Playback
Output devices
- Main/Headphones. Selection of the sound cards recognized in the system. Even if only one sound card is installed, several selection options are occasionally offered, but then they have little relevance. This selection is actually only interesting if a second sound card is actually installed (or connected via USB). Then you can select over which card the main output should run, and over which the headphones for trial listening should run. More about the headphone function of Nemp in the Headphones section.
- MIDI playback. For the playback of MIDI files so-called SoundFonts are needed. Since the focus of Nemp is not on MIDI files, these (often very large) soundfont files are not supplied. Select the soundfont file you want to use for MIDI playback.
- Buffer size. Default: 500ms. A larger buffer can in some cases avoid stuttering if it is not always possible to read fast enough from the source (hard disk, flash drive, CD). However, this also makes changes to the equalizer settings or effects take effect with a greater delay.
- Floating-Point Channels. So-called floating point channels provide better audio quality, but can lead to hiccups under certain circumstances. Nemp can automatically detect if this feature is supported by the system. In case of problems: Turn off.
Fading
Default: On. Allows for a smoother transition when changing titles and fast-forwarding within a title. Fading duration can be specified separately for both cases. Fading should be disabled for very short tracks, and slow fading when clicking Stop or Pause can be disabled if desired.
Since version 5.1 there is the possibility to prevent crossfading between live recordings, where this is often unpleasant. You can specify how live recordings are to be identified. The default setting searches for the term "live" in the title, the album name and the "extended tags".
Pause between tracks
- Skip silence at the end of tracks. Default: On. Nemp can detect silence at the end of a track and then initiates the playback of the next track earlier, if necessary, to achieve playback of the playlist without pauses.
The threshold value specifies at which volume Nemp should assume silence to be skipped. Small values like -10db will cause the track to stop very early if the volume drops only slightly. Values of -40db or more will only jump to the next title when the volume of the title has already been greatly reduced. Preset is a value of -40db.
Since this detection is only started when the title is already playing and may take a few seconds, it may happen that this function does not always work as expected with very short titles. Very short means less than 5-10 seconds, so this is not a limitation for most cases. - Add extra silence between track. Default: Off. If no continuous playback is desired, but on the contrary an extended pause between the titles, an artificial pause can be inserted between the titles.
This is the opposite function to fading. This function is apparently useful for conventional dance events where a longer pause between individual titles or dances is explicitly desired.
Visualization
- Visualization. Default: On, 25fps. This refers to the bars bouncing up and down in the main window. The refresh rate is only a rough estimate and not an exact value.
- Scroll title in taskbar. Default: Off. Relic from previous times. In earlier Windows versions, not only the program icon but also the program name was displayed in the taskbar. Nemp could scroll the current title there. You don't need that anymore.
Advanced
- Use safe playback. Default: Off. An option related to variable bitrate files. With such files, it may be necessary to scan the entire file for accurate scrolling. By default, this is done in the background after the title is started, which may cause problems (but usually does not).
With safe playback, the file is first scanned completely before playback is started. However, this delays the start of playback noticeably for larger files.