Guys,

Crossfading songs together always sounds dreadful.
The feature which is needed is not a crossfade but an OVERLAP. It only needs to be a second or two (max) and would make stations sound far more professional.

Think about it, the previous song is tailing out anyway, and we need to hear the first notes of the incoming song or it'll sound a mess.

The ability to surpress an overlap on a given song would help where certain songs have a hard ending (just a tick box on each song).

Right?

I agree cross-fading isn't all that great and it takes up far too much CPU when you have more than a few stations using it. But i don't get what you mean by overlap. How is this overlap method not a cross-fade ?

http://servers.internet-radio.org.uk

I mean, keep the levels constant - don't perform any actual fades. Just let the next track start a second or two before the previous one ends, but have it start at full volume.

Anybody who ever fades in a song should be shot - unless he's expertly beatmatching a dance mix.

The last few seconds of a song are generally so quiet they sound like silence on air (even if trimmed). Auto DJ stations sound full of gaps (even if, technically, there is quiet sound present at the music junctions).

I understand what you're saying and can't argue with your logic, but please remember that Centova Cast is just a control panel... it does no audio processing itself.  The crossfading capabilities are provided by the source software (ices, sc_trans, etc.), not by Centova Cast.  So until/unless such a feature is added to the source software, Centova Cast isn't able to take advantage of it.

That said, if such functionality is ever developed we'll most certainly add the relevant UI elements to Centova Cast.