Brain the size of a planet, and you want me to play "Louie, Louie"

September 29, 2016 8:45 AM

Is there an Android mp3 player that can crossfade songs without fading-in the incoming track?

All I want is to have the player on my phone do the same things as Winamp on my PC and Rockbox on my late lamented iRiver iHP-140. I was too late to buy Winamp for Android before they went under, so I don't know if that would have worked, and haven't been able to find a build of Rockbox that will run on my Galaxy S5. I've been using Poweramp, which does two of the three things I want:

It can shuffle the contents of any selected directory including the contents of all subdirectories.

It can read and use Replaygain tags.

What it can't do is overlap the ending of a song with the beginning of the next by 3 seconds while fading those last 3 seconds of the ending track, and starting the next track at full volume. It insists on fading in the incoming track at the same rate as the outgoing one, which means that if there's any significant overlap (which is the whole point), it loses, say, the opening chord to "Louie, Louie" and the opening drum hits to "Young Americans" and every other first note of everything else ever.

So... yeah. Is there a player out there that doesn't take its crossfading quite so literally?

posted by Devoidoid to Technology (2 answers total)

I just turned on the crossfade (listed as Beta) on MediaMonkey for Android to see what it does. Either every song I have ends before the actual MP3 (i.e has about 3 seconds of silence at the end of the song) or it's somehow starting the new song (at full volume) with 3 seconds left in the old song, but not really playing them over each other. So the little counter says there's 3-2-1 seconds left in the song, but what is playing is the new song, at full volume. So I don't think it's doing the thing you hate, but it might not be doing the thing you want, either.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 9:35 AM on September 29, 2016

I use PlayerPro, which has a gapless playback option (which is what I use), and a greyed-out settings section where you can crossfade, select manual crossfade time options, and various other tweaks for your crossfade. Apparently you have to get a (free) PlayerPro DSPPack for these to work. That might have what you're looking for? PlayerPro itself was around 5 USD when I got it a couple years ago.
posted by and her eyes were wild. at 10:40 AM on September 29, 2016