Always Play – 1.2.2

Fixes

• Fixed silence / long delays when switching tracks (especially noticeable when skipping backward and on game startup). The cause was that a track's readiness to play used to require volume analysis (RMS) to finish first-an operation that could take several seconds for files never analyzed before-before the track could start playing at all.
• Opening an audio file and analyzing its volume now happen independently: a track becomes ready to play as soon as it's opened (typically tens of milliseconds), while its volume is brought to the correct level during playback if needed, without delaying the start.
• Optimized track prefetching system: Now correctly detects the shuffle mode and no longer wastes effort predicting upcoming tracks for modes where the actual pick is inherently unpredictable. Previously, this constantly overloaded the preload queue for no benefit and pushed the actually needed track out of it.
• Fixed constant preload-queue recalculation on failed playback attempts. Previously, every such attempt would restart preparation for an entirely new set of tracks, making the problem worse instead of solving it.

Internal (Development)

• WavPlayer: Volume analysis (RMS) moved to its own thread/queue (VOLUME_EXECUTOR), separate from the file-opening queue (PRELOAD_EXECUTOR). Accordingly, preload() and the background volume backfill in crossfadeTo() are now decoupled.
• PlaybackScheduler.tickPreload(): Removed the "waiting on cache" flag from the key that determines whether the preload window needs recomputing, as it was causing unnecessary recalculations on every failed playback attempt.
• QueuePlanner: Prediction of upcoming tracks is now only built for deterministic ordering modes (SEQUENTIAL, SHUFFLE_NO_REPEAT). For other modes where the real pick doesn't depend on prior state, no prediction is made.
• PlaybackScheduler: Regular (non-playlist) autoplay now gets the same protection against starting before the cache is ready that playlists already had (MIN_PRELOAD_TICKS, formerly PLAYLIST_MIN_PRELOAD_TICKS).