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[blgentry]

I've been doing some testing and I can't seem to find a transition option that works as I expect it to.  What I want is:

As a song ends, it is faded out, but I get to hear 100% of the track down to the last second.
A small transition zone of silence.
Then the next track.

Gaped Fade would seem to indicate this.  It fades when you press the next track button.  But for natural transitions (without touching the track controls), it abruptly cuts out the old track and turns on the new one.  This is normally not a problem, but there are tracks that end at nearly full volume and the transition is unpleasant.  Thus the desire for the fade.

I think the closest thing I'm going to get is "standard gaped" with the appropriate gap setting (say 2 seconds as an example).

But I'm confused as to why gaped fade does a fade when you press next, but does *nothing* when doing a normal transition.

Am I missing an option that would work correctly based on what I expect?  Or something that meets my requirement of hearing the whole song, but not being jarred by transitions?

Thanks,

Brian.

[~OHM~]

bump----Anybody

[6233638]

Are you playing albums?
Try turning off the "Use gapless for sequential album tracks" option.

[blgentry]

I'm mostly not playing albums.  Mostly shuffled tracks from many different albums.  I tried turning it off anyway to test it.  No difference.  Thanks for the suggestion.

Brian.

[6233638]

Hmm, different music formats? (bit-depth and sample rate)
I seem to recall that there was an issue with crossfading between formats (sound would speed up or slow down) and so the feature was pulled until it could be implemented without that issue.

[blgentry]

More than 99% of my music files are 16/44.1 .  I've tried crossfade smooth and aggressive.  Smooth loses part of the song.  Aggressive loses less, but it's blended into the next song.  Which is implied by the term crossfade!    It's just not the behavior I'm looking for.

I would just use standard gapped, but then I get an abrupt cutoff when I manually change tracks.  This is all fairly nit picky stuff.  I'm just trying to get the most sophisticated tailored experience that I can.  I think the fade out on pause and things like that REALLY add to the feel of MC.  It just makes it nicer to use. 

Brian.

[RoderickGI]

I was somewhat interested in the answer as well.

I have been using "Cross Fade (Aggressive) - 2s" but found that to be a bit much, and moved it down to 0.5 seconds. Still not quite what I would like.

I thought Gapped Fade should work the way you expect. So I just tried it with various delays up to and including 16 seconds. Regardless of the setting, MC seems to finish the song with no fade, then immediately launch into the next song, when transitioning without user input. When I hit the Next button, with 16 second Gapped Fade, I get a very slow 16 second fade on the song playing, no real gap, maybe just a beat, and then the next song starts. I tried turning off "Do not play silence (leading and trailing)" and "Use gapless for sequential album tracks", but neither changed the behaviour, although the listening result was different due to the full length of the track being played, including silence at the end of a track.

The Wiki says:
Gapped Fade

Provides a smooth transition when switching between tracks without any overlap of the two tracks. (Correct, there is no overlap.) If the first track finishes naturally, there will be a small gap between tracks. (Correct, there appears to be a very small gap, but with "Do not play silence (leading and trailing)" set to remove silence, this can be hard to see/hear.) If there is a manual track change where the first track is somewhere in the middle of the song at track change time, the old track will fade out, then a little silence will be heard, then the new track will begin. (Correct. This appears to be the only occasion that the time delay set with Gaped Fade is used, and it sets how long the fade takes before a track changes, rather than the size of the gap between tracks.)


So I guess MC does do what the Wiki says. But it isn't what I expected. I was expecting the time associated with the setting to be the gap introduced, similar to the "Standard (gapped)" setting.

It seems that "a little silence" with this setting is a fixed amount, and not related to the number of seconds in the setting. Also, fade is only used when a manual track change is initiated, because if the song runs to the end it probably has its own fade built in. However, that fade can be shortened when "Do not play silence (leading and trailing)" is set. Perhaps try Gaped Fade with this setting off, to get the normal fade built into the recording?

It actually makes sense that a fade is only required if a track is manually changed, so that the existing song doesn't suddenly drop out. But also, there is no need to fade in the new track, if the track has some silence or built in volume increase up to normal volume.

[6233638]

Yes, sorry, I did my own testing today and found the same thing.
Gapped Fade only applies when manually skipping tracks and not through natural progression - whether they are sequential album tracks or not.
 
And personally I like that behavior, but another option to always do a gapped fade might be worthwhile?

[blgentry]

Re-reading my original post, I don't think I actually described what I want accurately.  Essentially, I want "all the music" and "no jarring transitions".  I think that would be perfectly accomplished by a gapped transition always *and* a fade out on manual track change.  Essentially if Gapped Fade obeyed the gap all the time, I'd be super happy!

Does that sound right to you guys? Roderick, your testing confirms *exactly* what I've experienced.

Thanks,

Brian.

[RoderickGI]

Yeah, I understood what you wanted. Play both the beginning and the end of songs at their proper volume. Play all of the song. No fade for normal tracks changes, but a user defined gap between songs. Fade for forced (manual) track changes, to avoid the jarring transitions.

It would seem reasonable to me, but I couldn't make it happen with currently functionality. Perhaps there is an enhancement request for you to make. It would probably require splitting of the normal track change and forced track change settings, so you specify Standard Gapped for normal changes, and Gapped Fade with the fade time and maybe the gap for forced changes.

I believe that there was a fair bit of discussion about this previously, and the functionality fell where it is . . . then Bit Streaming discussion was thrown into the mix and confused people. After all, it is impossible to fade bit streamed media, by definition . . . then DLNA renderers were added on top, and heads exploded.