MEEP! Marcin Gokieli wrote:
On a related topic: my device (a Samsung) was making a short (0.5 seconds) breaks between mo3 tunes. That was driving me mad, and was one of the reasons why I enentually sold the thing. was really surprised that all mp3cds I tried had the same drawback. Is it the same with iPod and other devices, is it somehow necessary (I can't believe it being so) Unlike a CD, which deals with a continuous stream of bits, MP3 players load up one file at a time, so unless a clever engineer somewhere decides that it's okay to buffer the beginning of one item while playing back the end of another, you're stuck with that delay. (There are plug-ins for some software that will do essentially this, and iTunes tries to work around the problem with a lame cross-fading feature that doesn't work especially well, but I guess that's a start.) The other alternative is to burn files as collections of tracks that blend together, but that takes a lot more work than just slamming a CD into the drive and telling iTunes to go to work.
Other essentials for walking trips, though, would be some Patti Smith ("Wave" would be my choice, album-wise, though you'd get its highlights and more by dumping all of "Land" on to the 'Pod instead), The The ("45 RPM" for random play, "Dusk" if you're going album by album), and the New Pornographers' "Mass Romantic" for some sunny-afternoon cheer. Oh, and a Ramones concert album. -me