Ya’ll are comparing apples and oranges.
Just because it can do 8 channels of audio in a single stream doesn’t imply it should be able to do gapless audio of stereo sources.
The difference is because one is a SINGLE STREAM, the other requires DUAL STREAMS.
*ALL* media players (be it a streamer or an iPod or MP3 player) must start up a new decoding thread in the CPU for each new track. The reason being: The encoding may be different between the two tracks.
Track one may be MP3 / 192KHz, the next one may be M4A / 128 KHz.
iPods handle all of that in hardware; the CPU can decode multiple streams simultaneously.
It actually STARTS decoding Track 2 in hardware BEFORE track 1 completes.
In hardware players that only decode a single stream, the decoder and all the buffering must be reset between tracks, hence the gap.
Gapless audio is MUCH more complex than most people imagine…
But there *IS* a workaround.
If your MP3s are all encoded the same way, you can CONCATENATE them and make them gapless quite easily.
The downside is that you have larger single tracks. :)
