I recently experienced an issue where every time I launched iTunes it insisted on “Determining gapless playback information”. That wouldn’t be so bad if it didn’t freeze iTunes for 2 minutes while it scanned 25 or so files every time. This was such a terrible experience I was quickly looking for alternative ways to manage my media.
If you’re not familiar with gapless playback, it’s the iTunes way of making your music library play like a CD without unintended gaps of silence between tracks. Apple has an explanation here.
If I had to choose between a 2 minute launch and gapless playback support I would say goodbye gapless!
After a while, I noticed iTunes kept scanning the same set of files and I began to suspect some of my MP3 files might be corrupted from a misbehaving NAS I once owned. I had ripped hundreds of discs and really didn’t want to spend time doing that again. Looking for a way to check my files, I came across this great tool called MP3 Validator for Mac OS X.
It found issues in about 80% of my files. Since I had a good backup (albeit of apparently corrupted files), I took the plunge and let it auto-repair my library. Now, iTunes starts up like a champ!
Since these corrupted files appear to be what caused the issue in my case, I would have liked to have seen iTunes:
- Run gapless playback analysis at low-priority in the background. There’s just no excuse to freeze the app for this feature. [Must have]
- Notify me with a warning message that gapless analysis couldn’t be determined on a file because it appears to be corrupted. [Should have]
- Offer to backup and repair the corrupted file. [Nice to have]
I had a similar problem, every time I launch iTunes it would try to determine gapless playback for one particular song.
It didn’t freeze or anything, just was a bit annoying seeing it over and over. Turns out that MP3 was corrupted but MP3 Validator managed to fix it! Thanks!
iTunes Gapless Playback Problem
Solution #1 (preferred – results in better sounding music)
1) download a FLAC version of your broken tracks with BitTorrent from piratebay.se or other BitTorrent trackers.
2) convert them to Apple Lossless with XLD (preferred) or Max
3) carefully re-rate the new lossless songs in iTunes.
4) note which playlists the broken tracks are in by control-clicking on them and choosing ‘Show in Playlist’.
5) add the new lossless tracks to the old playlists
Note: there may be applescripts and other tools to automate some of the above steps.
Solution #2
The only solution I found to gapless playback problems was to:
1) select broken tracks in itunes,
2) get info on the tracks
3) in the comments field write “Converted from MP3 320 kbps due to gapless playback analysis.”.
4) go to the advanced menu and choose ‘Create Apple Lossless Version’.
5) after the conversion press command-delete to send the broken tracks to the trash.
6) create a smart playlist from the file menu and choose ‘comments contains’ then type ‘gapless’ in the field.
7) label the playlist ‘gapless playback problems’
You waste a few pennies of hard drive space by going to Apple Lossless but audio quality will not be impacted. You also have have a running log in the smart playlist of what tracks you need to upgrade from a compact disc in the future.
Note: one way to find out which tracks are causing the problem is to slow your computer down to a crawl. e.g. run some java apps, convert some files from FLAC to Apple Lossless in XLD or Max… compile something in Xcode, etc. While the computer is crawling, launch iTunes and gapless playback will take way longer. Menu Meters is a great way to see your CPU power in the menu bar.
Previously, I tried the following with no luck: On OS X I used Wineskin to run Foobar2000. I added the broken tracks. I selected all tracks. I right clicked using the two fingers on the track pad and clicking the track pad button. Rebuilt the MP3 streams and the VBR headers. Added the tracks to iTunes and I still have the gapless playback problem. An OS X app called MP3 Scan+Repair also did not fix the problem. I lost many hours on this… learn from my trial and error.