Since we're all hobby broadcasters here, allow me to sing the praises of the best fully automated system I've used so far. RadioDJ, which I've heard of for years but it wasn't until this year when I figured out how to get it to work. It's a bit more complex, and uses a MySQL server to store all your songs and settings.
Attached is a screenshot of my radioDJ in action. First off, you can see at the bottom right a countdown clock that says WHAR TOH. It's an automated action that automatically adds my TOH ID in the log, so at the TOH it'll play on its own. The log itself also is automated. I am able to build a clock. This means each song is categorized into a specific decade or genre, and each slot in the clock is the same. So, the log is generated by itself according to what I picked for each slot, allowing for a very consistent sound throughout the day. Even more interesting is that at midnight, it switches to an overnight clock, of more obscure and left of the dial songs, and switches back to my daytime clock at 6am.
It also allows me to voicetrack the day, so if I want to spend a few hours the day beforehand voicetracking, I can "be live" the day after. You can also, when adding songs into the system, add sweepers to the beginning of the song that will always play with that sweeper. In terms of the transitions between songs, it automatically finds the fade out of each song, and transitions seamlessly between tracks.
Overall, RadioDJ has transformed WHAR into a tightly ran station, sounding as good (with the help of stereotool) if not better than the local commercial outlets. I'll be happy to answer any questions you have in the comments.
I am using Play It which like Zara accesses your tracks from your computer and remembers your settings without a server. The silence detector never worked right with Zara and used the overlap to shorten the gap between songs, jingles, etc. but still couldn't get it to be truly gapless.
Tried to download Radio DJ but got pissed off when it wouldn't work without an extra server installed. So I then installed that mySOL thing but still errors came up and couldn't get it to just work so I said screw this, deleted it all and tried PlayIt and it's been great with smooth gapless operation running 24/7 on my computer I use for broadcasting ever since. The silence detection is great and eliminates the dead air between tracks and I just use 1 second overlap setting. Play It also keeps a log of what was played date and time although I haven't gone to look to see how far back the log starts from.
Don't know why Radio DJ gave me so much trouble. You may have said it when you said it's a "little" more complex. I assume Radio DJ uses the computer sound card and to get EQ I have the computer output going to a Behringer mini FBQ 9 band equalizer.
But I remember seeing something about Radio DJ having a plug in that has compression and EQ? Is that with the pay version?
Play It also shows the next 2 songs that will be coming up next.
So, to answer your question, yes radioDJ has built in audio setting like comp and EQ. But, I bypass that opting to go right into stereotool, which goes to my board, into an external behringer eurocomm compressor, then into my transmitter.