Auto analysing of Music Folder for 'gapless playback'. How to stop?

I have my music library on a portable HD which is connected to my old Quicksilver G4 via USB1.
It seems that after a period of being open, but not playing, iTunes takes it upon itself to start analysing my Music Folder for 'gapless playback', and certainly does it after I add anything to the Library.
This is annoying on 2 counts: I never asked for this to be done, and I couldn't care less about silence between songs! (3rd; I don't own an iPod)
Hitting the 'x' next to progress waiting for a break in the SBBOD isn't a good sign for a new app. C'mon Apple some of us still use USB1!
So, how to turn off auto analysis of my Music Folder?

Great idea! However, I actually need access to a Shared folder on that Mac (with correct permissions). You'll see from my screenshot above that the same folder appears twice, once with the proper shared volume icon (with full access and correct permissions), and once with the 'folder with red bar' icon without any access (and incorrect permissions).
I might try deleting all keychain entries relevant to that shared folder and see if that helps.
If anyone else has any ideas, they would be gratefully received.

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IOS Music Player MP3 Gapless Playback Problem

Hi,
I've been having this gapless playback issue on iOS now for the past few years, since at least iOS 6 if I can remember correctly. The number one reason I use an iPhone and iOS devices is for gapless playback in the iOS music player. For the last few years I've been experiencing a bug with the stock iOS music player on my iPhone 4S using iOS 6 and on my iPhone 5 using iOS 6 & 7, and currently on my new iPhone 6 running iOS 8.1.2. This only happens on my iPhones and using iOS, this bug is not found when I use my iPod classic or when playing the same albums through iTunes.
I thought it might have been spotted by other iOS users and fixed in iOS 7.1 or at least the current version of iOS 8, but instead it's gotten worse, albums that used to play smoothly between transitions now suddenly pause and jump for a split second when changing from track to track.
What's happening is, I listen to a lot of albums that are continuously DJ mixed and play straight through without any pauses between tracks, and I've been experiencing problems a lot now with random split second pauses between tracks and choppy transitions. These albums in question have been ripped from cd using the latest versions of iTunes.
For example,
I'd be listening to an album and it would play gapless and smooth for most of the album, but maybe one or two transitions on the album would have a split second pause between them, and the rest of the album would play perfectly with no pauses, skips or jumps at all.
This only happens on my iPhone, as I have a 160gb iPod classic and I've listened to all the same albums on it and never has a problem playing the album without any pauses, every album plays 100% smooth and gapless on it.
I mailed Apple about it through their feedback page on their site... https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
Hoping that they would take note of this and try and look into it and fix the issue. That was probably about a year ago now, never got fixed or got any confirmation back from them about this problem. Then last August, I'd had enough and contacted Apple support to notify them about this issue. They told me the usual story, "have you tried restoring the phone?", which I obliged and did. The problem was there on a freshly restored iPhone 5.
So they told me that they would put me in touch with someone higher in Apple to take the case further, "great" I thought.
I spoke with a senior care advisor and explained the problem and agreed to send detailed explanations of the issue and test files too so that they could hopefully hear what I was talking about. But after a few weeks of going back and forward, I finally got them to hear the issue with the random pauses, the first week they denied there was a problem and said the files played ok on their test iOS devices, so I myself tried the files on another iOS device and the same problem was there.
The last correspondence I had with the Apple care advisor was back in the end of August / start of September, and she told me that they spotted the issue and was told by the tech's that it would be fixed in a future update, I never got a when this would happen, I was just told to make sure my iOS device was up to date with the latest version of iOS. I couldn't speak to an actual technician, got no follow up support, just a vague "We'll look into it." Case Closed.
I got so sick of this problem that I sold my iPhone and iPad just after this last phone call with the Apple people, and switched over to Android. I'd being reading up on gapless playback music players and found out that there's a good few available for Android devices. I got myself a Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, twice as powerful as the iPhone 6 and half the price. I was using that for the last few months, and playing my music through Neutron Music Player app which is a great music player which plays gapless 100%
But I couldn't really take to Android OS, seeing as I've been using Apple products for around 10 years now and iOS since the iPhone 3G. So I decided to contact Apple again and see if they'd fixed the music player issue in iOS yet.
I wrote a long email explaining the problem, how it wasn't really looked at properly, and how I was a long time Apple customer and had to resort to switching over to Android because the basic music player functions on iOS devices have bugs. I took a chance in mailing this to Tim Cook's offices, I knew he wouldn't reply personally, just thought that it might get read by someone in his offices with a bit more say in the matter.
Just before Xmas, I got a call from someone from executive relations from my local Apple offices about this. He seemed nice and was aware of the problem from reading back through my emails and previous case notes from August when I opened this case originally.
We had a talk and he said he would get one of the tech's to call me too about this so that I could explain the bugs to someone more knowledgeable about iOS.
A few days later I received a call from one of the tech's at Apple and was chatting to him, explaining the problem. His response was that he thinks Apple doesn't support gapless playback on current iOS devices. From looking at the gapless playback information page on the Apple support site below, it looks like it hasn't been updated to show any iPhone models after the iPhone 3GS... http://support.apple.com/en-ie/HT201644
I was trying to explain to him how ridiculous this sounded, why would Apple stop supporting basic functions on their music player on iOS devices? It makes no sense at all? You can see that the amount of hardware devices and software that supports gapless playback today... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gapless_playback#Player_support
He couldn't explain either, he just said that because it's not listed there on the Apple support page.
Then the next day I got the follow up call from the Apple executive relations guy, he was stating that he was speaking to the tech guy that called me and it looks like Apple doesn't support gapless playback anymore, from looking at the documentation on site.
I told him how stupid this was, and how lots of music players have gapless playback as standard today. And if they don't support it now, then why does it play through some parts of the albums on iOS ok and then just randomly pause, or have jumpy / choppy transitions on the rest of the album. If it was the case, no albums would play gaplessly at all, it would be like when the first ever iPod's were released back in the day with no gapless playback and would pause for a split second between every transition.
He couldn't give me an answer and said that maybe down the line they would start supporting it again, and that I should request the feature to be added to future iOS versions via the iPhone feedback page... https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html
He just kept on emphasising that it was "NOT A BUG OR ISSUE", trying to cover up the problem because the info on the site wasn't updated to show the current iOS devices. Which in itself is wrong, looking at the page it says "Supported iPod and iPhone models (make sure you have the latest iPod or iPhone software)"
iPhone, iPhone 3G, iPhone 3GS only go up to iOS 6, so that contradicts itself when the latest version is iOS 8.
The info is out of date and needs to be updated. So in August I was told, "we found the issue and will look into it" and a few months later, "it's not an issue", what's a cop out.
I was annoyed and taken back by this response, and really found it hard to believe that this was the case, Apple stopping supporting their music player on iOS devices. Seeing as iTunes plays everything smoothly and no gapless issues. I just went out and bought an iPhone 6 for €900 / $1060, and for that money you'd expect it's basic music player to work. It's total BS to think that a top computer software / hardware company would just decide to abandon basic functions in their devices, especially when we are talking about how much Apple takes pride in their products and how much more they charge for them over their competitors.
So this is my next step to try and get this problem seen and out in the open more. The more people who know about it and are aware of the issue, the better.
Hopefully more people can get the word around and get this noticed by Apple and finally fixed.
I've uploaded some test files below to show the problem. The files are mp3's and aac, and have been ripped from cd using the latest version of iTunes. The mp3's are the ones with the issue, but the aac play with no problem. If you listen to the transition at the end of track 2 (2-02 Colours (JH Re-Edit)) going into the start of track 3 (2-03 Your Body), you will notice the split second pause / jump. But listen to the aac version and compare it to the mp3 version and you will hear that it plays back fine, just as it's supposed to. Try them in iTunes too and both versions playback fine, no jumps or pauses.
You can download them here, all links have the same files, I just uploaded them to different hosts for other people's choosing...
http://s000.tinyupload.com/index.php?file_id=86512332626247919914
https://www.mediafire.com/?w5wvi50er96b14s
http://www42.zippyshare.com/v/37047710/file.html
https://www.sendspace.com/file/lubcmc
More files can be provided if needed to show the problem happening on various other albums.
I really hope that people can spot this issue too and help get this fixed, I know this gapless playback feature might not be important to some people, but like I said at the start, it's an essential function for me in a music player and I use it on a daily basis when I listen to music.
Thanks for reading this long rant of mine, appreciate it.
Ger

I believe this issue occurs only between songs that iTunes has converted to a lower bitrate for you during transfer to your iOS device and songs that it has not done this for. Take this Between the Buried and Me album, for instance. I have marked all of the transitions that should have been gapless but probably aren't in red. I know for sure that most of these marked transitions are indeed broken and that the most of the transitions not marked in red work flawlessly... I honestly can't remember whether or not some of these transitions were gapless or not, but the many transitions I do remember working or not working match up exactly with whether or not the songs on either side of the transition were also on other sides of the 256kbps threshold, the threshold at which I enabled iTunes to convert tracks to 256kbps AAC.
I'm going to try re-sync'ing my library with that "feature" disabled and see if it fixes my gapless playback problem. Will post the results once I test it out.

Cannot resize some columns in the music folder for my ipod

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Album, Grouping, Kind
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I've tried moving the column around, doesn't seem to help
I can resize all columns in my Music folder for the PC.
Any ideas?!?

ok...
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What is the "iTunes Music" folder for?

I am looking for confirmation that it is a folder dedicated to holding converted files that i already have stored on my pc, and not doubles... Converted from WMA to w/e

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If you have upgraded from version 8 (or earlier) to iTunes 9 (or later) at some point, then your media folder (everything inside the red outline) may still be called *iTunes Music* instead of *iTunes Media*. The extra Music folder inside the media folder is used if you have allowed iTunes to *Upgrade to iTunes Media Organization* (iTunes 9) or used *File > Library > Organize Library > Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Media"* (iTunes 10). Depending on your choices for *Keep iTunes Media folder organized* and *Copy files to iTunes Media folder when adding to library* plus a little bug in which one build changed the name of the file storing the choice of layout it is quite easy for some of your files to be organized according to one layout and some the other.
Assuming you're happy letting iTunes organize your files the following steps should tidy things up (should it be necessary):
1. Select *File > Library > Organize Library... >* Tick *Reorganize files in the folder "iTunes Media"* and click OK. Skip if this option is greyed out (already upgraded) or you prefer the older layout.
2. Select *File > Library > Organize Library... >* Tick *Consolidate files* and click OK. This will bring any files currently organised outside the designated media folder into it.
NB This will create duplicate copies of any file that needs to be consolidated, and you will need to manually clean up afterwards. If space is at a premium try my scripts Unconsolidated to find out what would need moving and ConsolidatebyMoving to move rather than copy it.
3. Select *Edit > Preferences > Advanced* tab, uncheck *Keep iTunes Media folder organized* and click OK.
4. Select *Edit > Preferences > Advanced* tab, check *Keep iTunes Media folder organized* and click OK. This triggers iTunes into reorganizing everything according to your preferences.
5. (Optional) Close iTunes, rename the folder *iTunes Music* as *iTunes Media* then restart iTunes. Check under *Edit > Preferences > Advanced* tab that the location has automatically updated. If you can't access the media for any reason just undo the folder rename.
6. (Optional - Windows only) If Windows Media Player has ever had access to your files it may have liberally scattered folder artwork files about which iTunes won't tidy up when it reorganizes things, thus leaving behind a heap of folders with artwork and no media. I've written a script for cleaning this mess up which you can find at http://samsoft.org.uk/iTunes/CleanDeadArt.asp
PS If you really prefer the older layout, but it is already in the new one then edit the file called *.iTunes Preferences.plist* in your media folder and change the integer from 1 to 0 before doing step 3.
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Ok friends,
I have this little problem of my iTunes.
I was have all my music to an external HDD under a folder "G:\Antonis\Music". I was put some of this music (about 2000 songs) to iTunes and i was have a lot of play lists. I desided to transfer all my music files to local HDD to "My Music" folder of windows 7 under a subdirectory "My Best Music".
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If it isn't any maybe aplle improve itunes in the next version.

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I lost my music on in my music folder on itunes. How do I get it back?

I lost my music from my itunes music folder how do I get it back?

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I've been rather stupid in restoring my computer. I moved all the music to an external harddrive before I restored my PC but forgot to bring the Itunes library file with it. I've got ITunes Match so I can stream all my songs, but is there anyway to get it to recognise the songs on my external drive? I've tried re-importing them into ITunes but it adds each song as a duplicate, so I have the Match version and then my harddrive version, I really don't want duplicates of all 7000 odd songs! Likewise I'd like to try to avoid having to download everything from Match as this will take ages and be a bit of a pain! The only reason I care is so I can use my Sonos system with my laptop, otherwise I'd just leave them all on Match. Any ideas?
Thanks, Luke

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When I move music to my ipod it doesnt appear in the ipods music folder. (no content) shown, how do I get my music back on there. Ive restored several times now

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See Recover your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device.
tt2

Previewing itunes music plays for 5 seconds and then stops

Hi and Help! When I attempt to preview a song on itunes, the song plays for about five seconds and then ends.

Perhaps try resetting your iTunes Store Cache.
Go "Edit > Preferences". In the Advanced tab, click the "Reset cache" button shown in the following screenshot:
... and then click OK.
Restart your iTunes, and head back to the Store. Are you getting full previews now?

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come faccio a disdire gli acquisti di una app ( quella del Corrirere? ) ,dato che pensavo fosse solo per una settimana e non ogni settimana

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Solution: iTunes "Analyzing Gapless Playback" Bug Fix

I have seen many complaints of a problem that has become somewhat commonplace in iTunes. I work for a major Technical Support company and get customer complaints about this often. It is frustrating because I generally am good at solving issues. Now I have a solution and I wish to share it with everyone.
The Problem
The issue is whenever you open iTunes it begins "Analyzing Gapless Playback" for a certain number of songs. In my case I have discovered that once this issue begins happening...every single song you add to iTunes thereafter will be added to the list of songs that need to be analyzed. I had this issue in Lion and Mountain Lion. But I have heard lots of people have the same issue with previous versions of OS X.
The Cause (hypothisis)
My hypothesis is that the problem is that iTunes loses the ability to physically write the ID3 tag information. When you make changes to files the changes are saved in your iTunes library files but nowhere else. Because iTunes detects the ID3 tags untouched when it opens it assumes that they have not yet been checked for gapless playback thus performs the check. The problem lies in permissions. Some change you make (OS Upgrade, Reinstall, etc) cause the permissions in the folder to not allow iTunes to write the ID3 tags. I have tried everything I could think of to fix this and was unable to do so. I tried using MP3 repair programs (MP3 Scan & Repair.app)
The Solution
I have tried a lot of different things to fix this and the only thing I figured out is kind of a "catch all" but it works none the less. I want to preface this with saying this is kind of an extreme pain the neck thing to do but it fixed my issue. In my iTunes preferences I have enabled Keep iTunes Media Folder Organized and Copy Files to iTunes Media Folder. This is how I have always kept my iTunes. These instructions are assuming that is also what you are doing.
Quit iTunes
Navigate to your Music Folder
Move all of the highlighted items in the photo below to a new folder on your desktop.
   4. Now launch iTunes. When it opens it will appear like the first time you opened iTunes because (duh) there is no media in it yet.
    5. Go into Preferences (advanced) and make sure your iTunes Media Folder is set correctly.
   6. Make sure that iTunes Match is turned off for now.
   7. Click File>Add to Library and then choose your iTunes Media Folder. You will then wait for a long time (most likely) while your media is rescanned.
The Fallout
At this point (if you organize your iTunes with precision like I do) you are going to find your iTunes Library with a little bit of disorganization (depending on how long the issue had been going on). Because iTunes had not been able to write to your ID3 tags many corrections you may have made over the past couple of months (however long the issue had been going on) will not be in effect. For me it wasn't so bad. I had about 200 songs & books that I needed to fix. Audiobooks seem to be more of a problem for me.
So go through and get your iTunes Library back to the way you like it. Then turn on iTunes Match (if you have it). The reason we had it off was to make sure that your match data didn't get replaced with your iTunes Library mistakes not re-fixed.
I have restarted my Mac many times and it has been about a day since I did this and everything appears to be working correctly.
Prevention
I wish I had something to write in this area but I have no clue how to prevent this from happening again. If I figure out a way I will be sure to edit this article. I am open for suggestions!

Apple should provide a way to disable Gapless Playback.
For Albums I guess checking is not so bad, though I prefer GP only to work when asked.
However, there is a major bug.
I record my own music which results in a single file with no Tags or references of any kind.
When I one of these files to "Add to iTunes Library" I get the spinning wheel while iTunes
tries to figure out if it is Gapless. This usually freezes up iTunes for about 15 minutes.
Please Apple. Just give us a way to turn off Gapless Playback.
I have my iTunes library on an external RAID drive, using a MacBook Pro.

Freezing while assessing gapless playback-crossfade checked

Every time I plug my iPod in to iTunes, it only allows me a minute or two before it starts trying to assess gapless information on my music and then iTunes freezes.
I've checked my preferences > playback and crossfade is checked. I thought this would override gapless as none of my albums are marked as gapless album. Is there any way to solve this? I've already upgraded to 7.0.1.

I have the same exact problem. It doesn't happen every time the iPod is connected though. It seems to only do it about every 3rd or 4th time the iPod is connected and the other times it skips the analysis. I've never gotten it to finish analyzing before it freezes. When this happens, I simply pull the iPod out of the dock. I get the "Device Removal" warning but iTunes thaws out immediately and I can use it again. Any thoughts on how to keep this from happening?
<soapbox>I know some folks have a use for gapless playback, but I don't and would like to have an option to turn it off completely since it doesn't seem to work properly!</soapbox>

How do I stop Determining Gapless Playback?

Yet again, another iTunes upgrade has caused the horrible gapless playback scan to occur on my iTunes library. As a result, iTunes is totally unresponsive until this action completes. In my case, it's really slow as I'm accessing my files wirelessly from a network drive. I have to keep canceling the rescan to use iTunes. For the most part it keeps track of where it left off, however some files keep getting rescanned.
Here's what I've observed so far (not that it solves anything)
- it appears that rescans are triggered whenever an upgrade rebuilds the library. After going through this once for iTunes 7 upgrade, I remember it occurring again for 8 (and probably a point release in between) and version 9.
- The gapless playback mp3 tag doesn't seem to stop the rescan from occurring. I tested this for files that kept getting rescanned. I first set them to No and they still got scanned. Next I set them to Yes and still no luck...
- The number of files being scanned are less than the total number of files currently in my library, which leads me to believe the rescan trigger has to do with either when the file was added (i.e. before iTunes 7 release) or based on what version of iTunes the file was created.
Based on the above, I think this is a bug as it should only go through this once and if needed when new files are added to iTunes. Better yet, there should be an option to shut this off completely!
Any info on what causes this to occur or how to make it stop would be greatly appreciated!!!

Yes, with previous upgrades, I had to let it run it's course (usually overnight). However, this still doesn't really answer my question.
If the scan isn't used to auto update the gapless flag, then in my option it's completely useless and renders iTunes unusable until the process completes or is cancelled by the user.
(1) What does the scan actually do??
(2) Why does it reoccur after every major upgrade??
(3) Why does the rescan only occur on a subset of the songs in the iTunes library??
I'm convinced this is a bug and iTunes is hard coded to scan for gapless playback on files added prior to the iTunes 7 release date, which per Wiki was on 9/12/06. If I create a smart playlist of songs added before this date, then the total number of songs in the list is nearly identical to the number of songs that are scanned after a major upgrade.

Can I disable "Gapless Playback?"

Apple says this feature is only available on 5G ipods. I have a 40GB iPod Photo, yet every time I sync it with iTunes or plug in in, iTunes searches all of my music while "Determining Gapless Playback Information."
It now takes forever to wait while iTunes implements a "feature" that my iPod doesn't support.
I can't find any tracks that have the gapless option selected in my library.
Is there a fix for this?

Is this info for real? Am I really supposed to go through all of my songs and copy them separately? Why do I have to go through all this? Since when is it my responsibility to make this software work?
Here's the real question, how hard is it to just plain turn that feature off? Why hasn't Apple accommodated the many that still have this problem?
It is amazing me that this problem still exists(I went back to an earlier version and didn't install 7.0.2 until I reformatted three days ago).
I guess I'll have to go back again! I am thoroughly dissuaded at Apple now.

Auto analysing of Music Folder for 'gapless playback'. How to stop?

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