Gapless playback of music from Google Play

[mzanette]

Tested latest version v5.7.1717Q (new material design version) on KitKat. ALMOST works..some albums seemed fine gaplessly, but then one skipped between tracks. Have to re-test again once I get Lollipop pushed to my phone.

 

[minori_aoi]

I was using Redmi 1S when I made previous post. But now I use Huawei Honor 3C, strangely, Play Music now support gapless playback. Not sure if because a new Play Music version or because Redmi 1S just sucks...

 

[mutterman]

It's fairly sad that I originally started this thread almost 2 years ago, sent numerous reports to Google, and we're still talking about this issue.

I agree, it's sad and bewildering why Google has been unwilling or unable to solve this issue.

Yeah, hi I'm back. Way back in January I mentioned my own problems about getting proper gapless playback on my Galaxy S4 and how I found the solution using Google Play, all thanks to this thread you started. Well, my google gapless goodness ended in October after Samsung's big firmware update that put Android 4.4.2 on my S4. Okay, to be accurate gapless still works in the Google Player. However, after the update I have noticed that songs now skip a note every 15 seconds or so. And it wasn't just Google. Shuttle music player, which also played gapless flawlessly before the update, also began skipping. It's like I'm back in the 80's and the bad old days of early CDs. There might already be a thread about this new problem somewhere around the forum, I just haven't bothered to look. Anyway, at this point I don't know whether I should be sending unpleasant thoughts in the direction of Google or Samsung. I've been trying other music players from the Play store, but so far they all skip as well. All except one: VLC - and it's a beta version for Android, no less. VLC actually runs fairly stable and to my ears has the best sound quality, next to Google Player itself. Unfortunately, VLC doesn't support gapless playback. Foiled again!

 

[mzanette]

Testing live as I post this. Have Lollipop freshly installed on my Nexus 7 (2012)... listening to Tool's Parabol to Parabola...and the verdict is.....

IT WORKS!!!


Now to go onto further testing with Pink Floyd...


Dark Side of the Moon tracks blending nicely, no gap


I'm thinking this bug seems fixed FINALLY (although I've said that before). I'll continue to test with other gapless albums to see if anything hiccups.. so far I'm pleased.

Ah nevermind....equalizer going back on

 

[mzanette]

Seems worse than ever now. Not sure if the Google Play services update affected it but now I can't even play gaplessly WITH the equalizer on. This sucks.

This is such a pathetic joke at this point. My old iPhone had this feature working flawlessly over 4 years ago.

 

[create_username]

Yeah, on my Nexus 5, since upgrading to Lollipop, gapless playback is even more broken than ever. Doesn't matter if equalizer is on or off. Most of the time it just skips a small part the end of songs altogether. Also tried Shuttle, to no avail now. Starting to regret that update...

 

[mzanette]

Yeah, on my Nexus 5, since upgrading to Lollipop, gapless playback is even more broken than ever. Doesn't matter if equalizer is on or off. Most of the time it just skips a small part the end of songs altogether. Also tried Shuttle, to no avail now. Starting to regret that update...

I want to "report" the bug to Google but I have no idea how to submit an official bug to them. I keep using the "Send feedback" link in the menu for the app, but I have no idea if they actually read that or care at all. I guess if a lot of people submit feedback about gapless playback maybe they'll finally look at the issue?

 

[Dave Evans4]

Google switched to the experimental NuPlayer with the new versions of Play Music and these have a bug with gapless playback (resulting in a glitch between each track). To fix: Settings, About Phone, keep tapping on Build Number to enable Developer Options. In there you'll find an option to stop using NuPlayer and revert to the older Awesome Player. This fixes gapless bugs...

 

[mzanette]

Google switched to the experimental NuPlayer with the new versions of Play Music and these have a bug with gapless playback (resulting in a glitch between each track). To fix: Settings, About Phone, keep tapping on Build Number to enable Developer Options. In there you'll find an option to stop using NuPlayer and revert to the older Awesome Player. This fixes gapless bugs...

Wow! How did you find this out? I love you by the way! Thank you!!

 

[Dave Evans4]

Not bad for my first post eh?

I'm familiar with the Developer Options menus because I'm always trying/flashing various ROMs - saw the option for Nu/Awesome player so gave it a go (as gapless glitches were driving me mad) and it appears to fix it (with no need for other "hacks" like enabling EQ etc).

Hope that it works for others too.

 

[mzanette]

Not bad for my first post eh?

I'm familiar with the Developer Options menus because I'm always trying/flashing various ROMs - saw the option for Nu/Awesome player so gave it a go (as gapless glitches were driving me mad) and it appears to fix it (with no need for other "hacks" like enabling EQ etc).

Hope that it works for others too.

Yeah you're right. It fixes gapless for me, no equalizer needed (Nexus 5). Now that I know about this Nu Player option in Dev Options I can test it in the future when new versions of Lollipop are rolled out to see if they finally fix gapless with Nu player as well. Thank you again!

 

[Tigermave]

Yeah you're right. It fixes gapless for me, no equalizer needed (Nexus 5). Now that I know about this Nu Player option in Dev Options I can test it in the future when new versions of Lollipop are rolled out to see if they finally fix gapless with Nu player as well. Thank you again!

I don't suppose there is a fix for pre-5.0 huh? I gave up and accepted defeat a year ago and can't believe its still an issue...

 

[specialsk]

So after getting the vzw 5.0 update and praying this would fix, alas, no.

Tried the developer option as well of turning off nu player and no.

Appears this will not ever be addressed as long as I have my stock vzw M8. Pretty poor.

Sent from my HTC6525LVW using Tapatalk

 

[paulgj]

Yeah you're right. It fixes gapless for me, no equalizer needed (Nexus 5). Now that I know about this Nu Player option in Dev Options I can test it in the future when new versions of Lollipop are rolled out to see if they finally fix gapless with Nu player as well. Thank you again!

Hi Zee, I also have a Nexus 5 and hassles with gapless. In my testing just now I found that gapless playback can only be achieved with the equalizer *on* regardless of the developer setting. I am running Android 5.1 on my Nexus 5.

Can you see if you get the same results?, I would really prefer to get gapless playback without having to remember to turn on the equalizer.

Thanks!

*edit* also notice that even with the equalizer on, if you dial down the bass boost and surround sound to the lowest possible setting then gapless playback is lost again, you need at least a small amount of those settings apparently.

 

[mzanette]

So i've recently switched to the Sony Xperia Z3, and gapless is a no-go (at least with Play Music). i'm sure gapless would work if I copied my music locally and used the Walkman music player, but really, who wants to do that?

 

[mzanette]

So some strange behavior with Google Play Music and my Xperia Z3. If I clear the cache in the settings and have "Cache during playback" and "Automatically cache" enabled, then go to play an album that is gapless...tada, it works. However, the next time I play that same album, (with the cache already populated so it doesn't have to fetch the data from the server), suddenly there's a gap in that very same album. So stupid, if it works one way it should work all ways.

 

[justind29]

So frustrating, I have a nexus 7 and has always worked on that. But never on my Samsung galaxy s4 mini, not only is it not gapless but on shuffle there is a little click between tracks. Any advice? It's poor, iTunes fixed this in 2006

 

[Dave Evans4]

Some potentially bad news guys...

I've been running the preview versions of Android M on my Nexus 5, and the gapless bug is back.

However, they've also now removed the Developer Option to choose the deprecated NuPlayer (which could do gapless).

Unless this option is reinstated in the production version of M, it looks like we're back to not having gapless playback again!

Not happy.

 

[Dave Evans4]

Update: enabling the Equaliser in Play Music seems to have restored gapless playback (Play Music v6.0.1995S on M preview 3)

 

[Ray 3G]

Xperia Z3 Compact, Google Play Music, lots of frustration. Android 5.1.1, latest build (234).

Yesterday I decided to activate the Premium Spotify. Then I found out its local files management has been crippled to the level where it's essentially useless. It will randomly download songs to my phone. Or not. Or replace them with Spotify versions.

Apple Music has been incredibly useless since day one and it is still not repaired. Replacing songs with other versions based SOLELY on the title, and not even that, because "Rebel Heart (Demo 4)" is the same as "Rebel Heart" for AM.

So I activated my trial of Google Play Music. Yay! I can download my songs from the cloud and they play and I can add the new David Bowie! Except... I can't play gapless.

When I try to enable equalizer, I have the Sony ClearAudio+ enabled. No dice. When I disable that and use a flat eq setting, there are STILL gaps between songs, but they take a slightly different form – instead of an actual gap it sounds like the song is muted for half a second (it doesn't miss the beat, it just goes quiet for a moment). I have a lot of gapless mixed albums.

Is there really no music service that can get ALL things right? Is it that difficult?