I decided to split this off on a separate thread from Android Automation.
So, I've gotten Zara 1.4.1 with the Sound Solution DSP plugin to work with Exagear. But apparently Zara only ever supported DSP plugins, so it can't play Opus files through the appropriate Opus plugin. I can possibly live with that, but most of the music files I have on my phone are in Opus, and I would have to go back to the originals and reconvert to a low mp3 bitrate due to limited storage. Even then they will be at least double the size of similar quality opus files (32Kbps Opus sounds just as good as 64kbps mp3).
So I started to research if there were any other potential solutions and came up with ... drumroll please ... Winamp. And in particular, Version 2.95 of Winamp, a relatively older version.
Why? Well, there's an opus plugin for Winamp that runs in Winamp 2. In fact there are a ton of plugins, including Edcast, allowing you to stream to an IceCast server. I have no idea if this would work in the Exagear virtual machine, because I would need well before that, automation. And it turns out there is an automation plugin, WRS (Winamp Radio Scheduler) that looks remarkably similar to Zara. It was written by a radio station (Part 15 I have no idea) to solve their problems.
I've gotten both Winamp and WRS installed in Exagear, and both seem to run OK at first glance. Winamp can play opus files. The devil will be in the details with WRS, however. I'm not sure it will stack delayed jobs (their terminology for events) and how much. It doesn't support random directories either (because Winamp doesn't, it only seems to support m3u), but that can be gotten around easily.
I have to decide how much I want to play Opus files before going any further and spending more time on this software. But I thought it interesting that software 20 years ago can hold its head up high amongst current radio automation software.
I .... And it turns out there is an automation plugin, WRS (Winamp Radio Scheduler) that looks remarkably similar to Zara..
I wouldn't go so far to say that...
https://www.suprasoft.ro/wrs/doc.html
It has all the basic functionality of Zara, regardless of the relatively primitive UI.
And more, when you take into consideration Winamp and all of its plugins.
That's all I really care about.
@artisan-radio Can it also schedule events like jingles, shows at various times?
Yes. Here is a link to the documentation.
I still need to test it out fully (for example, the latest version wouldn't install, I had to use the 1.15 version - the installer couldn't find some custom controls). I also need to test out Zara fully.
What I'm now doing is thinking about whether I want Opus playing or not. That will determine where I spend my time.
@artisan-radio This must have been one of the first automation programs available for part 15 before Zara.
@mark The developer used it for his own radio station. No idea what kind of station that was.
There is a great deal of functional similarity between it and Zara. I wouldn't be surprised if the Zara developers used it as a basis for their program. Obviously, they improved the user interface.
WRS is just a scheduler that drives WinAmp. You need both, and, in fact, you have to specify a default playlist for WinAmp before WRS will install.
So you get the Winamp interface to see what songs are being played, and all that fancy graphics. The WRS interface is admittedly pretty basic, but it gets the job done.
And you have all the other Winamp plugins available at your disposal as well.
There's a website, WinAmp Heritage, that contains a whole whack of plugins. Not all. Sometimes you have to do a google search if you know the specific name of the plugin. And if you can't find a specific plugin that way, there's always the Wayback Machine to try.
Most of this stuff was developed in the early 2000's.
WinAmp was the boss for forever.