between 'instant
gratification' and energy savings, the choice is highly personal and,
therefore, beyond reasoned argument.

--
Johnny B Good

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Jim Lesurf
wrote:
In article , RJH

Gapless recording is where, by design, there is no gap between
tracks. For example, live music.

In practice I tended to assume this might happen anyway before I got
into playing audio files.. So when generating files from Audio CD I
usually make 'contiguous' tracks into one long flac file. Became a
habit I found convenient anyway. However in practice, when I haven't,
it doesn't normally seem to give me a noticable 'gap'. So its not
really been a problem here. How lucky I've been, I dunno.

But surely the player and the controller and the UPnP server should all
be totally unaware if there is an intended silence gap or not.

Well, the problem may be in the "should" returning "false". :-)

But it could be other problems. Above I was just saying I tend not to get
the problem.

AIUI.

A. music playing in track 3 B. Music fade out and end of track silence
(track still playing) C. XXXXXXX = this is what gapless is about. D.
music playing from track 4.

Machines that cannot do "gapless" introduce a silence (C above) between
the tracks. Intended silence (by record companies) is supplied in 'B'.

Question here is what it meant by "Machines". It could be a communication
problem between particular machines which fail to ensure the parcels are
passed in good time.

So the player may know there is not meant to be a gap, but doesn't get the
start of the next file in time to avoid it. Possibly because it didn't ask
the source machine in time to send it.

If the music doesn't call for a silence between movements then area 'B'
= 0 length.

Area 'C' should ALWAYS be = 0 in length. If it isn't, the system isn't
playing gapless and it doesn't matter if area 'B' is zero or not.

That is why I have no understanding of a gapless track. The intended
silence is part of the track, there is no gap.

Sorry we may be talking at cross purposes here.

I have CDs and other recordings where there are 'tracks' or index points
indicating a time just before another movement begins. But the background
noises - e.g. audience noises - are continuous. Having tracks lets you
choose to start at a movement other than the first. But you don't want a
short 'total silence' at the handover.

Some classical works have sections or movements with no break at all. Yet
may be 'tracked' on a CD. FWIW I downloaded the high rez flac files of
Britten's War Requiem (superb!) and Peter Grimes, and they have 'file
splits' like this because you can buy individual items from the entire
work.

I suppose I should mention that the start of 'D' could have a very brief
intended moment of silence but again this is the track playing, there
should be no gap 'C' in a playback system.

I guess the problem might be pop songs that start right at the beginning of
a track and end right at the end. Then the abrupt immediate start of one
song may disturb your reaction to the previous one. But I dunno, I'm just
guessing, as its not a problem I tend to run into.

Maybe you need a silent gap after listening to Def Leppard if the next song
your random-play mobile chooses is Val Doonican crooning gently. Or vice
versa! 8-]

I should declare that my music collection lacks the works of both. ;-)

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

On 05/02/2016 18:34, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Bob Latham
wrote:


That is why I have no understanding of a gapless track. The intended
silence is part of the track, there is no gap.

Sorry we may be talking at cross purposes here.

I have CDs and other recordings where there are 'tracks' or index points
indicating a time just before another movement begins. But the background
noises - e.g. audience noises - are continuous. Having tracks lets you
choose to start at a movement other than the first. But you don't want a
short 'total silence' at the handover.

Some classical works have sections or movements with no break at all. Yet
may be 'tracked' on a CD. FWIW I downloaded the high rez flac files of
Britten's War Requiem (superb!) and Peter Grimes, and they have 'file
splits' like this because you can buy individual items from the entire
work.

Not just classical. Plays, audiobooks, prog rock, live and concept
albums too.

My solution when converting CDs to MP3 was to either
convert half the CD (i.e. one LP side) into a single MP3
or
listen to it, note which tracks blend into the next,
and convert the groups into single MP3s.

I don't suppose MP3s preserve phase so there's bound to be a click
between files even if there's no gap.
So I should bite the bullet and convert all my CDs again to FLAC.

--
Eiron.

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:

However, if you have several manufacturers machines that work fine from
a given NAS and UPnP server and another company who's machine does not
work with either the NAS or the UPnP server then I think it far more
likely the problem lies with the player and/or the control software
running on a tablet/phone.

A problem is that one or more large organisations may "define darkness to
be the new standard meaning of light". Its the kind of thing that MS,
Apple, etc, etc, do to try and get everyone to use *their* software (or
hardware) "because it works correctly" - when in fact it breaks with an
otherwise-agreed standard. [1]

Then something like a player may not work because it *does* follow agreed
standards, but the user doesn't know this.

The history of HTML and web-browsers is littered with examples where people
start thinking their browser isn't working properly for such reasons.


Certainly, under a some do some don't situation, the "don't"
manufacturer could join the "do" group even if that means implementing a
spec 'addition'. I might argue that it is remiss of them if they don't.

The above may mean they have to deal with an ambiguous situation, so they
can't always win. Or may mean paying to join a club.

I have no idea if any of the above *is* relevant in this particular case.
But it is a reason for being careful about assigning 'blame' when different
items or software fail to work together nicely, when others seem fine.

[snip]


That is why I have no understanding of a gapless track. The intended
silence is part of the track, there is no gap.

Sorry we may be talking at cross purposes here.

I don't understand why you think that.

I wasn't sure if we were, so thought it best to allow for that. From your
response I think it was OK.

Jim

[1] Its an extension of the way MS do something like fail for ages to
impliment agreed standards like those for USB Audio Class 2 devices so such
devices "just work", forcing users to install a 'driver' - whilst Mac /
Linux / RO users can use the devices because they connect using the same
common open standard.

Note that MS participated in the committee meetings that laid down the
standards *years* ago. But then didn't include them in their standard OSs
when others did, and many devices adopted them. You can speculate on if
this is lazyness, incompetence, etc. But it enhances the chance that some
device makers simply then won't bother with adopting the standard... and
thus produce devices that *only* work with the current version of Windows.
....Which might suit MS nicely.

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

In article , Bob Latham
wrote:
In article , Eiron
wrote:

So I should bite the bullet and convert all my CDs again to FLAC.

I fully concur with that idea.

In some ways I guess I was fortunate in coming a bit late to the party of
using computer files for audio. Meant I didn't have to worry so much as I
might in the past about the storage requirements. Once they can be ignored
mp3 becomes an also-ran as soon as you want audio quality.

Jim

--
Please use the address on the audiomisc page if you wish to email me.
Electronics http://www.st-and.ac.uk/~www_pa/Scot...o/electron.htm
Armstrong Audio http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/Armstrong/armstrong.html
Audio Misc http://www.audiomisc.co.uk/index.html

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

On 06/02/2016 14:09, Bob Latham wrote:
In article ,
Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , Bob Latham
wrote:

However, if you have several manufacturers machines that work fine from
a given NAS and UPnP server and another company who's machine does not
work with either the NAS or the UPnP server then I think it far more
likely the problem lies with the player and/or the control software
running on a tablet/phone.

A problem is that one or more large organisations may "define darkness
to be the new standard meaning of light". Its the kind of thing that MS,
Apple, etc, etc, do to try and get everyone to use *their* software (or
hardware) "because it works correctly" - when in fact it breaks with an
otherwise-agreed standard. [1]

Then something like a player may not work because it *does* follow
agreed standards, but the user doesn't know this.

The history of HTML and web-browsers is littered with examples where
people start thinking their browser isn't working properly for such
reasons.

Absolutely, I agree with all you say but that doesn't help someone who's
kit won't play ball.

Now minimserver is written by an individual and not a company and as far
as I know he has no particular association with the likes of Linn and Naim
who are two companies for whom I know gapless works. Actually, I bet Simon
Nash (minimserver) could tell us chapter and verse about this.

This seems from what I've read to be an issue between the control software
running on the phone/ipad and the player. In Linn's case, they write the
software for both themselves. There are at least two 3rd party control
apps that I'm told also work with the Linn but I've not tried them.


Just to pick up from our exchange upthread - that's my understanding
too, but for Cambridge.

Also Linn published the spec for their control comms sufficient for
someone to write a 'linn player' that runs on a raspberrypi and having
built one myself, I know it plays gapless.

There have been companies who have brought players to the market and then
had to modify their code to make gapless work, I think Pioneer was one and
that uses UPnP/DLNA. I seem to recall HiFi News being amazed that the
player couldn't do gapless and were quite critical. 12 months later it
could according to HFN.


I have a QED audio media player - that won't do gapless either. It's
just eye-rollingly bad.

Certainly, under a some do some don't situation, the "don't"
manufacturer could join the "do" group even if that means implementing
a spec 'addition'. I might argue that it is remiss of them if they
don't.

The above may mean they have to deal with an ambiguous situation, so
they can't always win. Or may mean paying to join a club.

I have no idea if any of the above *is* relevant in this particular
case. But it is a reason for being careful about assigning 'blame' when
different items or software fail to work together nicely, when others
seem fine.

I have no proof but I know where I think the blame lies and it's not
anything to do with a NAS or a UPnP server.


Agreed.

I'd still like to better understand gapless. The Wiki explanation is
unclear. I'm coming to the view that the (poor) control software inserts
a silence, or takes the change in tracks as an opportunity to buffer. So
it's *adding* a flag, rather than not picking one up? Dunno!


--
Cheers, Rob

Couple of cd queries, model numbers later
 

On 05/02/2016 14:18, Jim Lesurf wrote:
In article , RJH
wrote:
On 04/02/2016 09:36, Bob Latham wrote:
In article , RJH
wrote:


An alternative (such as that used by Jim Lesurf) is to access the files
directly, and use the NAS as you would an internal drive on a computer.
I've just given this a quick try, using VLC on Mac OS. And it almost (!)
works - a split second gap between tracks. Better than the Synology - a
good 2s between gapless tracks. it's not a playback route I use, but
I'll look into it . . .

Might be worth experimenting with VLC's buffer size/number settings. I
guess this can be done as it is so flexible, but I can't recall getting
into this.


Mmmm, had a look but still can't make it happen. It does work fine with
iTunes.

Still not sure why you don't use a media server. You can still select
'old school' by folder. Plus all the other stuff - vast search and sort
(composer, year, artist etc). Also my latest toy - lyrics :-)

I sometimes notice a delay in getting the 'first file'. I've wondered if
the NAS is wanting to load the files I've listed by dnd into RAM and so is
trying to get ducks in a row before going much further. Or if its the first
file(s) of the session that make it do some sorting out. Not sure for the
reasons I give below...

Gapless recording is where, by design, there is no gap between tracks.
For example, live music.

In practice I tended to assume this might happen anyway before I got into
playing audio files.. So when generating files from Audio CD I usually make
'contiguous' tracks into one long flac file. Became a habit I found
convenient anyway. However in practice, when I haven't, it doesn't normally
seem to give me a noticable 'gap'. So its not really been a problem here.
How lucky I've been, I dunno.


Obviously, the problem with one large file is selecting tracks. And as
you say, it should 'just work'.


--
Cheers, Rob