Streaming audio crossfade option

It would be nice to have a crossfade option (perhaps with adjustable crossfade length?) for streaming audio when crossing parcel borders -- having it cut in & out abruptly is a bit jarring, and it hurts the immersiveness IMO.

I realize this would mean having to buffer two streams simultaneously for the (brief) duration of the crossfade, which is why I would have an option to turn it off for those who are strapped for bandwidth. Or perhaps the second stream could fade in after the first has finished fading out, so that there is no actual overlap?

Right, It damages the speakers, and it annoying when you are flying, and suddenly, *blip* no music...

Yeah definitely, and it can damage your hearing if you are using headphones. Streams are so varied in volume level its hard to know what to expect.

I fully agree with this suggestion.

They should also still bring the overall volume down as I've suggested before. I always have it at the lowest setting and the louder stations still drown out the SL sounds in many cases.

Crossfading multiple streams could be costly on bandwidth, but I'm all for fading.

I agree with the concerns. In fact, I've abandoned the sport of exploring anymore. I'm sick of being bombarded with sudde-- DAH DAH DUNNA DAH NAH!!--n music blasting into my speakers then disappearing suddenly.

John, I'd suggest turning off streams then... don't let some peoples poor musical taste (and I'm not going to get into who's is good or bad... down that path lies the dark side) spoil your enjoyment of the world.

This might introduce unintended consequences...

Example 1 - Two adjacent plots playing different streams:

[-------A-----XX][XX-----B-------]

In the area marked with X's you'll hear a mish-mash of two stations, which is the intended result if you are flying around, but what if land A is a club and the walls go to the property edge?

Example 2 - Streaming plot with empty neighbor:

[-------A-----XX][---------------]

The sound fades out on the edge of the property. This kind of defeats the whole idea of having sound across your entire property, and again might be a concern if a club or whatnot is stretching to the edge of it's plot.

Example 1 completely defeats the purpose of the "sound barrier box" option land owners have now. Also remember that sound doesn't necessarily kick in at the very edge of the property, it happens whenever there is enough buffer filled to start streaming. So maybe do a fade out whenever an audio signal is going to drop out, and a fade in whenever a signal would come on. This adds no additional bandwidth concerns, you're just adding some fancy code in place of stopTheMusic(); and startTheMusic();

I think that's more of what people have in mind, and that's what I was thinking would be ideal. I don't think there should be an area on the land parcel where they actually mix. If any mixing happens at all it should be the moment you leave a parcel and enter a new one, and only temporarily. It should have nothing to do with your location within the parcel. But again, I'd be quite happy with just a fade-out / fade-in with no mixng involved.

Siobhan, I don't mind music in general. I usually love it--I love to step into a land parcel and turn up the speakers. It's when I'm exploring--did you READ??--that I get agitated. I don't have time to go futz around with the big Edit->Preferences dialog every time I see something in the distance and I go "oohh look" and go to check it out and pass a number of loud-music enabled little parcels along the way.