Ever had to deal with the two-second skip between tracks on a CD? You don’t see (or rather, hear) this much anymore, but it was more prevalent in the past due to the way CD burners handled the disc writing process. For studio albums, this isn’t a big deal; when a song ends, a few seconds of silence is normal, and you likely won’t even notice it. But when it comes to live albums…it’s intolerable, and hugely distracting.

Wondering what brought this post on? A week and a half ago, I covered an Epica show for Musician Photo Journal. (You can read my review of the show here, and my interview with Epica founder/guitarist Mark Jansen here.) After the show, I hit the merchandise table to buy a few Epica CDs I was missing. One of them was their second full-length album, Consign to Oblivion. The other was The Classical Conspiracy, a double live album featuring the band playing classical tunes as well as their own, backed by a forty-member orchestra and thirty-member choir. It’s the latter album that sparked this post.

Don’t get me wrong, the music on the album is nothing short of stunning; Epica’s renditions of classical pieces is amazing, and the full orchestra providing accompaniment to their own compositions is a natural fit. The first disc is just perfect; each track flows into the next without pause.

The second disc, however, has those dreaded gaps. So, in the midst of the crowd cheering between songs, there’s a cut to two seconds of silence, then back to the crowd. It completely destroys the illusion that you’re attending a live performance, which is the entire point of a live album!

Do I blame the band for this? Of course not. Nor do I blame the record label. The fault almost certainly lies with the hardware used to mass produce the CDs at the factory; perhaps a setting was toggled incorrectly, or an older machine was used to write them. Whatever the cause, it’s still irritating. I’ve used iTunes to ignore those last two seconds, but it’s not seamless; the gaps in the CD are like a kick in the ear every time.

Quality control, people, quality control!