The new version of LCDJ (v1.2) has a number of enhancements over the previous version. Here is a short list of what has been changed (minor bug fixes, as always, are not included in this list):
- Added an option to stream only Aux Inputs to Shoutcast/Icecast servers. This should be helpful for those who use an external mixer.
- Added an Event calendar of sorts for full radio automation. 2 different kinds of events can be added; Individual titles (for things like TOTH) and random (which allows you to select a folder to pull random songs from). The random option allows you to also set a time interval and tracks from your selected folder will be pulled at random from that folder over x minutes. These titles are added one at a time to the play queue. Whenever a new event begins, the play queue is first cleared of any pending songs. The Repeat option at the top of the tab will set whether or not the entire calendar should repeat when the end of the calendar is reached. The pull-down menu allows you to choose between the 3 different calendars and each of those calendars can contain as many events as you like. There are still a number of changes that will likely need to be done with this to improve performance and add more flexibility but, it is at least a start.
- Winamp DSP plug-in support. Allows for adding many of the popular Winamp DSP plugins to LCDJ. 2 options are also available in the Plugin tab. They are; Remember and Open on Startup. Remember will simply store the path to your chosen plugin while "Open on Startup" will (as its name implies) set your chosen DSP to open with LCDJ. Currently it allows for only one plugin at a time to be used, but future changes will likely include multiple plugin support.
- Waveforms on each player. Waveforms are displayed at the bottom of each player for each song. A left mouse click on the waveform will set a start point and a right click will set a stop point. This start/stop setup is still a bit buggy at the moment and does not always work properly.
- 10 band EQ on each player. Underneath each player is a down arrow button which (when clicked) will open the EQ for that player. Click the same button again to hide the EQ. Settings for each band are from +15 to -15 db. The "R" button will reset all band levels to 0.
- Added more options to encoder bitrates.
- Added OPUS encoder and playback support. The encoder is untested at the moment however. If anyone has an Icecast OPUS stream setup and tests this encoder, please let me know how it worked out for you.
Additional planned improvements are too many to list really. But one thing I will mention is this. After a lot of thinking (and testing), I have decided to make 1 very important change to the way LCDJ works. I will be removing the database all together and switching to XML files as a database of sorts. This may sound strange to many folks here, but I have a few reasons for attempting this change.
1. XML is portable and platform independent (it's really nothing more than a formatted text file.)
2. XML can be treated like a database for programming purposes anyway.
3. Eliminates the necessity for users to install any database at all.
4. If you are running LCDJ on a server directly, the xml files can be parsed (i.e. via php) and integrated into a web page much more easily than a database. Eventually, I could add an option to ftp the xml files to a remote server as well.
In LCDJ v1.2a1, the Events section is setup using xml instead of a database already and seems to be working pretty well so far.
I still have quite a bit of testing to do on this, but I believe it to be worth a shot. Since I am not sure yet how it will effect the overall performance of LCDJ, this is certainly not written in stone. If it doesn't work out, well, I'll just scrap the idea. But, at least I will have tried. 
A couple of items with v1.2a1 that have been brought to my attention that will be fixed for the 1.2a2 release.
1. Song title updates aren't working properly (only artist being sent instead of both artist and title).
2. Crashing with a Framework error (if someone would please send me the entire error message, I should be able to fix the problem)
3. Timers (Remaining, played, etc.) may be in too dark of a font making them difficult to read. This will be adjusted for the 1.2a2 release.
Please post any further bugs/issues in the forum or via the bug tracker. This will help me to track the progress.
Just remember this is an Alpha release and WILL have some bugs/typos/yada yada yada...
