Markers and mixing
Every track has up to five markers, in seconds:
| Marker | Meaning | How it is set |
|---|---|---|
| Cue in | Where playback starts | Automatic: just before the first sound above the trim threshold |
| Cue out | Where the track ends | Automatic: just after the last sound above the trim threshold |
| MIX (segue start) | Where the next track starts in continuous mode | Automatic (see below) |
| Outro start | Where the ending of the track begins | Automatic (see below) |
| Intro end | End of the spoken-over introduction | By hand, or from an INTRO tag in the file |
Markers set by hand always win: a new analysis never replaces them.
Editing markers
On a player’s waveform, or on the waveform of its CUE window (the same menu and handles; a change shows in both at once):
- Right-click where you want a marker and choose Set cue in here, Set intro end here, Set outro start here, Set MIX point here or Set cue out here. Reset markers to automatic removes the markers you placed, and the track is analysed again. Loudness… opens the track’s loudness normalization settings: exclude it, or trim its gain.
- Hold Alt (Option on macOS): handles appear on the markers. Drag one to move it; the time is shown while you drag. A drag never moves the playhead.
Cue-in must stay before cue-out. The other markers are kept between them. Changes to the track on air apply to its next transition at once.
The INTRO tag
A file can carry its intro time in an INTRO tag, as seconds (12.5) or
m:ss. The name may be written in any case (INTRO, Intro). It can be an
ID3v2 user text frame (MP3, WAV, AIFF, DSF), a Vorbis,
Opus or FLAC comment, an APE item (WavPack, Monkey’s Audio) or an MP4
freeform atom. It is read during analysis. A
manual intro end still wins.
How the automatic markers are found
The analysis measures the track’s peaks in 10 ms steps and its loudness in short windows (50 ms by default).
- Cue in / cue out: only near-silence at the start and end is skipped: anything whose peak reaches the trim threshold (−60 dBFS by default), on either channel, is kept, with a trim margin (20 ms by default) around it. Soft fade-ins, quiet tails and short sounds are never cut.
- MIX: the analysis finds the last point where the track is still less than the segue drop (15 dB by default) below its own typical loudness, so loud and quiet masters with the same fade mix the same way. That point is never more than the maximum mix length (4 s by default) before cue-out, so overlaps stay short.
- Outro: the analysis scans backwards from cue-out and finds where the level drops more than the outro level drop (6 dB by default) below the track’s median loudness. The outro is never longer than 30 s by default.
- Tracks shorter than the minimum length for mix and outro markers (60 s by default), such as jingles and ads, get no MIX and no outro.
Long recordings
A whole programme (one, four or more hours) is analysed like a song, while it plays if need be: a 4-hour FLAC or Opus file takes under a minute on a current computer, and memory does not grow with the length. Seeking to any point, even near the end, is immediate. The waveform and markers are kept in the analysis cache up to about 16 hours of audio; a longer file works too, but is analysed again each time Fauste Player starts.
All these values are in Settings → Analysis. After changing them, the tracks are analysed again automatically.
What the player does with them
- Continuous mode with automatic mix on: at the MIX point the next track starts at full level while the current one fades out until its cue-out. The overlap is sample-accurate.
- Continuous mode without a MIX point, or with automatic mix off: the next track starts exactly at cue-out, with no gap.
- Single mode, or Stop after: the player stops at cue-out.
- Pressing Play while on air: the next track starts at once and the current one fades out over the fade time (1 s by default).
- A player whose Main output is bit-perfect ignores the MIX point and automatic mix: each track plays to its cue-out, then the next one starts, and Play while on air switches at once, without a fade. See What it costs.
- Use cue-in and cue-out off (Settings → Players): every player plays each track from 0 to the end of the file. Cue-in and cue-out, automatic and manual, are kept, and the waveform draws them as dim lines. The MIX point, intro and outro still work, within the whole file; Automatic mix is a separate switch. Countdowns, the duration column, the playlist totals in Settings and the remote API times follow the same range. Carts always use their own cue-in and cue-out. Changing the setting never restarts, seeks or stops a track that is playing; the next track is prepared again.
A track can be played before its analysis finishes. Until then it plays from the start to the end of the file, with no MIX point.