Just did a quick search through the database and did not find anything "recent" about crossfading support. Is this a planned feature?
In anycase, i guess i can start this thread in hopes of gauging how many ppl are currently still interested in crossfading support between songs and when the player starts up.

I would love it on Shuffle mode. I think I started one of those threads a while back...

Count me in ...

This would only work on Songs with real endings rather than continuous tracks ...

Personally, it could sound good, or it could sound absolutely AWFUL!!

I don't thnk it would sound aweful as long as it happens in random mode only. Try some winamp plug-ins for the experience... they rock.

Well if you're listening to continuous tracks then you don't need to enable cross-fading

If you're shuffling, it doesn't matter because two songs in a shuffle aren't going to usually flow nicely into one another unless they happen to be adjacent songs from the same album (a very odd case indeed if you have a lot of songs.) So even if they're "continuous songs" a cross-fade would make the transition a bit less abrupt. Not necessarily natural (especially if you're going from a jazz tune to a heavy metal tune) but less abrupt.

You'll be surprised how well some totally differant songs will fade into one another...

Oh, of course, and when this happens it's often very cool, sometimes very amusing.

There were some threads a while back about having some kind of system for tagging songs with metadata so that shuffle would try to line up songs that "went well" together in terms of transitions, but nobody could describe a really solid method for making it happen. That would make cross-fading even more effective.

Maybe I'm just a sucker for cross-fading because if two totally differant songs were about to play one after another - I'd rather they fade into one another. I had this plug in for WInamp and just loved it. I found myself skipping songs less because things flooooowed better.

Winamp 3 beta does not have this as a plugin anymore, but rather "built-in". In addition there is now a Alpha of Winamp3 available for linux.. maybe some code from there could be re-used with permission? or am i just waaaaaaaaaaay off.. It also allows to set the time of the crossfader.
And i agree. if its a feature you can turn on and off. then anyone could decide on their own whether it sounds good for their tastes or not.

I would think crossfading when the player starts up and continues in the middle of a song would be really nice. A sudden spike in volume isn't always the nicest thing to hear..

I would think crossfading when the player starts up and continues in the middle of a song would be really nice. A sudden spike in volume isn't always the nicest thing to hear..

Version 2.0 of the software already does this. But that's not crossfading, it's volume-ramp at startup.

I couldn't agree more. The crossfade plugin for WinAmp is one of the coolest inventions of all time, and it definitely makes everything flow better. Even if the songs are completely unrelated.

If the empeg had crossfade, I would allways have it enabled.

OK, I admit it, I'm addicted.

Cross fading would require that we run two decoders simultaneously. We did update the architecture to support this (HSX109 uses it for a different purpose) however there could be bandwidth issues doing it in real time with high bitrate (e.g. WAV) files.

Rob

Is two decoders a requirement?

I mean: if the ouput bit-stream is buffered for, let's say 4 seconds, than we've more or less 2 seconds of the current playing and queued for playing. Some other process should find the silent moment and does the cross-over.
Ok above is not wriiten very clearly, but I think I have seen above story earlier in an other discussion thread.

EiSl

Then support it for low bitrate at first.....

Calvin

Crossfading a bunch of wav files shouldnt be necessary in theory, becuase they already play without gaps in them, right? Maybe there could be some way of disabling cross fading on wavs.

Crossfading and gapless playback, while related, are two different issues. Gapless playback is obvious. Crossfading is where you have one song fade out as another comes in, overlapping for a few seconds, like they do at your favorite Top40 station. It's amazing how much better shuffle mode sounds when this happens. It doesn't seem like it would, but it really does.

I'm defintiely for it. Empeg ppl said in the past they would eventually include it in the player sw, but not in 2.0 sw version. If I recall well. Do you confirm, Empeg ppl?

Your right, I was hoping that cross fading would cover up the gaps between my songs since mp3s are not gapless.

Find the threads covering the ripping and encoding of MP3s to help with "introduced" gaps. I don't have a problem with gapless playback with most of my gapless segues. At least the gap or any introduce artifact s so small as to not cause any kind of problem or be noticeable.

Bruno

Yes, I have read all of them. I have tried using the nogap option in lame, and everything else people had suggested. The gap is almost inperceptable, but its still there. Cross fading would solve the problem, and would make all my trance sound better in shuffle mode. :-) Thanks for the suggestions though!

Sean

I'd like a configurable cross-fader as well. Mainly for use with shuffle modes and not to try and fix things that should be gapless (though it will also do that).

I use an excellent one (SqrSoft Advanced Crossfading) with Winamp for which I've set to some pretty rudimentary settings. I set it to its CLUB preset and then made some small adjustments (no fading on seek for instance, nor tracks less than 55 seconds (good number based on my other position settings)). It's worked great on anything I've played through it. Even if the two pieces of music are completely different styles and/or tempo.

Bruno

Assuming crossfading is technically feasible, it would be a really nice feature. I would imagine its pretty complicated to program, and I would imagine a big strain on the processor. But if you;re listening to loud thumping music theres nothing worse than sudden dead silence inbetween tracks. Even if the tracks dont go together well, its better just to have continuous sound IMO. Failing that even a fast fade out, and fade in (no overlap) might be better than a hard cut!

As for pre-matching which mp3's go together, Hmm, theoretically, a field on the ID3 tag could store info about pitch, BPM, and fadein startpoint and endpoint., and at the end of the track, fadeout startpoint and endpoint.
Perahps asking the machine to tweak the speed of similar BPM'd tracks (like a real DJ) might be asking a little too much however

It would be awesome if the empeg team can pull together cross fade. And also add a checkbox to emplode to mark "Never Crossfade" -- as there are music, even whole genres that do not make sense to cross fade.

Calvin

I think crossfading would be great, even between different types of music. My end goal is to create my own music "stations" based on genre but with my music and without commercials and DJ's. Crossfading would just add to the effect.

Of course, if its impossible (or practically impossible) to program, that pretty much ends the discussion.

"I think crossfading would be great, even between different types of music. My end goal is to create my own music 'stations' based on genre but with my music and without commercials and DJ's. Crossfading would just add to the effect."

I agree!

Should i really start a crossfading poll? ;->

Practically impossible? I know a few people that can probably do it. They're all on this BBS. As mentioned above by someone else, it can be a processor drain, but no one has ever mentioned anything to say it's not technically possible (for hardware or software reasons).

Have you ever used SqrSoft's crossfader for Winamp? It works very well between any kind of music. Of course it also trims leading and trailing silence (near silence actually because there's some fuzziness in the detection (which is a good thing)). Very incredible little plugin. It has far too many features than should ever be attempted for the empeg, but the basic cross-fading stuff (Club-type settings) are what we could benefit the most from.

At this time, this is something that should be handled by the player software and not a hack, IMO. Of course if the player were openned up to plugins and patches via some kind of API, that could be a difference story...

Bruno

Very interesting stuff, a subject that I too am quite interested in!

It's not so difficult to crossfade on a PC platform, resourses allow two decoders to play at different rates and the output to be mixed, I've done it in windows!

Not sure how easy it would be on the Empeg, you need processing power but also you need ram to buffer both streams and you need to pre-analise the beginning-end of each track to calculate BPM (Beats Per Minute) and work out syncronise positions!

Possible, but a little tricky to squeeze into a machine that is already performing miricles! I guess it will take a really good programmer with plenty of time on their hands to stand a chance of getting done!

Just my thoughts ;-)