Can Atmos Music Play Gapless? Yes, Here's A Demo

    Audio: Listen to this article.

A simple, yet powerful demonstration for today. I'm sure the audience for this will be much larger over time, than it is at the time of publication. Everyone will hear the gapless claim sooner or later. Now they can just send a link to the following demo.

I've heard it asserted that Atmos can't play gapless. Some people have even told me this while we were sitting inside a studio where Atmos is created. Others have heard it through the grapevine and repeated it. Yesterday a friend reached out to ask, "Why does gapless playback not work with Dolby Atmos?" 

My answer is always the same. It works perfectly. Like all formats ever released for public consumption, gapless can be screwed up by software / hardware implementations. Has anyone ever had a gapless issues via UPnP streaming? Of course, it happens all the time. Suggesting that UPnP doesn't support gapless playback is as ridiculous as suggesting Atmos doesn't support gapless playback. It's all about implementation. 

When people in my listening room ask about gapless Atmos playback, I just put on a couple albums and press play. End of story. After yesterday's question from a friend, I decided to make such a demo available for everyone. In the video below, I play a few tracks from Wagner's Der Ring des Nibelungen, and every track to track transition from Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon. 

I could do the same thing on my iPhone 15 Pro Max to show gapless Atmos music plays perfectly there as well. The same goes for the TrueHD Atmos albums I've ripped from Blu-ray Discs or purchased and downloaded. I've never had a single issue with Atmos music gapless playback. I'm sure some people have software / hardware that doesn't support gapless Atmos playback. That's unfortunate and duly noted, but not the point of this demonstration.