Add silence to start of Album playback

[enjdee]

Hi, hope someone can help me.

I'm running MinimServer on a ReadyNAS Duo v2, mostly playing ripped or downloaded FLAC files. I'm using a Cambridge CXNv2 to render the music, feeding an Arcam AV950 processor.

My problem occurs when the CXN is connected via digital to the Arcam (my preferred setup, due to the Arcam's superior DAC circuitry) - if I queue up a track, the first half-second or so of the music is missing. If playing an album (which is what I do 99% of the time), only the first track is truncated, and all subsequent tracks play fine (and no gapless issues either).

If the Cambridge CXN is connected to the Arcam via analogue, there is no problem at all - it plays perfectly. Also, to rule out the Arcam struggling with other digital streams, if I play a CD into the same digital input to the AV950, again it plays perfectly.

I talked to Arcam and Cambridge - the conclusion is that over digital, the Arcam takes slightly too long to recognise the digital stream, and so misses the first fraction of a second of music. Given the relative age of the AV950, Arcam will never provide a firmware upgrade now, so I need to find another solution.

So, sorry about the long story - to my question. Is it possible to add a few milliseconds of silence to the start of an album via Minimserver? My hope is that by doing this it will "trigger" the Arcam, before the music itself actually starts.

[simoncn]

It is possible to use MinimStreamer with FFmpeg to add silence before a track but this would apply to all tracks, which is not what you want.

[enjdee]

(16-07-2020 20:53)simoncn Wrote:  It is possible to use MinimStreamer with FFmpeg to add silence before a track but this would apply to all tracks, which is not what you want.

Yeah, unfortunately - solve one problem and create another (worse) one! Thanks anyway.

If the worst comes to the worst, I may have to re-rip some of the biggest offenders - I use dBpoweramp, which I think has the ability to add silence at the start. I'd rather avoid that if I could though!

[simbun]

I can't think of any nice workarounds for this, but for me personally changing the track itself is the worst of all of them, as it would mean the tracks sector count will increase and therefore the majority of tagging lookup routines will fail e.g. matching to MusicBrainz/Discogs etc., and that AccurateRip verification would fail.

It's a pain, but you could create a new track containing just silence, and always queue it up first before adding any other tracks/albums, or even add a silent track to each album (with a track number of 0). If you were to add a new track to each album you'd need to make sure you didn't include that when matching to MusicBrainz/Discogs, or create a CUE sheet for the album excluding track 0 for verification with AccurateRip.

That being said, I am very particular about my setup, so if none of the drawbacks bother you I'm sure there are programs out there that can add silence to tracks without having to re-rip.

[DavidL]

(17-07-2020 10:59)enjdee Wrote:  

(16-07-2020 20:53)simoncn Wrote:  It is possible to use MinimStreamer with FFmpeg to add silence before a track but this would apply to all tracks, which is not what you want.

Yeah, unfortunately - solve one problem and create another (worse) one! Thanks anyway.

If the worst comes to the worst, I may have to re-rip some of the biggest offenders - I use dBpoweramp, which I think has the ability to add silence at the start. I'd rather avoid that if I could though!

How many tracks are involved?
One solution would be to use audio editing software to add some silence at the start of each of these tracks.
[I use TwistedWave on a Mac for editing live recordings into tracks. It has an 'add silence' option for which you can specify the length of silence.]

[enjdee]

Hi, thanks for the suggestions. Good point @simbun, that physically changing a track would upset other tagging routines, and break AccurateRip - maybe need to rethink that one then.

Not sure how many albums are likely to need "treatment" - but essentially it would be audible on anything that doesn't fade in at the start, I guess (so Dark Side of the Moon is fine, but something like Mark Knopfler's Sailing to Philadelphia is fractionally truncated). Good excuse to listen to the entire collection again, I suppose! :-)

The idea of adding a track 0 makes sense, so it doesn't affect the integrity of the music tracks - I did try something like that a while ago, but couldn't get it to work at the time (I didn't have much time to play, however, so will have another go).

I asked Cambridge if they could include an option in a future firmware update to add a momentary delay to the start of playback. Their support guy agreed it was technically possible and would suggest it to their engineers, but thought it unlikely to happen - I guess most of their customers either are happy to use analogue outs, or have DACs that latch on to a signal faster than my Arcam. I know the DACs in the CXN are very good, but it does seem a shame not to be able to use the even better Arcam circuitry!

[simbun]

(17-07-2020 13:11)enjdee Wrote:  The idea of adding a track 0 makes sense, so it doesn't affect the integrity of the music tracks - I did try something like that a while ago, but couldn't get it to work at the time (I didn't have much time to play, however, so will have another go).

I just tried it and it does work, but MinimServer doesn't pass a tracknumber of 0 to the control point so you have to decide how you'd like it to look.

To create a stereo (to make it Red Book compliant) track consisting of just silence in Audacity just do:
Generate > Silence (set how long you want the silence to be)
Select > All
Edit > Duplicate
Click the drop-down on the top of the first track labelled 'Audio Track' and choose 'Make Stereo Track'
Export > 'Export Audio' in the file format you require

Then copy all the tags from another track in the album (removing any the aren't applicable), change tracknumber to 0 , title to '0.' plus anything else you might want in the display for that track.

Before I do a full music backup I run a CUETools (using AccurateRip) verify pass across my library to make sure nothing has been corrupted, so for these albums it's best to create a .CUE file excluding track 0 so CUETools can do its thing (it prioritises .CUE over the files themselves).

It's not elegant, but it'll work :-)

[enjdee]

(17-07-2020 14:58)simbun Wrote:  

(17-07-2020 13:11)enjdee Wrote:  The idea of adding a track 0 makes sense, so it doesn't affect the integrity of the music tracks - I did try something like that a while ago, but couldn't get it to work at the time (I didn't have much time to play, however, so will have another go).

I just tried it and it does work, but MinimServer doesn't pass a tracknumber of 0 to the control point so you have to decide how you'd like it to look.

To create a stereo (to make it Red Book compliant) track consisting of just silence in Audacity just do:
Generate > Silence (set how long you want the silence to be)
Select > All
Edit > Duplicate
Click the drop-down on the top of the first track labelled 'Audio Track' and choose 'Make Stereo Track'
Export > 'Export Audio' in the file format you require

Then copy all the tags from another track in the album (removing any the aren't applicable), change tracknumber to 0 , title to '0.' plus anything else you might want in the display for that track.

Before I do a full music backup I run a CUETools (using AccurateRip) verify pass across my library to make sure nothing has been corrupted, so for these albums it's best to create a .CUE file excluding track 0 so CUETools can do its thing (it prioritises .CUE over the files themselves).

It's not elegant, but it'll work :-)

That's brilliant, many thanks for the detailed steps. Looks like a wee job for the weekend then on a single album, see if it resolves the issue, and then set to work on the rest (it may take some time! )

[simbun]

(17-07-2020 15:10)enjdee Wrote:  (it may take some time! )

If you have a consistent naming and folder structure it may be trivial to automate it. For me that would simply be, wherever there's a file called 01.01.flac create a new track called 01.00.flac making the tag changes previously discussed.

I've got some scripts from previous library cleanups that could be cobbled together to do most of it, although they are bash scripts, so if you're windows based you'd need to install something like Ubuntu on Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

[Donuk]

Years ago, in the good old DOS days, when one had to lift the bonnet of one's computer, I used to have a generally available utility called SWEEP. I suspect it was made from a batch file using Copy. It does exactly what is needed here: it copied a specified file to all subdirectories from a given directory. It would also delete any file from anywhere in a directory tree.

I note that there is still reference to it on line and it seems to be available in various DOS nurd forums. I only use Mac, and I suspect there is a way to do it using rsync.

Not a feature I need. Actually instead of having a few seconds silence at the beginning of each CD, why not have a file of tick, tick, tick recorded from vinyl run-in grooves. That would make one's system sound a whole lot more vinyl.

Donuk sunny downtown York.