If you dread the awkward silence between songs, you might want to learn more about Spotify’s Gapless Playback. However, people often mistake it for Crossfade.
Let’s talk about Spotify’s Gapless Playback feature. We’re going to define what it is, compare it with Crossfade, and decide whether you need to use the feature or not.
What is Spotify’s Gapless Playback?
Spotify’s Gapless Playback is a feature meant for albums with consecutive audio tracks. It plays multiple digital music files in succession without inserting any silences of its own.
In short, there are no gaps between songs in the album.
However, Gapless Playback is not applicable every time. It only works on live studio albums where each song is meant to blend into the other when played in order.
Some studio albums, like Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session, were recorded live in its entirety so that it would sound like one continuous session with the band.
They were created to transition where each song blends to the next smoothly, therefore, having a silence in between tracks would destroy the overall listening experience.
This is where you need the Gapless Playback to listen to the entire album without gaps in between each song. It’s the perfect feature for fans of live recordings and classical music.
If you’re just listening to random playlists or your own queue on Spotify, Gapless Playback won’t have any effect. For that, you can simply use Crossfade for a seamless transition.
Spotify Gapless Playback vs. Crossfade
When you turn on Spotify’s Gapless Playback, there would be no delay between the end of a song and the start of another song, but there would be no blending in like Crossfade.
On the other hand, Crossfade is basically blending the tracks as one stops and the other starts. It works by overlapping 2 tracks, fading out of the first while fading in the next.
Gapless Playback is meant for albums with consecutive audio tracks, while Crossfade will start playing the next track by overlapping the song for the time you set it up.
Spotify’s Gapless Playback is different from Crossfade because it is the uninterrupted playback of consecutive audio tracks, which would sound best when listening to a live album.
For example, let’s use Pink Floyd’s album to illustrate my point.
If you listen to the song “The Thin Ice” on Spotify and you turn on Gapless Playback, the next song “Another Brick In The Wall, Pt. 1” will be sewn in together with the previous song perfectly.
However, if you turn off Spotify’s Gapless Playback and only rely on Crossfade, you may not get the perfect transition as the artist intended on the live album.
Should you use Gapless Playback?
Normally, you want to have Gapless Playback turned on if you are listening to an entire album because often, the songs are meant to blend into each other when played in order.
Some studio albums, like Pink Floyd’s The Wall and Cowboy Junkies’ The Trinity Session, were recorded live in their entirety so that they would sound like one continuous session.
They were created to transition where each song blends to the next smoothly, therefore, having a silence in between tracks would destroy the overall listening experience.
This is where you need the Gapless Playback. Without it, a short gap of silence between two tracks that are meant to connect to each other seamlessly would be ugly.
If you’re someone who skips songs and listens to different tracks in random order, you won’t notice the silence between songs and the Gapless Playback won’t matter that much to you.
However, if you’re someone who requires their music to be played back continuously with the perfect transition as the artist intended on the live album, then you’ll need Gapless Playback.
Let’s say you’re listening to the Black Eyed Peas.
If you play the first track of the “Monkey Business” album with Gapless Playback on, the next song, “Don’t Phunk with My Heart” will be sewn together with the first song perfectly.
However, if you turn off Gapless Playback and you only rely on Crossfade, then you may not get the perfect transition as the artist, Black Eyed Peas, intended.
In short, if you often skip from song to song, you don’t need Gapless Playback.
Also, if you’re a casual listener who listens to random playlists or your own queue on Spotify, you don’t need Gapless Playback. You can simply use Crossfade for a seamless transition.
But if you play albums that rely on a continuous flow of music from beginning to end without awkward silences in between songs, you need to use Gapless Playback.
Of course, if you do want to use Gapless Playback, you need to make sure the hardware and/or software can play back the digital music files in succession without putting any silences.
I hope my explanation has been clear so far. Cheers.
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