I have looked into it more and the problem does not appear when playing OGG Vorbis files, but does when playing FLAC files. GStreamer appears to have plugins to parse files to get things like padding. It has such a plugin for Vorbis, which I think, is why Banshee shows the correct track position for Vorbis files, even when in gapless mode. GStreamer has no plugin for parsing FLAC files (or at least, I did not see one) so I think that is why it has no way of knowing, in gapless mode, when one FLAC ends and another begins.
I have included a link to the upstream GStreamer bug report. ** Summary changed: - Banshee track slider displaying incorrectly, incorrect time + Banshee track slider shows total play time instead of position in current track ** Bug watch added: GNOME Bug Tracker #664433 https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664433 ** Also affects: gst-plugins via https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=664433 Importance: Unknown Status: Unknown -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Desktop Packages, which is subscribed to banshee in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/869301 Title: Banshee track slider shows total play time instead of position in current track Status in Banshee Music Player: Unknown Status in GStreamer Plugins: Unknown Status in “banshee” package in Ubuntu: Triaged Bug description: Recently discovered a bug with Banshee. The track slider/skipper displays the correct time periods for the first track off an album, but then instead of sliding when the next track is played it stays static and the track time displayed below displays the total of the tracks played rather than per song. I have attached a screenshot Cheers Description: Ubuntu oneiric (development branch) Release: 11.10 banshee: Installed: 2.2.0-1ubuntu2 Candidate: 2.2.0-1ubuntu2 Version table: *** 2.2.0-1ubuntu2 0 500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ oneiric/main amd64 Packages 100 /var/lib/dpkg/status To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/banshee/+bug/869301/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages Post to : desktop-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~desktop-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp