How to keep the ending silence of a music file?

Question

I am fed up...
iTunes just always clips the ending silence of all my music. This is SO annoying, if you i.e. listen to a classic piece of music, Beethoven, Bach etc. ALWAYS iTunes bombs in the next title on the playlist milliseconds after the previous title has ended.
I do not know, which "60 beats a second" kid has programmed such a senseless feature....?
Of course I browsed the Internet, of course I used the search function in this forum.
It seems really many people have the same problem, but the only solutions are like adding silent 2 seconds mp3 files into the playlist.
This iTunes is really not a very well programmed software, if users needs these awkward workarounds...
Is there any smart solution to this problem? Help is really appreciated.

Answer 1

iTunes doesn't do anything with the "ending silence of a music file".  If you have crossfading turned on (see previous comment) each track will start playing, with a predetermined fade in, before the previous one ends.  You definitely want have that disabled.  Otherwise, each track plays through to the end and the next one starts immediately - there is no "gap".  However, you would normally expect that last few seconds of the track itself to be "silent" so that you hear a gap between each piece of music - just as you would when listening to a CD.  Are you perceiving something different?  There are a couple of somewhat obscure scenarios where the end of a track could be truncated.  One involves a very specific error that could occur if your music has been imported from CD outside iTunes and then transferred to it - but that would require a very deliberate action with certain tools used for this purpose.  In technical terms, the import ignores the "pre-gap" that may precede a track on a CD (you'd see this on some CD players as a brief - usually two second - countdown after the end of one track and before the start of the next.  Most software, iTunes included, normally treats this pre-gap as part of the preceding track.
The other possibility is that the metadata associated with some tracks has been altered such that playback terminates before the actual end of the track.  However, it requires a specific user action for this to happen - I can't think of a way it could happen accidentally.
Bottom line is that - unless you've hit one of these unlikely scenarios, or found a previously unreported bug (either in iTunes itself or in its interaction with audio drivers), or have that ghastly crossfade function turned on, you are hearing the music as recorded and mastered.  The only other exception is the case where you are hearing the end of one album/disc immediately followed by the start of the next.  Depending on how its been mastered, there could be a "shorter than expected" gap between them.