Audio Quality: Apple Music vs. Spotify – Apple Community
Hiccup between albums when shuffling music by album on Mac
I listen to classical music almost exclusively. I have organized my library so that each work in the library is in its own album. I then frequently listen to the music by choosing a playlist (for example, right now, I’m listening to music using a playlist called: Played less than twice but not recently).
I send the music to my living room hifi and the kitchen HomePod minis using Airplay 2.
Very consistently, perhaps always, although I’ve not studied it closely enough to be certain, between albums there’s a tiny hiccup of sound that shouldn’t happen. My theory (although I wouldn’t bet the ranch on it) is that what’s happening is that when the end of an album is reached, the Music app recognizes that it’s in shuffle mode and sets a new thread in motion to play the next album, then it closes down the current thread.
And I think the hiccup I’m hearing is the result of the current thread actually starting to play the next track in the library (or perhaps replaying the first track of the album it just played) before it gets closed down. That’s why the effect is not 100% consistent because it depends on how much of a silent lead-in that track has as to whether or not I hear anything.
This is just speculation on my part about how it is happening, but what I’m hearing is what I would hear if what I’ve just described is indeed happening. One thing I can say for certain is that I am not hearing a false start of the track that should be played because the tenor of the hiccup is usually quite different from the track just starting.
As I was typing that last sentence, it happened again, but this time, as though to be contrary, it did rather sound like a false start of the next track.
I’m using an early 2015 MacBook Air to play the music. It’s completely up to date with the latest OS and Music software. Perhaps I just need a faster computer, but I rather think this ought to work properly even on a six-years old computer that does nothing else other than play music.
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