Use this thread to give feedback on the new Smart fades features.
I’ve obviously only had a short time with this feature but so far so good.
While its not always perfect I think this accurately solves my issue with most implementations crossfading.
There’s no set time values I can use to ensure from track to track each transition is smooth & seamless feeling. That’s too rigid (excluding album playback).
The only reason I say its imperfect is the inconsistencies in the FEEL of transitions. (I dont know that this is “fixable” or an issue per-say)
The best way to describe it is:
Some transitions feel like a crossfade thats perfectly timed to ensure two tracks come together without trampling each other
Some just feel like silences were removed
In some cases tracks Start immediately or end abruptly so there’s not much getting around that change in the feel of the transition.
In that regard I dont think users can or should expect a seamless transition every single time.
I can confidently say music listening feels more fluid especially if the queue is stacked well. With a good queue it feels like one song that never really ends as theres 0 gaps in music playback
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Yes there’s still plenty of space to improve the edge cases hence the thread to gather more details about those who sounds really bad to try to improve.
I might be taking a long drive later I’ll upload any oddities so you can take a look.
What would you expect on songs that start or end abruptly? I would intuitively try to fade in or out very quickly in these situations, so that there is not so much cut away from the song. But for a “seamless” experience it is of course better to have a longer crossfade. So I am interested in your opinion here, mine might not always fit the majority.
I tried the smart fades with a mostly synth/orchestral and very lush game soundtrack this morning, and for that it worked perfectly, I did not even now anymore where one track started and the other ended. The tracks were relatively similar sound-wise, and mostly started and ended with kind of a fade anyway, so that was perfect material.
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For the record there will always be oddities, this is complex computation done on a phone so I’m relatively limited in the deepness of the analysis.
So it’s more about non working pattern that the ultra specific songs that does not work. (I’m interested in those too for the long term). But the first round of updates will be for the generic cases.
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Yeah. I tried with music of similar styles & it flows very very well. But on a more shuffled list it gets a bit tricky here & there. There’s also some wild combos in shuffle. My library may go from something dubstep esk to a motion picture Soundtrack. Idk that theres any smoothing you can do to bridge that but i wouldn’t call the feature flawed for that.
For me the transition length in & of itself is also a preference that depends on my queue. I feel like the transitions eb & flow between a more DJ style crossfade with some slight overlap & a simple transition from track to track that feels seemless / gapless.
Both of which are nice but depending on what is in the queue they hit you differently.
I cant imagine how difficult it is to get this right so often but its been really good for me. Some transitions are quick but not rushed & others are a bit more slow. Im constantly forgetting the track has changed lol
That’s the point 
Durations and curves depends on the tracks, opening a lot of things, just need a lot more feedback to find the best defaults for some of the general special cases.
That is a great result I would say 
And yes, having different genres/moods/styles one after the other will expose the weakness of automated crossfades. With the resources available you cannot do a full blown analysis to find out if this is a song with a heavy beat or some flowing orchestral stuff and then modify the fade automatically. Currently it is more about finding the right spot volume-wise to fade over.
That is already better than having static fades, which suck if the track ends in a couple of seconds of almost silence, or if you have a floor noise (like applause) etc.