Only once in my lifetime have I seen a digital audio playback device
with a feature called Auto Cue. Auto Cue is mode in which reaching
the end of a track (other than the last one), instead of advancing to
and playing the subsequent track, pauses at the track boundary.
Although useful and cheap to implement, most customers have never
even heard of Auto Cue, because equipment manufacturers have
deliberately omitted it from consumer-grade products so as to force
radio stations and the like to buy much more expensive 'professional'
units including the feature, which is not merely useful but mandatory
for their workflow.
I don't know much about CD-ROM support for Auto Cue, except that
Apple's OS 9 driver allowed an application to set an arbitrary point
at which to stop (which of course no application took advantage of),
but not pause. Using this mechanism would involve spinning down, and
then spinning up, the disc. Perhaps there was a limitation in the
hardware, which of course is off-topic here.
Which brings us to discless digital audio playback, which is all
software. Why the hell can't I tell iTunes or my iPod to finish the
current track and then pause? Why is it my job as the user to
babysit the thing until *just* the right moment, which invariably
passes before I can hit pause and results in a nasty shard of
unwanted sound?
Maybe I have to give them my credit card number to enable that feature?
Josh
