Wayne's dashboard

Back when I was running a nForce motherboard the sound drivers had a "Night Mode" which would "compress" the highs and lows so you could hear everything clearly at a softer volume. A sort of "Don't wake the neighbours" mode. (Or the better half.)

I found it useful at the time, maybe others would too.

I believe this is the technical term for it: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dynamic_...

This idea occurred to me while asking here about what to do about my Christmas music. I've written up some ideas on my blog as I was hashing this over in my mind and I'm going to repost it here to get others opinion. ('Cause really, no one cares about my blog. ;)

It's a little wordy, but I hope it gets the point across.

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The new version of SongBird is amazing. It just gets better and better. I'm hoping that by version 1.0 I'll be ready to switch away from iTunes.

One of the things I'm going to need to be fixed before then is what do to about Christmas music. If I rate a Christmas song a full 5 stars, it'll show up in my Highest Rated playlist. Which would be fine, if it was December. During the summer months when I'm arguing to turn on the A/C it's not exactly something I want to hear.

Under iTunes, I simply create a smart playlist called Christmas Music then do a select all on the results and uncheck the songs. Then none of the other playlists will include those songs.

Nice.

Songbird doesn't have that feature yet, nor can I create a Christmas Music list and tell the Highest Rated playlist to ignore songs that are also in Christmas Music. But these are all things that are going to be fixed.

But how about if I want it more then fixed? Why can't Songbird be better?

Why can't Songbird recognise when it's appropriate to play Christmas songs?

Or for that matter, what about other types of tracks? Like Comedy. Once again, I might give Robin Williams 5-stars but I don't want that showing up in Highest Rated when I just hit play.

I started to think about this more and more after I initially posted in the Songbird forums.

Imagine a way to give Songbird some idea of what's going on around it? Such as the time of year, time of day, or maybe even it's location. Then let it be able to tune playlists to those situations.

Time of year: When to play seasonal music and when not to. Christmas is one of the main points here, but I also have tracks which are really only for Halloween. I also have a CD of national anthems - wouldn't it be cool to play those on the nation's respective "<Insert Country Name Here> Day"? Maybe play Happy Birthday on your birthday?

Time of day: Some people would like to hear Nine Inch Nails in the morning, some wouldn't. Maybe you'd like your playlist to blend into softer music before bedtime on a weekday and maybe a little more rock'en on Friday night. Those who have left their teenage punk roots behind but not their music might prefer if some tracks would be kept out of rotation until the kids are asleep.

Location: Laptops are starting to come with GPS and a computer can get an idea of where it is based off it's IP address. Your workplace might frown on Gangsta Rap, or maybe you just stay more focused if songs have no lyrics. If you're enroute somewhere you might want travelling music.

So how would this work? I'm not sure.

My first thought is to have a new selection appear just under Library and have it called something like BirdBrain ('cause it's smart) or DJ Bird ('cause it does all the mixing for you) or a more "Apple" style name of Concierge ('cause it thinks it knows what's best for you). And have it as a generally more intelligent version of Party Shuffle on iTunes.

Or maybe that would keep it too separate from the rest of things? Perhaps it should just work in the background with the main Library and the smart playlists that are already there. I imagine normal playlists would be left alone since they are made with specific tracks.

As for what it would do in the background I can see at this point two main tasks. Based off rules which the user can create (or perhaps Songbird could even learn) Songbird would enable or disable tracks from playing outright - or change the statistical chance of a song being selected for random play.

At first there was talk of iTunes' randomization not being random enough. Then Apple made a feature of making it less random with the ability to focus on songs from the same album or artist. I'm suggesting to take that level of randomness down another notch.

A quick scenario on how this might work:

The Rules

Global (In place unless a following rule comes into effect)

• No Music tagged with: Christmas, Comedy, Spoken Word, Halloween, Anthem, Bad

6 AM - 9 AM Everyday

• No Music tagged with: Heavy, Loud, Industrial, Techno, Sad, Blues


• Increase chance of Music tagged: Easy Listening, Morning Music, Soft, Energetic, Happy

9 PM - 12 PM Worknights (Sunday Night - Thursday Night)

• Gradually Decrease chance of music tagged: Energetic, Peppy, High Tempo, Loud


• Gradually Increase chance of music tagged: Slow, Quite, Sleepy, Relaxed, Ambient

While At Work:

• No Music Tagged: Course Language, Loud


• Significantly Increase chance of Music tagged: Instrumental

December 1 - December 24

• Gradually Significantly Increase chance of Music tagged: Christmas

July 1

• Significantly Increase chance of track:" O Canada.mp3"

What it means

The date and time settings are obvious. "No Music" is simply disabling of tracks from playing. "Increase/Decrease chance" means to boost or hinder the "randomness" of a track being played. While "Significantly" simply means exactly that, I'm thinking you could choose a few levels of randomness interference. Increase Chance, Modestly Increase Chance, Significantly Increase Chance or something like that.

"Gradually" affects how the rule is implemented for the duration of the rule. So if Significantly Increase boosts a tracks chances by, say 90%, and that rule is in effect for 3 hours/days/months then the statistical boost starts off low and and then increases to 90% at the end of the rule duration.

So in the Christmas rule above, you only get a few Christmas songs at first and then get many by Christmas Eve.

So what do you think? Good idea?