A freshly imported library is a list of files. Turning it into something a rotation clock can select from takes three batch jobs, all of which run in the background.
1. Loudness analysis
Preferences → Broadcast Engine → Analyze all tracks walks the current playlist on a background thread with live progress, filling the loudness cache.
Until this runs, tracks play at whatever level they were mastered at, and the difference between a 1980s master and a modern one is audible and irritating.
Results cache to disk keyed by path, size and modification time, so this is a one-time cost per file. A warm-up service also queues missing entries after imports, limited to two concurrent analyses so it cannot compete with playback.
2. Cue point detection
Automation → Analyze Library Cue Points runs intro and outro detection across the whole music library.
Detection works in layers: RMS frames for leading and trailing silence, an energy envelope pass to refine positions, then a peak-transient pass for tightly trimmed files with no silence at all. Each result carries confidence scores and a review flag.
Manual cues can be preserved rather than overwritten. An operator who set a marker by ear outranks the algorithm, and the software should assume so.
3. Library analysis
The AI Library Analyzer runs deterministic library and cue checks, including a fix-missing-cues batch. Despite the name it does not require any model to be configured for the "Analyze library…" path — it is grouped with the AI tools by menu placement, not by dependency.
Checking your work
After these, the schedule confidence scan tells you what is still outstanding on a loaded playlist: missing files, missing cue points, tracks with no loudness cache, weak rotation category matches.
Ready, Review or Risk on the status bar, with a detail window behind it.
The order that makes sense
- Import folders; let metadata load in the background.
- Assign categories in bulk, using ADS, ID and VT prefixes for imaging.
- Run loudness analysis.
- Run cue point detection.
- Build a rotation clock and generate an hour.
- Read the preview timeline before committing.
Skipping steps three and four is the most common reason a first generated hour sounds worse than expected.