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SqrSoft® Advanced Crossfading v1.5b Rating:


Plug-in By:
Mariano López

Author's Comments:
Fast professional crossfading for parties and broadcasting. SqrSoft® Advanced CrossFading v1.5b can mix two tracks, the one you are listening to and the next one by analyzing the last seconds of the sound level of the first track and applying the fading curves to the finishing and starting tracks. You can set different crossfading parameters that get activated when you press Next, Previous, Stop or when the track reaches the end. The mixing length is defined for both the normal crossfade on track end and the one when you skip the track. This is so to prevent extremely long fadeouts and speed up the resulting mix. This plugin includes a Gap Killer that eliminates the silence or any sound bellow the trigger level, this is applied to the start and end of the track. If you want to play another track with a different bits per sample, samplerate or number of channels the sample converter will automatically change the track to the format selected in the "Open wave device as...".
Reviewer's Comments:
New Version! A nice new clean version to winamp's most downloaded Crossfader. Crossfase It back in action after a short brake of no updates. Again The Author resubmits! Argh I should lower his score. c-
Date Published:
2000-04-23 12:05:31.0

mailto:mariano_sqr@hotmail.com


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SqrSoft® Advanced CrossFading v1.5b
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Index:
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1. What can this plug-in do?
2. News.
3. Setting up the crossfader.
4. How does it work?


1. What can this plug-in do?
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SqrSoft® Advanced CrossFading v1.5b can mix two tracks, the one you are
listening to and the next one by analyzing the last seconds of the sound
level of the first track and applying the fading curves to the finishing and
starting tracks.
You can set different crossfading parameters that get activated when you press
Next, Previous, Stop or when the track reaches the end.
The mixing length is defined for both the normal crossfade on track end and
the one when you skip the track.
This is so to prevent extremely long fadeouts and speed up the resulting mix.
This plugin includes a Gap Killer that eliminates the silence or any sound
bellow the trigger level, this is applied to the start and end of the track
If you want to play another track with a different bits per sample, samplerate
or number of channels the sample converter will automatically change the track
to the format selected in the "Open wave device as...".


2. News
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*Individual CrossFading with Fade-on-stop/skip parameters.
*Now you can save configurations as presets!
*Better crossfading engine, less CPU time!!!
*Small and cosmetic bug fixes.
*Wide mixing buffer length configuration range.


3. Setting up the crossfader
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Here's how to set up the crossfader for listening to live music or playing
music as any radio or club does.

3.1 Live music
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*Device tab: Set the output device to 0 (Wave mapper), it's better to set
the output format to 44100Hz-Stereo-16bits but you can change this
to the most used format for less processing.
*Buffer tab: Set number of blocks to 16, maximum block to 16kB, minimum to
8kB, priority to highest and prebuffer to 25%. Mixing buffer length should
be set to it's lowest value, 500ms.
*Crossfade tab: leave this as in default, it is not used in this configuration.
*Advanced tab: Uncheck "Enable crossfade", check "Use fade-on-stop/skip
crossfading parameters".
*Fade on stop/skip tab: check "Flush on stop/skip".

3.1 Club/Radio
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*Device tab: Set the output device to 0 (Wave mapper), it's better to
set the output format to 44100Hz-Stereo-16bits but you can change this
to the most used format for less processing.
*Buffer tab: Set number of blocks to 24, maximum block to 16kB, minimum to
8kB, priority to highest and prebuffer to 25%.
Use a mixing buffer length between 8000ms and 16000ms.
*Crossfade tab: Set fade in time to 0% and fade out to 100% for Radio or 0%
for Club. Signal level should be between -18dB/-28dB for longer overlapping
or between -32dB/-48dB for small overlapping.
*Advanced tab: "Enable crossfade" must be checked, if you want you can
check "Use fade-on-stop/skip crossfading parameters" to make a small or
different crossfade on stop/skip.
*Fade on stop/skip tab: Check "Flush on stop/skip" to flush buffers when
you press next, previous or stop, or leave this unchecked and set the
buffer length with "Set buffer to..". Set the appropriate mixing curves.


4. How does it work?
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A few words on what this plugin basically does to crossfade the music...
Assuming a track is playing, the track reaches the end so Winamp tells the
output module to "close" the output, at this time the plugin first analyzes
the mixing buffer (that contains the track end) to eliminate the silence at
the end, once this is done it analyzes the sound level trying to find the
best point from where to mix, this is done by scanning the peak level in the
buffer from end to start, when the level has been found all the previous data
to that point is written on the sound device, if the desired level is not found
the buffer remains untouched.
There's a notification that the device must be closed, then a process waits
for a call from Winamp to "open" the device again, if this is not done the
process writes the mixing buffer contents on the output device, it waits until
the device finish playing and "closes" the output device, if the call is done
just cancels the awaiting close.
So once Winamp calls "open" it starts calling "write" to place the new track
data in the sound device. At this point the plugin starts searching for the
new data for a louder sound than the rise trigger level specified in the Gap
Killer.
Then it mixes the new track data with the one it is contained in the mixing
buffer using the envelope curves and finally it places the mixed data in a
new mixing buffer.
In this way the two tracks can be mixed. The mix is done while the sound
device is playing the data in the sound buffer. The sound buffer length
should be big enough to cover the time the plugin lost in the mix because the
mixing process is not very fast.
When the mix finishes the plugin continue playing normally until the track
reaches the end...
If you need more info please let me know.