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Hey Folks,

I'm helping an artist friend with an exhibition, where we need to be able to loop an audio seamlessly for 3 days. I would normally use Ableton live for this, but the nature of the space dictates that a computer would be impossible to hide..

Is seamless looping possible with an mp3 player? I mean a cheap one from the corner electronics shop.

I know that there are issues regarding looping with MP3s (but it all seems to do with looping in a playback engine/ game), but there must be a way to do this. Tomorrow I will go out and look for a MiniDisc player and give it a try. Also, I suppose a cheap loop pedal or a cheap sampler might be an option too, but that put's it out of my 'client's' budget.

Any help appreciated

Kurt

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2 Answers 2

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  • Create the sound file, bounced as a loopable file with no printed silence on the front or back

  • In iTunes tag it as "Part Of A Gapless Album" under Options for the file itself

  • Create a new playlist

  • Add this file to the playlist or maybe a few repeated entries of it for a good measure

  • On the iPod playback, go to the new Playlist, hit Play (on the top of the playlist, not the files in the playlist)

  • Once it starts playing, select the loop icon. This should loop your playlist continuously, and by indicating it's gapless, the playback should be seamless.

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  • This is of course assuming you're using an iDevice, as you mentioned in the question title.
    – Stavrosound
    Sep 26, 2012 at 19:22
  • Nice one... I've been going in the same direction myself but the little tricks are much appreciated!! My backup would have been leaving my old MacBook (running Live) in the gallery for 3 days. She's not very reliable though. Thanks.
    – Kurt Human
    Sep 27, 2012 at 8:42
  • OK - My findings are: 1 - create your file (in my case i exported a looping .WAV 16bit, 44.1khz out of ProTools) 2 - Pop into iTunes 3 - Edit Info to say "Part of a Gapless Album = Yes" 4 - Convert to MP£ in iTunes 5 - Edit Info to say "Part of a Gapless Album = No" 6 - Quit and Restart iTunes 7 - Edit Info to say "Part of a Gapless Album = Yes" 8 - Quit and Restart iTunes 9 - Create a Playlist with at least 2 instances of your track 10 - Sync to iPod (in my case an iPod Nano 4th gen.) 11 - Hit Play on the Playlist (NOT THE TRACKS) 12 - Once playing, set to "Repeat All" Et Voila
    – Kurt Human
    Oct 1, 2012 at 21:24
  • It's a 2 -sided trick: Let itunes do the conversion to mp3 AND One must have at least 2 instances of the track on the same playlist so that the iPod can actually segue gaplessly between tracks - I made the mistake of testing with 1 instance at first and it just didn't work...
    – Kurt Human
    Oct 1, 2012 at 21:27
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Not sure, but you do get seamless loop cd players which are reasonably small like this Numark. I imagine they're pretty solid too as that's what they are designed for. That one is about £128. Probably out of your budget, but maybe you could get a secondhand bargain.

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