Crossfades

[fwafitz]

I posted this message on the Host Tips & Techniques Forum but so far no takers, so I'll try here...(what's the difference in these 2 forums anyway? The content seems pretty much the same. How do I decide which forum to post a question on, or do I post to both?)

Anyway, on to my topic...

Please help me get a better understanding of "crossfades" --- how and when they are used, what are they good for, how they fix things, when not to use them, any possible applications, specific examples (especially related to live drumkit editing), anything!... Right now, I don't have any idea how they are utilized.

Also, if you know of other places where I can go to learn more about this topic, please point me in that direction.

Thanks for any info.

[rsmith123]

Hi,
I have been right where you are and I didn't get much direction from people so I am inclined to help you.

Crossfades are used when joining 2 pieces of audio together.

They will keep the pops and clicks out of your playback. When joing two pieces, I use tha smallest size possible that will cover the transition enough to avoid pops. This is usually 25-50 samples. I have had to use larger ones at times 100-300 samples when I screw up in editing but even then, they have always been invisible.

Hope it helps. [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[Roy Howell]

fwafitz,
rsmith has given you a good definiton, I think, but check this out too. Say you have pasted 2 Audio pieces together, of any kind. At the point where they meet, often there is an audible 'pop' that you don't want in your mix.
An easy way to use Crossfade to fix that pop, is to hightlite the smallest area possible, from the end of first Audio section, and into the beginning of the second Audio section, right? Then just hit Ctrl/F, which will bring up the PT Crossfade window, and hit OK.
If it says something like 'Out of bounds....', again tell it to go ahead and do it.

It works great, and only recently did my friend Phil O'Keefe tell me about it.(I'm so dim sometimes...hehe)

Hope that helps you too,
~Roy [img]images/icons/wink.gif[/img]

[homerg]

What if you are consolidating a track made up of several punch-ins, should I create the crossfades first ot will the consolidation take the pops out?

[Roy Howell]

homerg,
I'm not sure that just consolidating will take out all the pops. I've consolidated before and still heard pops. Usually, I've done all the crossfading I'm gonna do first anyway, before I consolidate a track.
Phil will probably know if consolidating alone gets the pops out.

[Bastiaan]

The problem lies in the sudden change of level in the waveform. Hence the pop. Consolidating does not fix that. Bouncing to disk will not fix that.

Either go in on samplelevel and draw it in, or make a small crossfade as Roy suggested.

All the professional digital system suffer from this problem...protools TDM has some feature that will perform the crossfade automatically, and dat-machines, ADAT-machines and digital betacam-machines will make a small crossfade too.....

[Roy Howell]

Also, I know that Phil had tried to find out if we could 'mass' crossfade a whole track (where there are several 'pops'), and we can't. We have to crossfade them one by one. But still, at least there is a solution...