Audio Playback Options

Tools > Options > Audio

Player > Playback Options

See also: Playback Options

See also: Audio Output Modes

Audio Output

This is where you configure how Media Center should talk to your sound hardware. This section has its own help topic here: Audio Output Modes

Settings

DSP & Output Format Opens the DSP Studio box, where you can set equalizer, effects, replay gain and output format settings for your output. See DSP Studio (Equalizer, Replay Gain & DSP)

Prebuffering This is the amount of decoded audio data that is retrieved ahead of playback. If you are on a slow network or use some other spotty source, you might increase this from the default of 6 seconds.

Play silence at startup for hardware synchronization Some hardware requires a lead time from when a signal is delivered to when sound is produced. This option allows outputting leading silence so no actual sound is lost in these cases.

Play files from memory instead of disk (not zone-specific) This option loads an entire file into memory so that the disk is not accessed during playback. The memory buffer is capped at 256 megabytes, and rolls as needed for extremely large files.

Track Change

Switch Tracks This setting describes how the program sounds when it changes tracks.

• Standard. The traditional method of changing tracks. One track comes to a complete stop, there is a brief pause, and the next track begins.
• Cross-fade (smooth) or Cross-fade (aggressive). This blends the end of one track with the beginning of the next track. It makes track changes smooth - much like the transitions used in clubs and on radio stations. A smooth fade slowly fades one song out as the next fades in. An aggressive fade starts the new song at full volume and slowly fades the old song out.
• Gapless. Track changes are perfectly seamless. There is no pause between the end of one track and the beginning of the next. Useful on classical and other recordings where track boundaries don't always occur during silence.

Do not play silence If this option is selected, the program skips long portions of silence during playback. This is quite useful for hidden tracks or tracks with a lot of leading or trailing silence. This option may not be a good choice for classical music or other genres that contain long, intentional pauses in the middle of songs.

Use gapless for sequential album tracks This will override a selection of cross-fading or other between track modes and use gapless between any tracks from the same album with sequential track numbers. This way, an album will be heard exactly as the studio engineer intended while allowing cross-fading or other switch tracks modes for mixes.

Stop, Seek, & Skip

Seek This setting affects how Media Center sounds when it changes position within a track.

• Standard. The old material will stop completely, there will be a brief pause, and then the new material will begin.
• Gapless. The end of the old material and the beginning of the new material are played with no gap.
• Smooth. This blends the old and new material together (cross-fade). The duration of the blend affects how noticeable it will be.

Stop This determines what happens when you select the stop button on the Player Window. You can have Media Center stop the file immediately or you can have the song fadeout.

Jump behavior This allows control over how much to jump when seeking.

Alternate Mode Settings

Media Center saves two playback settings: a default and an alternate setting. Select this and set the options for the alternate setting. To use the alternate audio settings, set the option on this dialog or toggle with the keyboard shortcut Alt+M.

Notes

Note: Some of these options will only affect the playback of an Audio CD if you have "Use Digital Playback" selected under Tools > Options > CD. Some CD drives do not recognize digital playback. If you have a problem playing Audio CDs, try disabling this option.

Changes to many of the playback settings will not take effect until playback comes to a complete stop and is then restarted.