Gapless playback to Chromecast devices

[Hi-Fi Cast Help Forum]

The level of support for gapless playback depends on whether you are playing to the local Android device, to a Chromecast or to a UPnP/DLNA renderer.

Playing via a Chromecast device
Hi-Fi Cast currently supports gapless playback of MP3, AAC, FLAC and WAV files when playing via a Chromecast device. To enable this feature go to Settings > Chromecast. The Android device must remain connected to the network during gapless playback.
When using the 'Original' Chromecast, gapless FLAC/WAV is only available for 16bit files (ie not hi-rez).

Playing via a UPnP/DLNA renderer
Hi-Fi Cast can play gaplessly to renderers that support gapless playback. Enable gapless mode via Settings > UPnP/DLNA. Note that even if your renderer does not support gapless, enabling this setting may reduce the gap between tracks.

Playing to your local Android device
Hi-Fi Cast always plays gaplessly when playing music via the local Android device.

[bobmu...@gmail.com]

Just a quick clarifying question. Am I correctly interpreting this post that mp3 files that otherwise play gaplessly won't play gaplessly by Hi-Fi Cast when played through a Chromecast Audio? Thank you!

[Hi-Fi Cast Help Forum]

Yes. That's right. mp3 files will not play gaplessly via the Chromecast when played using the Hi-Fi Cast app (and I don't know of any other app that can do it either). We're currently working on mp3 gapless support and hopefully this feature will be available soon.

[bobmu...@gmail.com]

Thank you--that's very helpful. It sounds like a workaround in the meantime is to mirror the audio from the phone, if I'm not mistaken. I don't know if mirroring is lossless or compressed, and would definitely impact battery, but works in theory until better gapless solutions are in place.

[Hi-Fi Cast Help Forum]

Yep. Mirroring is definitely an option. I don't know if mirroring is lossless or compressed either, but I do know that when I tested it everything was resampled to 48kHz.

[Hi-Fi Cast Help Forum]

In the latest version of the Hi-Fi cast app, we have added support for gapless playback of MP3 files via Chromecast devices.

[bobmu...@gmail.com]

Awesome--that's huge. Is that mp3 specifically, or lossy in general (mp2, ogg, m4a)? No big deal either way; mp3 covers the vast bulk. Thank you so much.

[Hi-Fi Cast Help Forum]

It's just mp3 for now, though if there's enough demand for the app, I'll definitely consider doing other formats.

[lewis.theh...@gmail.com]

Why is there a technical  limitation for the old CC regarding the no hires with gape less? That device does playback 24/96 no problem as long as I select "never" for gape less  playback.

[bobmu...@gmail.com]

I received a Chromecast Audio for Christmas. Tested it last night with mp3s streaming over DLNA. Gapless worked perfectly using Hi-Fi Cast. Thank you!

[marke...@gmail.com]

It is amazing to finally experience gapless playback on my Chromecast Audio from FLAC files on my local-network DLNA music server. Thanks. Hi-Fi Cast works great.

A couple of questions.

Given the requirement that the Android device must remain connected to the network, I assume that means the music is streamed from the server to the HiFi Cast app on the Android, and then the app does the actual gapless "casting" to my Chromecast. Am I correct in this assumption?

Or does the app magically control the server software, forcing it to cast gaplessly directly to the Chromecast?

Also, is there a way to have the music continue playing if the Android leaves the network or is turned off? Does turning gapless "off" in the app accomplish this?

[lewis.theh...@gmail.com]

The app does it by creating a "playlist" regardless where the music is stored, at least that is my understanding.

[marke...@gmail.com]

So the Android must be "downloading" the files on the playlist and doing the buffering necessary to provide gapless? Then the Android casts the files to the Chromecast?

Or does the app somehow have fine enough control of the server to cause the server to cast the files gaplessly?

I am curious because if all the files pass through the Android, it could affect battery drain quite a bit. If the app just sends control info to the server battery drain would be minimal.

[lewis.theh...@gmail.com]

Yes to your first sentence. And yes it affects battery life though not very much.

[marke...@gmail.com]

Thanks.

[Hi-Fi Cast Developer]

And to answer your question about continuing to play when the Android device leaves the network - yes, turning gapless off will achieve this.

You can see how many tracks are queued on the Chromecast (and so will play when your Android device leaves the network) by going to the 'Select Playback Device' screen. Hi-Fi Cast will maintain a queue of up to 100 tracks on the Chromecast (when gapless is turned off).

There is a gotcha however when you've added an entire folder to the queue (eg a genre) or are shuffling all your music. In this case Hi-Fi Cast will not immediately add ALL the tracks to its queue. It gradually builds up the queue while playback is happening and so the number of queued items on the CC will be less than 100 to start with. A trick to get around this is to go to the 'Queue' screen in the Hi-Fi Cast app and tap the item at the bottom of the queue that says something like '269 more shuffled songs from Country' and this will add more items to the playback queue on your Android device and within a minute or so these will also be synchronised with the CC queue.

[adam....@gmail.com]

Hi.

Thanks for the app.

I'm streaming from kodi (upnp) to chromecast ultra and I noticed that in fact minority of my mp3 albums can be played w/o gaps. What's the reason? VBR vs CBR?

[Hi-Fi Cast Developer]

Hi,

VBR vs CBR should not affect gapless playback. One prerequisite is that the mp3 files contain "gapless metadata" (ie. the number of padding samples at the start and end of the track as well as the total number of samples in the track). I believe the majority of mp3 files are created with the lame encoder and that this does in fact write the gapless metadata into the file. If you play the files through the speakers on your Android device is it gapless? If so, then the files do contain the required gapless metadata. If not, do you know if your files were created with a different encoder?

Also, the mp3 decoder on your Android device must be able to recognise the gapless metadata (and different devices have different implementations of decoders). Again, if you can play the files gaplessly via the speakers on your Android device then this indicates the decoder on your device is not the problem. If not, have you tried using a different Android device with the same files?

[antoni otton III]

Thanks for the explanation! I'm not sure if these particular albums were encoded with lame or maybe optimized with foobar later (that can trim some padding space) or... I never cared, as Kodi could play anything gapless; although being on Linux not Android. 

Considering this + extra issues with casting radios and photos to CC Ultra, I'm going to sell it and keep good old rpi.

Again, the app is very good. Thanks!

[Richard Bailey]

Hi, I'm not getting gapless to work when casting. It works fine when I'm "Playing to This Device", but when I'm casting there is a delay in switching to the next track.

Note, my library is a DLNA server, Synology Media Server. Does the DLNA server matter?

No app I've tried has gotten gapless working, but some others have a very small, almost insignificant gap. I like HiFi Cast's interface though. What do I need to do to get gapless from DLNA to Chromecast to work?

[Hi-Fi Cast Developer]

You just need to enable the Chromecast gapless option in Settings/Chromecast. After that it should just work.

It shouldn't matter if the library is on a DLNA server provided that the server isn't doing any transcoding.

[Richard Bailey]

I have that option enabled, but there is still a noticeable gap when casting. There is no gap with local playback or to a bluetooth device. 

I tried playing both local and DLNA tracks and I tried to both a Chromecast Audio and a Google Cast Speaker; all combinations had the same result. 

[Bart Kornmann]

I had the same issue. The next track was constantly missing the first 1 or 2 seconds. Then i enabled transcoding in the Chromecast settings within the Hi-fi Cast app where i added a rule to transcode everything to MP3 enforcing the app to download everything instead let music go through Google (?) and that solved the issue.

Op maandag 31 augustus 2020 om 00:18:15 UTC+2 schreef rm...@mail.com:

[Hi-Fi Cast Developer]

Hmm. I'm not sure what's going on then. If you follow the instructions here then I might be able to figure it out.

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/hi-cast-help-forum/oNXHVruw4B0

(Please make sure you are playing a track to your Chromecast when you tap the 'Include system info' checkbox)

Thanks.

[Xavier Mazure]

Hello,

Is there a way for you to make gapless work on Play-fi devices (my Audiolab streamer is gapless with the official app but it's a nightmare with alternative apps).

Thanks.