[Bug 45518] No easy way to listen to classical music

[seguso]

Public bug reported:

Binary package hint: totem

Hello. This is a wish for Totem. 
Any listener of classical operas (e.g. La Traviata, Die Walkuere) will have this problem and is stuck with MS Windows for this reason.

PROBLEM
-----------

Currently Totem (or any other linux program I know) does not allow to
listen to classical operas easily. Two cases are possible:

1. if I rip my CDs one file per track, I hear a brief silence 
   as the track changes and totem is loading the next track. 
   This breaks the continuity of the music.

   ( this is not related to the notorious mp3 bug.
    The silence happens on any format, like flac, ape, wv,
    mpc, ogg, wav, and is due to totem loading the file)

2. if I rip my cd with a single file per CD, I hear no gap but 
    there is no easy way to move among tracks.

POSSIBLE SOLUTION
------------------------
One possible solution is to do what foobar2000 does on windows: understand cue files. When I click a cue file, totem should read the track names and times from it, and then load the corresponding audio file in the same folder. The corresponding file is a big single file (~650 MB) with an extension that can be ape, ogg, mp3, wv, flac, mpc, or wav. Totem would then allow me to move quickly within the big file, by simply clicking a track name on the playlist. This would be the ideal solution because virtually all classical music lovers have their music in APE + CUE format.

Another possible solution is to make totem read ahead the next track, so
as not to produce silence between tracks. That is not ideal, because
classical music lovers should reconvert their music to be one file per
track.

** Affects: totem (upstream)
       Severity: Unknown
       Priority: Unknown
         Status: Unknown
** Affects: totem (Ubuntu)
       Severity: Normal
       Priority: (none set)
         Status: Unconfirmed

** Also affects: totem (upstream)
     Severity: Unknown
     Priority: Unknown
       Status: Unknown

-- 
No easy way to listen to classical music
https://launchpad.net/bugs/45518