How to loop a song that has a one time intro?

Thank you! This sorta does the trick, but the transition from the intro clip to the looping clip has a bit of a hiccup. Could the song's status as an addressable be the cause the hiccup problem or am I just not using the right time values?

Also, about crossfade, is there a way to set individual crossfade settings per song? Most of the time I need crossfade set to ~2 seconds. I have a one-scene game. When the player leaves the forest area and enters the volcanic area, crossfade smooths the transition between two different area tracks.

I am curious what other alternative methods there are for achieving a one-time intro. For example, is there a function to set the current playlist controller time? So I could have the section set to loop for 0:20 and 3:00, except when I first play the song, I manually set the time "PlaylistController.SetTime(0f)" and that could override the section loop once. Is there a function like that?

Much obliged!

Thanks for letting me know what my options are. Ideally, I'd like to keep all the music to one playlist for a variety of reasons (plus, it feels kinda hacky to have 2 playlists split by songs with an intro and songs without - and then to make them function as if they were one playlist...)

You said there is a way to programmatically set the time of a song, but it's likely to cause sound artifacts. Can you expound more on what function that is? I'd like to try it and see how bad the sound artifacting is.

Another method I'm trying to explore is CustomEvents. So have the song loop on section time, 0:00 - 3:00. And through an event, switch the section time to 0:20 - 3:00 through a timer or such. Would this work? I'd like to try it, but hit a snag getting events to work. I'm using the provided MA_SampleCustomEventReceiver (attached to camera in my scene). However, no events ever fire. Here's a picture of my setup: imgur.com/h1osKp2

Sorry for all the questions. Appreciate your help!

I do have shuffle turned off. The suggested solution you have does work, BUT the main problem with it is that it's incompatible with cross-fading. Without crossfading, transitioning between 2 areas sounds too abrupt.





Custom events would have been my means to change song or playlist variables via script at runtime. For now, I've worked around events by simulating it in FixedUpdate() and just checking when the song is ready. I figured it would be best to know if the solution I was pursuing even worked first before going through the work of getting events to work. And it turns out that it doesn't ...

• The first setup I tried was to have sectionStartTime and sectionEndTime set to the looping start and end, and then to set songAudio.time = 0 when the song played. I figured this would make the song play from the beginning, and then when it reached the section end, the “loop section” logic would take over, and everything would work. Unfortunately, it turns out that if you set songAudio.time = 0f and rewinded the song 20 seconds from sectionStartTime, the loop_section would also loop 20 seconds earlier - so it doesn’t reach the end and will loop prematurely.
• The second setup I tried was to have sectionStartTime and sectionEndTime set to 0 and the song's full length respectively. Then when the song played and reached the midpoint, set sectionStartTime forward to 20 seconds (when the loop began) via script. This one showed the most promise, but it'd be fractions of a second off. So the first loop doesn't hit correctly.

So, like you forewarned the sound artifacts will be present ...

---

So having exhausted that avenue, the only other solution I can think of now is to do what you suggest, and then to separately simulate cross-fading. So turn on gapless switching, turn off cross-fading, and have "2" songs (that are really the same song- one covers the intro and one covers the loop).



Do all that, and then simulate the cross-fade for when moving between 2 areas via scripting... Can you tell me your thoughts for how to best simulate cross-fading between two songs?



Thanks again for your help!

Yes. That is exactly what I'd like to do. How best to achieve that?

Mmm... that does sound pretty hacky. There'd have to be 4 "songs" per song. One for the intro, one for the loop. Multiply that by 2 since a song would need to would occupy both playlists (the game is non-linear adventure, so song A, B, and C may each lead into one another).

Hmmm... at this point, it seems our best solution, all factors considered, is to give up on the idea of play once intros. Going to have a chat with the musician about it, but wanted to know what our options were.

Thanks again for answering my questions!