Mind The Gap
From November 2003 Issue of MacWorld Magazine.
On concepts albums such as Pink Floyd's Dark Side Of The Moon, the music flows seamlessly from one song to the next--That is unless you downloaded the songs from Apple's iTunes Music Store or ripped them as MP3 files. Because of the nature of these compresses formats, you'll hear a tiny silence between connected songs when listening to them on your burned CD or an iPod. In fact, you'll hear this gap even if you've gone into the iTunes' Burning preference pane and set the Gap Between Songs menu to None.
To hear these tracks as the artists intended--gapless--you'll need to rip them from a CD. With the audio CD inserted, open the CD's playlist in iTunes and select the songs you'd like to run together, Next, choose Join CD Tracks from teh advanced menu. iTunes wil then create one long file that contains all teh songs you selected, witout any distracting silence.
Of course, it's difficult to navigate from song to song in suc a file. And if you're listening on an iPod, keep in mind that these long tracks will also take a toll on your battery's charge.....
