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[MusicHawk]

Bias: My background is radio station operations, and I love the sound. So I keep hoping MC will move ever closer to how music is managed and played on-the-air. Therefore...

It would be terrific to have one more Playback Option: "Radio Segue" style, which does NOT FADE anything, it simply provides user-controllable overlap duration. This is how radio stations do it.

To get close, I currently use this setting:
Playback Options... Audio ... Switch tracks ... Cross-fade (aggressive) ... 2s
This sounds pretty good, but it is not how a radio station transitions between songs.

Except in special situations, radio stations do not "cross-fade", aggressively or otherwise. They "segue", which in practice means transition between songs without a gap -- actually with a little bit of overlap, but nothing gets "faded".

Radio segue is not the same as "gapless" as implemented by MC or iPod, which seems to mean no gap between the physical tracks -- it doesn't "listen" to the music to create anything like a segue.

A radio station starts every new song at full level (never faded up at the start). That's the case whether playing music hands-on or via automation. (The vast majority of today's radio music is played via automation, even when there's a "live" DJ, who is also often recorded.)

Handling the end of a song is trickier, since there are so many ways a music piece finishes. It might fade out quickly, or fade out slowly or even very slowly. With this type of ending, whether MC adds a bit of its own fading is hardly noticeable, though seemingly unnecessary.

But, many music performances end "cold" -- the music comes to a precise conclusion. In this situation, I can often hear MC fading the music before it actually ends. A radio station would never do this. The music is allowed to end, at full volume. In fact, a big finish is often a key part of the performance.

But I haven't found a way to get MC to "segue". "Gapless" doesn't do it, not at all. "Cross-fade (aggressive)" gets really close with songs that fade out. But the transition out of cold-close songs rarely sounds good, because there's often a noticeable MC fade before the music actually ends.

I suggest one more MC Playback Option, Radio Segue, which works exactly how radio station automation systems do it. No fading, in or out. Play both ending and starting tracks at full volume. But, let the user control the length of overlap. For instance, if MC's "segue" playback is set to 2 seconds (a common setting in radio station automation), the next song starts 2 seconds before the current song (physical track) ends, with both playing at full volume the entire time. Let the ending song end as it actually ends -- fade or cold.

Would this sound "funny"? Rarely. Having the new song start at full level is essential -- record producers and engineers work hard on having a song start a certain way. The big question is how a song ends when the next song is going to start "hot". A fading song is, well, fading, and will be done by the end of the track, so there's no reason for MC to "help" it fade.

This leaves "cold close" songs to consider. These suffer the most from being "faded". True, there could be some noticeable overlap with the next song, depending on how precisely the end of the music and end of the physical track/file align. And that could sound odd with certain combinations of songs -- though in my experience in radio stations, it almost always sounds just fine. I cringe every time I hear a classic cold close nuked by an arbitrary fade that alters the performance.

For instance, while typing this I'm hearing MC (my wife loves random playback on Sunday mornings) and Tom Jones' "Love Me Tonight" just ended with MC doing a "cross-fade (aggressive)" -- yet this song has a classic cold close. It sounded bizarre to hear it get dumped out rather than the full power-house finish that everyone knows from hearing the song on the radio.

Thanks for listening.

PS, for the curious: Radio station automation can be more sophisticated than I implied. Rather than segueing based on back-timing from the end of the track, radio automation often uses control signals (either subsonic, on a separate track, or digital) to provide more information to the automation controller. So, the "start next track" signal can be placed manually and therefore positioned to precisely handle cold-close songs. Also, the control signals are positioned relative to the actual music, not the physical length of the track/file that contains the music. But after thousands and thousands of encounters with this done both ways, I'd much prefer MC playing with Radio Segue as I've suggested vs. having only the non-radio "cross-fade" effect.

[Roger_the_Shrubber]

Could I +1 this as well?

It is rather frustrating at times to have disppearing cold endings.......

[hit_ny]

It would be terrific to have one more Playback Option: "Radio Segue"

To get close, I currently use this setting:
Playback Options... Audio ... Switch tracks ... Cross-fade (aggressive) ... 2s
This sounds pretty good, but it is not how a radio station transitions between songs.

wondering whether Options->Playback->Do not play silence (leading & trailing) would help here, but there is no way to segue tracks at full voume other than a crossfade.

Segues in conjunction with MC's radio (smart random) would really be tops.

+1

[modelmaker]

Yeah, this would be an excellent addition to the options. It's something I always wanted out of my audio system - a way to emmulate the way radio works (as explained perfectly by Musichawk). The closest I get with MC is to use just a .5 sec aggressive crossfade.

[hit_ny]

Bubbles rise to the top

[MusicHawk]

Possibly simpler way to provide more control over Playback segues:

The current Playback Options > Switch Tracks control could be split into two options. One controls by how much two songs overlap or are separated. The other controls whether MC does any fading of songs as they stop/start.

Gap/Overlap - list of time lengths, ranging from minus values to 0 to plus values, such as these and other useful time lengths:
-2s overlap
-1s overlap
 0s gapless
+1s gap
+2s gap
ETC.

Segue/Crossfade - list of modes:
 + No fade (song volume is not altered by MC as it starts/ends)
 + Crossfade Aggressive
 + Crossfade Smooth

[hit_ny]

Why not 

[Matt]

In build 513, which should be available sometime next week:
Changed: Cross-fade (aggressive) does not fade down the end of a song when mixing with a new song. (but still fades the old song when manually switching tracks before the end)

[Matt]

I should add that this is experimental, and subject to change.

Your argument seemed good to me, but we'll have to see what other people think once the build goes public.

[MusicHawk]

I appreciate that the easy experiment is to change the behavior of existing cross-fade (aggressive) rather than add another option, so I hope either everyone likes it, or enough do that if necessary it can become a separate transition mode.

Either way, thank you!

[JONCAT]

Interesting discussion, and I like where it's headed. I used to make live mixes to cassette back 'in the day' and I agree that segue is preferred. The remove leading and trailing silence seemed to achieve this, and well, in MC for a long time. So does the new function segue before any fading? I guess I'm a little confused because aggressive with 4 seconds sounds like a non-fading drop-in of the new song at full volume (with remove leading and ending silence enabled). Furthermore, I can skip to the next track, and the new track drops-in over the top, at full volume, of the previous song which fades out nice and fast (at 4 seconds).

EDIT - okay this makes sense:

But, many music performances end "cold" -- the music comes to a precise conclusion. In this situation, I can often hear MC fading the music before it actually ends. A radio station would never do this. The music is allowed to end, at full volume. In fact, a big finish is often a key part of the performance.

Yeah this has always been hard to handle.   But adjusting cross-fade to .1 (even .3) and using remove silence (to help with dead air tracks)  seems pretty darn close to what your after, at least to me. "Moanin" by Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers has 5 seconds of silence at the end. It's 9:35 total and actually ends on 9:31 with a cold close there. MC works perfectly with remove silence enabled as it cuts this song right where it actually ends (checking with remove silence disabled). With the aforementioned settings, the dead air is cut off and the next song in my playlist drops right in which is a huge Blakey cymbal crash. Like you said, it's not gapless but just a tiny overlap (which you can adjust .1 - .5?). So for songs that fade MC still takes care of you as you mentioned. It also works with 'cold close' tracks for me. Even a human being isn't going to get closer than what MC will let you do, .1 seconds. Am I missing something? what about turning off the option to enable gapless for sequential album tracks??? Maybe that's what's happening?

We used to make a lot of Jamaican mixes, so having Rock Steady drum fills come on atop a song just as it is about to fade out (or within first second or so) sounded great. So don't worry we're after the same thing.

 I'll have to test out this change; I'm worried because things sound good now. The the settings described above I'm watching many tracks get right to the end of their duration, cold close, with a tiny segue.

But overall I think this could lead to some great possibilities for MC.

MCs DSP makes auto-mixing (i.e. pick your favorite songs and see what kind of awesome segues MC generates and burns to disc for you with Volume Leveling). But what if we could set fade points by entering times in a burn queue or just as a specialized playlist field. this would give some great mixing functionally in-house for playback or burn. I still have friends who are very specific and beatmix in a wav editor or use specialized apps. The way me makes is changing but the "mix tape" will never die.

DC

[JONCAT]

Matt - any chance you could review the Silence Remove threshold db level? I'm getting quite a few noisy LP tracks that are cutting quite a bit late. I know with all the noisy these tracks will be skirting the edge with all that surface noise, but it seems like it could be adjust a tad to accommodate some noisy vinyl tracks that haven't been cleaned up or can't be any further.

DC

[JONCAT]

With Aggressive cross-fade set to .1 seconds, MC is "fading" when there is 1 second of the song remaining that is about -25db which I'm pretty sure means it shouldn't be cut (guessing the silence cut is around -40db?). The problem turned out to be that the file, reported by audacity, is actually 1 second longer than MC reports. Mc is still seguing a bit early, and doesn't report the final one second, which is admitedly very quiet (-65db), in duration.

There is also the question of what the silence detection threshold level should be. I kind of like where it is, but in this particular example, the MC cuts the downbeat which turns into a quiet echo fade out which lasts for at most 1 second. in this case it feels like a radio DJ would hear that downbeat and have time during the echo to press play and drop in the next track; the segue feels abrupt even with .1 seconds. So I'm wondering if the incorrect duration analysis by MC is throwing something off.

Overall, I like the idea of using a really short aggressive cross-fade to get the segue effect, especially for tracks with a cold-close, and I also find the "remove silence" option is essential to protect against dead air on tracks which haven't been edited properly at the end or have an excessive fade-out.

However, I would like to see some of the functionality suggested by some in this thread to give the user some more configurable options.

See what you all think; here's the entire file in question:

www.catuccio.net/test.mp3

DC

[MusicHawk]

DC, thanks for doing some interesting experiments. I'm still on the road, not back at my full MC library for a few more days. But I can address some of the issues based on many years of running radio station automation systems, which have to do exactly what MC does (except via a different set of tools).

Even if the new non-fade segue isn't pleasing to everyone, I HOPE Matt will resist pleas to ditch it or put in just a little bit of fade. In other words, play the tracks as they actually exist, no "help". If a given track has a problem, cure that track, not apply the same medicine to every track.

Again, I suggest a separate playback option, leaving the two Cross Fades to do whatever they used to do. This would make clear the option does a Segue or Radio Segue or No-Fade Overlap or No-Fade Transition or similar option label.

There is never going to be perfect handling of all segues. Live DJs don't always get it right, and automated radio stations mess it up fairly often (though they use different tools so might do poorly what MC does well, and vice versa.)

Given the wide world of music (80 thousand tracks in my case), some cold closes, segued into some hot opens, will sound terrific, and some will sound jarring. But most endings and most beginnings will segue nicely, if there's a slight overlap, no forced fading, and no unnecessary silence. In a random mix world, all we can shoot for is good-to-great segues most of the time.

My MC, after experimentation, is set to 1 second overlap. This is based on the old forced-fadeout so might change with the new non-fade. Radio stations typically overlap music by 1 to 2 seconds. In the early days of radio automation, a 2 second overlap was "standard". Song endings were specified by inaudible tones, added when the song was dubbed to the tape, rather than song length or silence. So the next song started wherever the tone was placed, a human decision, with "standard" being 2 seconds before the end. Knowing this, when we wanted to avoid this overlap for a particular recording (song, commercial, whatever), we'd add up to 2 seconds of silence to the recording's start. Radio station silence-sensing was several seconds, used just to catch a broken audio source, jump to the next source in the sequence, and sound an alarm in the studio.

The silence-sensing level can be a key part of MC segues, but it seems to handle most music quite well. It might be cool to have more control over the silence level for special situations. But when I encounter songs with notable noise, or too much beginning or ending silence, or an excessively slow fade out, or some other anomaly, I re-edit the track to fix it, once and for all. I wouldn't want MC compromised to handle rare anomalies at the expense of all the good tracks.

[JONCAT]

Mhawk - running out for dinner and didn't read all your post yet, but you're on to something. I really appreciate you opening my eyes to all this.

My experiements made me realize that all songs either fade-out (varies) or 'cold-close', as you put it.

I take it what you were experiencing was the MC was 'helping' the tracks that fade-out too much. If the track is already set to fade, it should ride out until the overlap we set.

DC

[hit_ny]

The silence-sensing level can be a key part of MC segues

That alone would qualify as more than just aggressive cross-fade, ie an extra item in the menu.

I think this is shaping up quite nicely

[MusicHawk]

Yep, silence-sensing is a separate option, and one that I don't think matters much for normal music. As DC cited, silence-sensing as an "end of song" trigger is quite tricky.

I'm not sure how the option "Do not play silence (leading & trailing)" behaves (can't test anything right now). But it could simply jump from track to track, skipping the fixed gaps common on CDs and albums. If it really is silence-sensing, then there's the challenge of determining mid-song/false-ending vs. true inter-track "leading & trailing" silence.

Silence-determination can get messy with songs that start very quietly, or fade fairly slowly. In MC's current behavior, I usually live with apparent too-long gaps when these songs are played, or sometimes I edit to adjust levels and/or fade. But in general, set to a reasonably low level, silence-sensing to determine a song's end would work OK for most songs, giving a better effect than a Cross Fade action that is time-based.

However, silence-sensing alone would trash songs that have intentional silence mid-track (very common in classical works) or false-endings (jazz and pop -- Blakey's Moanin', Count Basie's April In Paris, The Rascals' Good Lovin', The Contours' Do You Love Me, etc). Of course, it can be done, by working in from the absolute front and back of the track until the first-encountered sound that exceeds the defined "silence" level.

Trying to keep it simple, my preferred Radio Segue mode wouldn't have MC do anything to audio levels. Just do time-based overlap of the two tracks -- that's all.

[hit_ny]

I'm not sure how the option "Do not play silence (leading & trailing)" behaves (can't test anything right now). But it could simply jump from track to track, skipping the fixed gaps common on CDs and albums. If it really is silence-sensing, then there's the challenge of determining mid-song/false-ending vs. true inter-track "leading & trailing" silence.

Silence detection from the help states

"Media Center can automatically skip long portions of silence during playback. This is quite useful for hidden tracks or tracks with a lot of leading or trailing silence. This option may not be a good choice for classical music or other genres that contain long, intentional pauses in the middle of songs."

...so currently the option "Do not play silence (leading & trailing)" only works with the beginning & ends of a track.

So far, we can say a track is segue worthy if..

- it does not contain any long intentional pauses in the middle.
- it does not start very quietly, or fade fairly slowly
- anything else?

So if one is consicious of the above, it only takes a custom field Segue (say) and one entry  No

Thereafter any random smartlist or even MC's radio can be configured to avoid these tracks in the future.

But in general, set to a reasonably low level, silence-sensing to determine a song's end would work OK for most songs, giving a better effect than a Cross Fade action that is time-based.

Trying to keep it simple, my preferred Radio Segue mode wouldn't have MC do anything to audio levels. Just do time-based overlap of the two tracks -- that's all.

Do you think then..
- along with the option "Do not play silence (leading & trailing)" and
- possibly seperate option for segue (with same flexibility to set intervals as with the other fade options)

that the current implementation is adequate ?

[MusicHawk]

Sorry, since I can't do any MC testing for a few more days, I can only talk in theory...

Segue -- It's simply an adjustable time-based overlap with no fading of anything by MC. This is apparently the current "test" behavior of "aggressive", but this mode should be available separate from the two Cross Fade options.

Silence-sensing -- If the vast majority of music tracks, after ripping, are tightly edited so they don't have any significant leading or trailing silence or excessively long fade, there's no silence for MC to handle, so I'd disable this option if it could mess up mid-song gaps. Most of my tracks are "perfect", especially those I rip from LP. When I find a problem I correct it permanently by editing the music files. So, with tracks that are already free of undesirable leading/trailing silence, Segue transitions don't need any silence-sensing/track trimming by MC. (In contrast, users who have sloppy tracks and/or no inclination or ability to manually trim tracks can benefit from MC's automatic trimming.)

Put another way, some people might like MC to do trimming and fading, some might not. The same with overlapping tracks, or adding silence between tracks -- personal taste or specific need. Having MC alter track audio level is distinct from having MC overlap adjacent tracks, so these behaviors should be separately controllable.

[JONCAT]

With regard to silence-sensing, I've always used it, but now I see reasons I shouldn't.

I keep my LP rips clean but there are tracks that have silence at the end. Moanin for example has about 5 seconds of silence on the end (at least my version from the cd album). Ends at 9:35 with 5 seconds of silence. I was listening on my crappy TV speakers however, so piano reverb could be on there; either way it's quiet enough for MC to yank it with silence-sensing enabled. In this example it seems to work really well.
No doubt a very quiet echo of the last notes on a non fading song just get mistaken for silence whereas a loud lp track (surface noise) will run out to the end even when edited well and mastered to reduce noise (some tracks are just noisy).

The very next track after Moanin', Are You Real?, ends and has two or three seconds of compete silence. So my .5 or 1second aggressive crossfade minus silence-sensing doesn't work with these songs, they need to be manually edited. My worry is will I be finding a lot of store bought tracks like this?

I'm inclined to leave silence-sensing off, and manually edit any files that need it, but don't want to make work for myself.

I wonder if a user-adjustable silence-sensing option is too convoluted and opens up a new can of worms, or would help?

Finally, the segue between Moanin' and Are You Real? sounds great now with .5 aggressive using silence-sensing. It's gets me close to the end (as calculated by MC which subtracts the extraneous -40db? wavform) I hear the last piano note, some reverb, and the switch to Are You Real?

So far, we can say a track is segue worthy if..

- it does not contain any long intentional pauses in the middle.
- it does not start very quietly, or fade fairly slowly
- anything else?

A track that fades in may not be segue worthy, but DJs still play these songs and there's a limit to hou much you can manipulate a song without altering its intended state of introduction. So maybe a DJ would drop in a fade-in song a little later than 0:00 but would still want to preserve the fade-in, imo. I love MC and all the options we have, the tools to make things work, but I already use custom fields for other things, and my belief is at most, another crossfade option will make it all work out. I'd love to see MCitself handle this instead of  the burden being put on the user to create new fields (which I really actually enjoy.....most of the time  ) If it comes to that, so be it.

DC

[MusicHawk]

>> My worry is will I be finding a lot of store bought tracks like this?

Probably not. I have about 30,000 tracks I listen to regularly -- all day most days while working -- via MC Random mode, from my CDs and my LPs (and many more of these to rip). So over days and weeks I hear all kinds of pseudo-segues (Cross Fade (aggressive), 1 sec overlap). Almost all tracks I have -- a huge range of music style and vintage -- work amazingly well in MC. Maybe once or twice a day I make a note of a track that needs attention. And only rarely is it anything urgent to fix.

Some individual CDs have more inter-track silence than I'd like. Some live recordings put the track breaks in goofy places (the talk intro to track 2 is the ending part of track 1, etc). These need editing to work in a random mix, segue environment. Very few songs truly fade IN, though some start quietly or weakly. In radio stations we'd either skip the too-quiet part, or create our own "mix" that cranked up the low intro (Carly Simon's You're So Vain, famously).

The other "missing" MC tool is automatic audio compression during playback, which all radio (and TV) stations use. This virtually eliminates too-low song starts and finishes, because all audio above a certain threshhold is raised in level to a specified peak, usually with carefully-tuned settings for volume-change ratio, attack and release times, and sometimes even frequency-band discrete compression. Compression's main negative is the risk of turning up noise (usually surface noise) as it raises the level of fading music. This was a notorious problem in the days when stations played 45s manually; they would get "cue burn" scratches at the start due to spinning backwards to "cue up" and these scratches would be played loudly due to compression. LPs were a tad less prone because they had better vinyl, but it was common to develop pops at the start and end of tracks that were played individually by dropping the stylus at that point. But while most radio people could hear these "scratches", I never had a listener say anything. One small benefit of segue overlap is to "hide" the start/end scratches.

I'm not obsessive about any of this. I want non-fading, time-controllable track overlap, which is now available but should be relabeled or separated from "Cross Fade". I'd love playback compression, which is available in audio editors such as SoundForge (and massive rack-mounted gear in radio stations). I sometimes wonder how "random" Random Playback is. And I wish remote libraries could be self-refreshing. But other than these tweaks, and with major help from several custom tags, my MC setup is doing a terrific job keeping my ears entertained. (I have separate issues with cover art...)

[laerm]

I'm not obsessive about any of this. I want non-fading, time-controllable track overlap, which is now available but should be relabeled or separated from "Cross Fade". I'd love playback compression, which is available in audio editors such as SoundForge (and massive rack-mounted gear in radio stations). I sometimes wonder how "random" Random Playback is. And I wish remote libraries could be self-refreshing. But other than these tweaks, and with major help from several custom tags, my MC setup is doing a terrific job keeping my ears entertained. (I have separate issues with cover art...)

just wanted to pipe up and say that i've been enjoying this thread, even though i'd never use any of these features. it's great to see that the MC team is curious about the same things we're curious about, and will try out alternate methods of doing things if we're curious.

one thing i was curious about, however, is your listening style. you must be pretty tied into putting your library on random and then going. i tend to listen to a lot of albums straight through, and these playback settings would drive me nuts. all of this segueing and compression would pretty much destroy what i view as the integrity of an album, especially compression. though speaking of compression, how is what you want different from replay gain?

micah

[MusicHawk]

Thanks for asking. Playback compression is very different from Replay Gain.

Replay Gain, stated simply, tries to make all tracks play at the same volume, by raising/lowering the entire track's volume relative to other tracks, while avoiding clipping any track's peaks. It is one adjustment applied to an entire track.

Dynamic range compression does more, differently, for a different purpose. It adjusts audio level, millisecond-by-millisecond, as the track plays. There are many ways to tweak this, but the general effect is that low parts of the song are raised and loud parts (including peaks) are lowered. In broadcasting, the lowering of peaks then allows the entire track's volume to be raised, making the radio station's usable signal go a bit farther. AND, compressing of dynamic range makes the entire song sound "louder" because our ears react to average sound levels, making the radio station jump out on the dial.

Compression of ALL songs creates a more consistent, controlled sound. Leveling out the volume range and maintaining a consistent average is a huge help in noisy environments such as moving vehicles, outdoors, bars, clubs, and even hotel lobbies and elevators. PA systems and commercial amplification systems usually have built-in compression.

At the song level, dynamic compression creates a hotter sound. People who grew to love a song on the radio often wonder why it sounds wimpy on the CD/album, and the reason is the added compression of the radio station.

Of course, compression is used on every recording, whether noticeably or not, to keep the audio above the noise level and below the clipping level. Because this is applied by the recording/mastering engineers, it's not consistent among recordings. Maybe across a single album, but often not even across a single recording session, and definitely not across multiple albums or miscellaneous tracks.

Dynamic playback compression can do quite a bit to clean up the wide variations in recording/mixing/mastering, creating a much more consistent sound as multiple songs are played. This is a big reason radio engineers see compression as an art; getting it just right is point of pride.

Of course, the compression parameters will vary depending on a station's musical format. I used very light compression at a classical music FM station, more on the same station's AM side, but a lot of compression on rock stations, AM or FM. Without the compression, is just sounded "wrong".

Taking this perhaps to the max, radio stations now use devices that have several compression channels in a multi-band process. The incoming audio is split into separate frequency ranges, typically five (loosely, bass, upper-bass, low mid-range, mid-range/vocal, upper mid-range, highs). EACH range is compressed by itself. Then the result is recombined into the outgoing full audio. The result is amazing, essentially a dynamic re-mixing of the original track. Bass-weak songs (like the Beatles on Capital) get "bottom". Screechy recordings get toned down. Tinny or muddy songs become clear and vibrant. I've heard it create reasonable consistency across recordings spanning 60 years.

Of course, compression can be misused. The common complaint that TV commercials are "too loud" is simply because they are compressed more than the show's audio. (When I produce TV spots we always compress the audio because that's what the advertiser wants.) Another complaint is that theatrical movies on TV (on HBO, for instance) are hard to hear in the family room because films intended for a big sound system in an otherwise quiet theater use much less compression than shows produced for TV. Smarter TV broadcasters tweak up the sound of movies, but some go too far, given that a mix of dialog, music and effects on TV should not get the same treatment as rock 'n' roll on the radio. Some cable channels I watch get it wrong a lot: AMC, Sci-Fi, Encore, often drive me crazy. (Not to be confused with the fact that all cable/satellite systems control the audio level of every channel individually, and sometimes do it incompetently, the reason as you channel surf some are too low relative to others -- call and complain.)

The same happens inversely. Lack of audio compression is why web sites that try to play music or present audio, people who record podcasts and vidcasts and "home" movie/video productions, often sound lame. They don't know about or effectively can't apply audio compression (and its partner EQ).

Back to MC: When playing music locally, not via a radio station's "audio chain", a variety of tracks in a stream can have jarring volume variations. Replay Gain is the cure for this, preventing wild swings in volume. But some songs will still sound louder than others, even if Replay Gain has done everything it can to make them the same. That's because of variations in the mix of different songs, and a big part of the mix is the compression.

(The critical factors in mixing a recording session's multiple are track EQ, track relative levels, and track compression -- critical because they interact and a problem with one can't be cured by diddling the others. And at the head of the "get it right" list are the original recording session decisions of microphone characteristics vs. live sources, and mic placement vs. sources vs. room acoustics.)

On the listener end, where we have a collection of finished tracks and can't remix from studio masters, dynamic playback compression is a terrific tool to create a more uniform "sound". But -- It's definitely a matter of taste. Some people (me) love the sound of a well-engineered radio station and lament the thinness of the same music on CD. Others don't. That's why, if it ever becomes available, it should be optional.

Re albums vs. tracks, that's personal preference. I love variety and rarely want to listen to an album as such. Random is my favorite mode. My musical collection spans almost every genre and year that audio has been recorded, probably because I'm a musician and get called upon to play all kinds of stuff, and probably because I have a short attention span.

[JONCAT]

I'll second random mode, or "Super-shuffle" in MC geek-tongue. As for the integrity of the album, which I assume you meant in regard to fidelity?, I don't notice nor care to bother with freaking out about whether or not RG, upsampling, crossfading, etc. are making my music 'bit perfect' and .1 microns less musically appealing (which RG has no affect on). Not directed at you, but places like Computer Audiophile forums, people resist using anything pragmatic because it "obviously" reduces sound quality. Just gets my blood going.

shuffle on,
DC

[Frobozz]

I've been trying the new aggressive cross-fade and I like it.  It works well at keeping the music flow going when tracks change.

However, playing with it brought up a nit-pick.  In order for the aggressive cross-fade to work correctly for many of my tracks it is necessary to turn on the global option to remove silence from the beginning and end of tracks.  The problem is that it is a global option that I don't want enabled all the time.  It really messes with classical music tracks where there is an intentional pause between movements.

It would really work better for me if remove silence was an option that can be disabled when playing sequential album tracks.  My normal mode of listening is to enable "Use gapless for sequential album tracks".  When playing sequential album tracks I don't want any silence trimmed from the beginning or end and I want gapless playback.  When playing playlists or random tracks I want cross-fading and silence trimmed.  Right now I can't have both unless I go into Options and manually change the trim silence option.

[hit_ny]

The other "missing" MC tool is automatic audio compression during playback

Have you seen the DirectX Host plugin.

If you have a VST compressor you could use it as is with MC.

reading through that thread and the suggestion was made that on Vista it can be done natively!!

But some songs will still sound louder than others, even if Replay Gain has done everything it can to make them the same. That's because of variations in the mix of different songs, and a big part of the mix is the compression.

I've noticed this at times and wondered where the problem was, as Replay Gain is touted often as almost perfect. It's very close

Don't there is a way to objectively measure apparent loudness yet is there ?

If not then the compressors are winning.

However, playing with it brought up a nit-pick.  In order for the aggressive cross-fade to work correctly for many of my tracks it is necessary to turn on the global option to remove silence from the beginning and end of tracks.  The problem is that it is a global option that I don't want enabled all the time.  It really messes with classical music tracks where there is an intentional pause between movements.

Thought about this one initially and wondered whether turn silence off would *always* work with segues ?

See, leaving it as a global option allows for either case rather than making it the default with segue playback, not that i'm against it but thought it covered both possibilities.

Does Alt+playback option help at all in this case ?

[MusicHawk]

Have you seen the DirectX Host plugin. If you have a VST compressor you could use it as is with MC.

Well worth exploring once I'm back home later this week. I'll let you know... thanks!

[Frobozz]

Does Alt+playback option help at all in this case ?

Nope.  The Alternative Mode doesn't affect the silence trimming.

I have standard playback set at gapless and no silence trimming.  alt+playback set at aggressive cross-fade but it is stuck with the global setting for no silence trimming.

[JONCAT]

Now I'm listening to Allen Toussaint's "Motion, tons of silence at the end of each track. I could use MC tro send to Adobe Audtion (which has an .ape plugin) for quick editing, but I don't know if I'll have the time to keep doing this when I hear one that needs it. Even the River In Reverse album  (2006?) has a decent amount of silence at the end of tracks......another random album I just checked, one by Alpha Blondy, almost 5 seconds of silence after quick-fade out.

and if a track fades out, silence sensing really helps cut away some of that really low amplitude fade. I'm leaning towards enabling it.

I thought the silence sensing was "smart" with regard to mid-track pauses...it's not?



DC

[JONCAT]

Some free multi-band compressors and application discussed here. http://www.songfight.net/forums/viewtopic.php?=&p=81095.

DC

[hit_ny]

This one looks nifty, but don't you have to keep twiddling them for every track ?