Question: I am getting married this coming Saturday (May 30 2009). We are poor. So, instead of hiring a DJ, I want my friend to kick off mp3 playlists from a laptop to be played through a PA system.

Well I had a vision for some software that would be perfect for this. Here is that vision:
![alt text](https://lh3.ggpht.com/_1RtF2lqDv2g/ShxExPnO1FI/AAAAAAAAFg0/wW_pnSNT-bY/s800/may30mediaplayer.jpg)

I want this to be so that my friend can't screw this up and I think that if my vision were a reality then there would be no screwing up.

And now for the programming question? How can I play mp3's from .net code? I am currently experimenting with NAudio, but I don't know if I can make it fade the files in/out.

Are there any other free libraries out there that could help me? Thanks for any input. Time is of the essence.

PEOPLE!
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Focus on the programming question! If I ever need to work with audio in the future, your answers could be the keys to my destiny.

Answer: 
What you're describing sounds like functionality programs like iTunes and Windows Media Player have had for years, and I would recommend just using one of those two programs. However, if you do want to play MP3s from .NET, a Google search found me this: <http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/mp3player.aspx> and this: <http://www.codeproject.com/KB/audio-video/ManWMF.aspx>

Also, if your wedding is in 4 days, this probably not the best idea. I wouldn't waste your time writing a media player. If you want it to be polished and idiot-proof, use iTunes. If you want to write a media player, do it after your wedding.
As I said before,

> 
> "There are a lot of great suggestions on libraries to help with playing audio, and that's what I was really going for. I'm not really going to try to write the program. Thanks for the great responses."
> 
> 
> 

Just for those who are curious: For my wedding, I used Winamp 5.whatever and saved playlists for different parts of the wedding and prefixing the filenames with 01, 02, ... so they would show up in order in the filesystem.

To normalize the audio I downloaded a plugin called [RockSteady](http://www.winamp.com/plugins/details/1099), which worked great. For fading on stop/pause/between songs, in Options -> Preferences -> Plugins -> Output -> Nullsoft DirectSound Output Configuration -> Fading Tab I set "on end of song" to 6000 ms and "on pause/stop" to 15000 ms. Then on the other tab I checked the "Logarithmic Fades" checkbox. 

These settings made the audio sound nice and professional.