Simple Fade

Stwert

I don't know how hard this would be to implement, but one of my favorite features (if not the favorite feature) of Winamp is the simple fade in and out when pausing, resuming, and stopping tracks. Even when I just hit the X and close the program it manages to fade away gently. Most audio players just do the harsh abrupt stop. So that's my humble request.

Just to be more specific, in case it wasn't clear, I believe my desired behaviour would be:
On play, start with no fade.
On pause, fade from current volume to 0 over 0.7 seconds.
On resume, fade from 0 to previous volume over 0.7 seconds.
On track finishing and next track starting, no fade.
On stop, fade from current volume to 0 over 0.7 seconds.

I don't know how long the Winamp fade is, but I figured 0.7 seconds felt about right, albeit overly specific.

bleu34

+1 for this one.
And not only for play/pause, but also fadein/out possibility when changing from one song to another.

ACX

MPD has a built-in crossfade option, you can test it enabling it with the command:

mpc crossfade [<seconds>]

crossfade [<seconds>]
Gets and sets the current amount of crossfading between songs (0 disables crossfading).

http://linux.die.net/man/1/mpc

Stwert

I'm less interested in crossfading between songs, I find that really doesn't work for albums that are designed to be gapless and transition smoothly from one song to another. My interest (though I don't speak for everyone of course) is to have a fade out/in on pausing/resuming and stopping.

ACX

Then I think that the only solution is to look for a MPD plugin...

aj78

As a proof of concept I've written a pair of bash scripts that achieves this:

fadein.sh

#!/bin/sh
vol="$(mpc volume |cut -c 8-10)"
step=$((vol/10))
mpc volume 0
mpc play
for i in [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10] ; do
        mpc volume +$step >/dev/null;
        sleep 0.07;
done

and fadeout.sh

#!/bin/sh
vol="$(mpc volume |cut -c 8-10)"
step=$((vol/10))
for i in [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10] ; do
        mpc volume -$step >/dev/null;
        sleep 0.07;
done
mpc stop >/dev/null
mpc volume $vol >/dev/null

These work satisfactorily and it should be easy to do the same thing in php, but I couldn't find the right place in the code. There are a few syscmd('mpc play') calls in runeaudio.php, but simply changing these to syscmd('/var/www/command/fadein.sh') didn't work (actually there was no effect, even after restarting php and clearing the cache). Where is the code that is called by clicking the playback controls?

ACX

You should "intercept" the needed commands (play, pause, stop...) adding some conditionals just before this line:
https://github.com/RuneAudio/RuneUI/blob/85e8a3212d08de4997d646ec0321bfca93af4730/command/index.php#L72
and adding the execution your bash scripts inside them.
Of course this would only work while you control MPD through the RuneUI, not if you do that with an external MPD client.

aj78

Thanks for the pointer. This is my first time coding in php (or working on a browser app) so there's quite a learning curve! I've got a solution that works now. It's a bit rough around the edges and I don't like relying on the bash script so I'll convert the code into php and do a bit of polishing before I submit it (I think the fade behaviour should be optional and non-default, for one thing). Perhaps once I've got it sorted (and improved my php!) there'll be some other junior jobs I can help with.

ACX

Good, any kind of help is truly welcome.
And yes, such feature should absolutely be optional and configurable.

Stwert

Cool, I'm glad someone is interested and working on this. Thanks aj78!

bleu34

Thanks ACX for the trick with crossfade.
For people interested in it, I added a simple service to start it automatically (I mainly use mixed playlist so I let the crossfade activated) :

nano /usr/lib/systemd/system/crossfade.service

then paste this :

[Unit]
Description=MPD Crossfade
Requires=mpd.service
After=mpd.service

[Service]
ExecStart=/usr/bin/mpc crossfade 2

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

You can change the value after crossfade if you need more (or less) than 2 seconds.

So ACX if we could have that as an option in future release that would be perfect.

Regarding the fade in/out, thanks aj78, I will be very interested in your work if you succeed implementing it.

ACX

bleu34 wroteSo ACX if we could have that as an option in future release that would be perfect.

Yes, we will add it to the options in the MPD settings screen.

lemon

Hi everybody!

I've discovered runeaudio only today, seems to be a great piece to software!!!
As crossfade will we very important for my needs I'd like to know if it has already been implemented, I do not see "crossfade" in the MPD settings. Maybe it has gotten another name?

Thank you very much!!!

ACX

Hi lemon,
it has not been included yet but it will probably on the next release.

lemon

Hi ACX,

thanks for you answer.
By adding bleu34's crossfade.service file I can use MPD's integrated crossfade feature in the meantime as a workaround, can't it?

Thank you very much!

Edit: seems that it doesn't change anything. Did I miss something?

hondagx35

Hi lemon,

did you start the service?

systemctl start crossfade

If like it to start at each reboot, you have also to enable it.

systemctl enable crossfade

Frank

lemon

hondagx35 wroteHi lemon,

did you start the service?

systemctl start crossfade

If like it to start at each reboot, you have also to enable it.

systemctl enable crossfade

Frank

Perfect, it works now like a charm. Thank you all!!!

anfuca

Hi, first of all, congratulations for this awesome work.

I'm very interested in the crossfade function. I have implemented as you've said but I'm getting some "troubles".

I've setted to 15 sec using the service that @[deleted] posted.

I start RuneAudio and check the crossfade time. It shows me 15. Ok.

But then, when I play music, some songs aren't crossfaded at all, and others are crossfaded but not the way that it should be, the crossfade duration is less than the 15s I've setted.

Have any of you noticed this?
Maybe is a MPD issue?

P.D: Ok. Solved. It's a MPD configuration thing about buffers size. Explained here: http://mpd.wikia.com/wiki/Music_Player_Daemon_Crossfading_Troubleshooting
Once buffer size increased, it works like a charm!