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[ASenna1]

I would like to be able to selectively add a variable 'play delay' option (in seconds) on a per album basis to create a defined space in time (silence) before first track of an album is heard.

[RoderickGI]

There is no entity in MC called "Album". There are only Tracks (files actually), which are grouped together by having a common value in their [album] field. So there is no way to set a delayed start to an Album directly.

What you could do though is create a silent Track of whatever length you want, and place it as Track -1 (Zero won't work) for the Album, so that it is always at the beginning. Or you could put it at the beginning of a Playlist. It would play, silently, before the first Track, and could give you the defined space in time you want.

You will need to uncheck the setting "Options > Audio > Track Change > Do not play silence (leading and trailing)", otherwise MC will just skip over the silent track quickly.
As it will be the first track in an Album listing, you will need to change the Cover Art stored in the file to the Album art, if you store such art in the file, as MC uses Cover Art from the first file in an Album generally when displaying music by Album.

You can create silent tracks using the top menu item in MC at "Tools > Advanced Tools > Audio Calibration". Select the Silence, the number of Channels you want, and the Sample Rate required. If the tool doesn't have what you need, you can always change these later using the "Convert Format" function. Click Create Files. MC will show you where the files are when it finishes. By default this function only creates one minute files. If you need longer than that, a quick Google will find a source of files for you. For example, https://github.com/anars/blank-audio which provide silence files up to an hour and twenty minutes.


The silent track should be the same format as the album's tracks, so no changes of playback format are required during an Album, i.e. File Type, Bit Depth, Sample Rate, number of Channels. Then it needs to be trimmed to length.

You can do all that using the MC "Convert Format" function.

First, before conversion, set the length you want the output file to be into the [Playback Range] field of the source file. i.e. For a 12 seconds track, put "0:00-0:12" into that field, without quotes.

Then set the conversion options, including the output Bit Depth (i.e 16 bit), any DSP to convert, for example, the above Anars silent mono tracks to stereo, and to set the Sample Rate (i.e. 44.1kHz). Note that you may want to save your regular DSP setup to a DSP Preset before making changes to DSP, and set up a DSP Preset for creating silent files, so that you can quickly access the setup and don't muck up your main DSP settings. You can just save and load the Presets as required.

Then convert the file. The output will be the correct length and format to add to the Album as Track -1. Copy the Cover Art from one of the existing Tracks and paste it into this new Track, if you store Cover Art in the file. Change the [Artist]. [Album], and other fields so that the Tracks appears in the album.


All done, and all using MC. Easy.

[swiv3d]

As RoderickGI says ....
Or you could use Audacity to edit the first track adding a silent lead in to the file. Of course neither of these suggestions give you what you want - a selectable time delay between albums and I can't see the Dev team spending much time on it to be honest.

[RoderickGI]

I can't see the Dev team spending much time on it to be honest.

That was my thought as well, as this is the first time I have seen a request like this.

Good idea with Audacity too, but I didn't want to suggest editing the original track, or requiring another application.

But I guess it depends on the actual application of the solution. Matching music to a presentation. Silence before a procession at a funeral. Preparation time before starting a yoga session. Etc. Or DJing on high quality equipment, and allowing a little silence for the DJ to intro the set.

[ASenna1]

Although "There is no entity in MC called "Album", there is clearly an Album view and what I'm looking for from this view is a "Delay Start Track 1" option that would be permanently tied to the Album view so that when a album sequence is created, a specified gap is added before that album is played.

Using with JRemote, I randomly create sequences of albums as I want at the time using "Add to Now Playing".  Simply put, I view albums as albums, not a collection of random tracks and I play back to back album sequences 99.9% of the time. It is extremely rare that I play individual tracks and I do not randomly shuffle tracks.

For example, ECM recordings all have 5 seconds of silence before Track 1, which I like. I would like to replicate or simulate this through the rest of my library. 

It's amazing to me that no one has requested something like this before.

[RoderickGI]

Hey, I'm just sharing my knowledge. If you don't want to hear it, so be it.

But asking for a setting by Album is like asking for a fleet of trucks to be painted blue, but without painting any of the trucks. The fleet doesn't exist as an entity to paint, only the individual trucks exist, so if you want to paint the fleet, you have to paint the trucks.

MC works the same way. Only files exist. Albums do not. The Album View is just showing a view of a group of files, collectively called an "Album". Same as the group of trucks is collectively called a "Fleet".

Also, now you are asking for a delay that would be permanently linked to the Album View, which would mean that the dealy was global for all Albums, while previously you asked for a delay on a per album basis. Those are two different things. I think you want it on a per album basis.


So, yes, you could have a tag by file, for which all files in an Album had the same value, and JRiver could programmatically look up that value and then apply a period of silence equal to that before the first track is played.

But that functionality doesn't exist today. You may be amazed that nobody has requested it before (as far as I know), but most people want the exact opposite; they want to skip the silence in a track and play the music right away.

Between Swiv3d and I you have been given two possible solutions. As Swiv3d said, I don't see JRiver spending development time on something like this that hasn't been requested by many users. But they could surprise us all.

Good luck.

[hoyt]

I've not done it, but you can link two tracks together, so it's possible you could link a silent track in front of T1 of an album always.  I'm not sure if you can link the same 5 seconds of silence track to all T1 tracks, or if you'd need to copy that silent track into every single album.  This would also play that silent track if you played just T1 by itself, but it might be a viable solution for you. 

Reference:
https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/Library_Tools#Track_Linking_Tools
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=90543.0

[swiv3d]

Create a 5 second silent track - called silent track, then add it in between each album when creating your playing list - simples!

[ASenna1]

I did not ask for a delay that would be permanently linked to the Album View, that was "idealy was global for all Albums,". That is not at all what I requested in my posts

Answer: No, JRiver does not provide an automated method to add any delay to an album start point.  The only way I can think of accomplishing this is by either editing track 1 or adding a silent slug, assigned track -1, to each album with the delay you want (oh sorry, the group of tracks that all have the same album name, ordered by Track #1,2,3...)