Optional gap between each song playback
-
This is probably very niche, but I would like the option to add an X second gap between song playbacks. I have a very very large collection, and I like to run shuffles of a lot of tracks. It ends up becoming a constant stream of random songs with zero gaps and it can be jarring when there are game music files or songs that do not do fadeouts/fadeins. It also tends to break my focus when it goes from Very Sad Song.mp3 to Very Exciting Song.flac in all of .1 second. Having a gap would give my head time to breathe between songs, so I would like to be able to add one in order to have that time, and be able to keep my focus while listening in the background.
I.E.
-
Song Plays
-
Pause for... 30 seconds? Maybe 2 minutes. Could have an optional random range?
-
Play next song.
-
-
Very niche indeed, and an interesting need. Some thoughts:
-
Abrupt beginnings and ends of the tracks would be softened using Options/Backend/Fading. You probably tried it but prefer gaps.
-
30 seconds to 2 minutes of silence is a lot, and sounds like long unattended sessions.
-
There's no gap feature in Strawberry, and I don't have a suggestion for dynamic processes like those of Smart playlists where the playlist is continuosly modified.
-
But I could think of an alternate way for already populated, static playlists. I imagine having written a script (say, bash for Linux; or a .bat or a .py for Windows), and this:
- Click on Dynamic-playlists/50-random-tracks.
- Select all tracks and drag&drop them to the desktop icon of the script.
- The list is read, the script builds a new playlist interspersing entries of a 30-second-silent audio file and asks Strawberry to load it (strawberry --load)
- The current list is replaced.
The script could present a dialog to choose the gap duration, or there could be several variants of the desktop icon if that's preferred.
There would be a problem in Windows: the maximum length of command arguments is 8 KiB, not enough for long playlists (2 MiB in Linux, should be safe). But if the user guesses how many tracks can be selected safely, the playlist could be drag&dropped in several chunks. In this case, the script should not replace the current playlist but append the tracks.
Another way: save to a predefined location the current playlist and double clic the desktop icon. The script would not receive the paths as command arguments but from the file, so no problem in Windows.
-
-
@jun_
Funny, I came here to ask exactly this and found your thread first on the list. Even a 10 second gap would be preferable to rushing headlong into the next song. The mind and body need time to process what has gone before. Like chapters of a book or scenes of a movie, though audiobook narrators rarely get this right IMHO.I really don't understand the modern interest in "gap-less playback".
-
@grepper
It makes sense for concerts, radio programs/podcasts, pieces of a medley or classical works delivered in separate tracks (so, navigable), and continuous things like those. There's little joy in noticing an audio hole in the transition, even a small one (or worse, a loud blip generated at the cut point), and creators of the tracks still have the chance to increase the duration of the silence before the signal begins or after it ends.But yes, those who like having time for the vibes to dissipate would need the opposite. I got curious about this and I'll build an ad-hoc playlist to try it, expecting a sense of surprise at first. Seems fun.
-
It was a good experience. Depending on the user's mood, the kind of music and the task being performed, it benefits from longer or shorter silent periods. I found it quite convenient for active listening, where it provides time to reflect, and it was funny with my Christmas playlist: medium-to-long length made me smile when I was doing something else and the favorite tune popped up unexpectedly.
Interestingly, I never felt impatient during the sessions where music was just a background, regardless of the gap duration.
I started a bash script to have that funcionality in Linux, though in a different way from what I had suggested. It will be far from perfect and won't work in every scenario, but it's doing the job for me and I'll share it here when finished.
For Windows and with the help of AI, I can build a .bat script that performs the outlines suggested above if there's anyone interested. Feel free to ask.
-
T TakeFive referenced this topic
-
It doesn't feel right to fill this thread with noise. Continuing in General Discussion: https://forum.strawberrymusicplayer.org/topic/5717/gaps-between-tracks