SMSL PL20 Review (CD Player)

[M.C. Logan]

An objective defect cannot be transformed into an absence of defects due to a particularly exclusive musical consumption... which also omits live recordings and those of popular music artists whose studio works include tracks linked together without silence, and worse, without the characteristic little digital noise...

I honestly have no idea whether my 35 year old CD player does gapless, due to not having any gapless CDs. It would never have occurred to me to seek out such a feature, let alone consider the lack of it to be a defect, just as I wouldn't have considered the lack of digital out or program play a defect . I only own DSOTM (the only gapless album I can recall owning) on vinyl, I never bought any CDs to replace any vinyl and by the time I started listening to classical it was only on HiRes downloads/streaming, which negate the need for CD's. The amount of potential purchasers for this unit who are classical enthusiasts or massive live concert collectors I imagine to be vanishingly small, they will, clearly, return it should they do so.

 

[MCH]

More like <0.1% of pop & rock albums, of the in excess of 1000 LP's I have I can only think of 1, which is DSOTM.

I can notice non gapeless playback in almost any album I am familiar with.

Edit for clarification: non gapeless playback is noticeable (and irritating and unnecessary) even with albums that have clear gaps between tracks

 

[VientoB]

More like <0.1% of pop & rock albums, of the in excess of 1000 LP's I have I can only think of 1, which is DSOTM.

I disagree. Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream is an example where you can notice it quite easily as there are quiet little spoken filler parts between some of the tracks There are loads of albums that have at least one join between tracks.

Additionally if you are familtwith an album you can tell if the gap between tracks is longer than it should be.

 

[M.C. Logan]

I disagree. Smashing Pumpkins Siamese Dream is an example where you can notice it quite easily as there are quiet little spoken filler parts between some of the tracks There are loads of albums that have at least one join between tracks.

Additionally if you are familtwith an album you can tell if the gap between tracks is longer than it should be.

Oh, come one, FFS one disc is not typical.

 

[Fletcher Munson]

Oh, come one, FFS one disc is not typical.

why do you have such a problem with people listening and valuing gapless, theres no rules here. many people like prog or classical or some electronica which involves gapless. Its part of recorded music. Its not unreasonable to rule out gear that fails to do whats required. With cd players though we have 40 years of players that just work. and now we don't.

 

[M.C. Logan]

why do you have such a problem with people listening and valuing gapless, theres no rules here. many people like prog or classical or some electronica which involves gapless. Its part of recorded music. Its not unreasonable to rule out gear that failes to do whats required. With cd players though we have 40 years of players that just work. and now we don't.

I don't have a problem with people listening to gapless, I have a problem with people assuming it's a significant problem for the majority of users, which it isn't, it's a problem for a minority of obsessives.

 

[M.C. Logan]

I can notice non gapeless playback in almost any album I am familiar with.

That's what I said, non gapless is the norm in non classical.

 

[Fletcher Munson]

I don't have a problem with people listening to gapless, I have a problem with people assuming it's a significant problem for the majority of users, which it isn't, it's a problem for a minority of obsessives.

So listening to classical music, electronica and prog is obsessive lol

 

[aagstn]

I don't have a problem with people listening to gapless, I have a problem with people assuming it's a significant problem for the majority of users, which it isn't, it's a problem for a minority of obsessives.

Expecting a CD player to support a basic feature of the red book standard is hardly obsessive. If you are any kind of an album listener, gapless is a must. Gapless tracks pop up on all genres of music.

 

[TurtlePaul]

Oh, come one, FFS one disc is not typical.

That you think it is <1% of pop and rock albums just shows that you don’t listen to modern albums. I have dozens of discs with gapless track transitions and I only have a couple hundred CDs.

Obviously any live albums. Pretty much any rap album in my experience. Concept albums. But also a huge chunk of the most popular pop albums since the creation of the CD use gapless.

 

[VientoB]

Oh, come one, FFS one disc is not typical.

It is not one album. That's the first one that sprang to mind as I know it well.

 

[M.C. Logan]

So listening to classical music, electronica and prog is obsessive lol

Classical music listening, on a niche, obscure, CD player, would be classed as niche and obsessive, yes. Classical music listeners generally fall in to a couple of three camps, mainstream big name mid priced systems users, streaming users or high end users. This device appeals to none of them.

 

[MaxwellsEq]

More like <0.1% of pop & rock albums, of the in excess of 1000 LP's I have I can only think of 1, which is DSOTM.

I listen to lots of prog, so probably about 10% of my albums sound wrong on players unable to handle gapless.

 

[Haskil]

If there's one rule, it's that gapless playback is the CD standard.

Playback with an audible gap and sometimes a slight digital noise between tracks is a design flaw in the CD player: it doesn't meet the standard set by Philips and Sony, who were record labels at the time and knew what they were doing.

Playback with a forced gap between files dates back to the early days of MP3 and was specifically designed for that encoding.

P.S.: I must have 10,000 classical CDs and 500 jazz, pop, and rock CDs.

- Most have separate tracks: classical music included, since the works presented are made up of separate pieces.

- Some alternate between separate and linked tracks on the same CD for reasons related to the work itself.

- Others play all the tracks together, and these are rare: again, this is for reasons related to the work, such as variations like the Goldberg Variations, for example.

In short, it's no coincidence that the CD standard has mandated gapless playback.

 

[M.C. Logan]

I listen to lots of prog, so probably about 10% of my albums sound wrong on players unable to handle gapless.

However, you are not most people, clearly it's not suitable for you, it will work for the majority of non classical listeners.

 

[M.C. Logan]

It is not one album. That's the first one that sprang to mind as I know it well.

Again, my point is that it is still rare, the massive majority of non classical CDs are not gapless, I have over 1000, none are gapless, I have 1 gapless vinyl album, DSOTM. If you listen to classical on CD, live albums or lots of prog obviously this isn't for you, huge swathes of people, the majority almost certainly, will never know the shortcoming however.

 

[VientoB]

Again, my point is that it is still rare, the massive majority of non classical CDs are not gapless, I have over 1000, none are gapless, I have 1 gapless vinyl album, DSOTM. If you listen to classical on CD, live albums or lots of prog obviously this isn't for you, huge swathes of people, the majority almost certainly, will never know the shortcoming however.

My point is they are not rare. You don't seem to realise what is meant by gapless. It's not just music that continues on into the next track. It's transferring to the next track with no added gap.

 

[HeadBanger]

Don’t Red Book CDs hold the music content as one file alongside a cue file? If so, this player is actually creating the gaps as it reads the cue file.

HB

 

[Linnie]

If there's one rule, it's that gapless playback is the CD standard.

Correct me if I'm wrong but as far as I know a CD, like a vinyl record, has in fact only one "track" in form of a continous data stream. What we perceive as tracks are in fact only markers for the laser to jump to. So gapless would be not a feature but a technical consequence.

Thats also the reason why we have to "rip" a CD to the PC because there are no tracks / files that could simply be copied.

 

[VientoB]

Don’t Red Book CDs hold the music content as one file alongside a cue file? If so, this player is actually creating the gaps as it reads the cue file.

HB

No this player is adding gaps between tracks regardless of the cue file.