MACKIE HDR24/96 - Manual (Page 113)

HDR 24/96
A 10-millisecond fade is automatically generated at the beginning (fade-in) and end (fade-out) of
each region. These fades occur at the start and stop of any recording, and also at the ends of any
Cut or Split within a region. The duration of
the fade and its shape can be adjusted from the
or by the edge of the fade area with the hand
tool.
Right-clicking in the fade area with the hand
tool pops up a menu allowing you to select the
shape of the Fade-in or Fadeout curve. For a
tight edit, you may find that a very short fade
works best. On the other end of the scale, you
can create useful fadeouts and fade-ins by
dragging the fade to extend over several
seconds.
Auto X-Fade (Cross-fade)
When assembling chunks of audio, cross-fading between two adjacent sections is often employed
to make the transition between them sound seamless. In razor blade editing, we cross-fade by
making a diagonal cut across the tape, so there’s a small portion of time where both sections are
playing together. In the digital world we get the benefit of a tiny audio mixer fading one out
while the other fades in.
When Auto-cross-fading is active on the HDR24/96, a cross-fade is automatically generated over
the entire overlapping area when one region is placed on top of another. The outgoing audio
fades down, while the incoming audio fades up. Cross-fade time on the HDR24/96 is adjustable
from zero to nearly the entire region length, with three different volume curve shapes.
The cross-fade occurs in the area where the regions overlap, but, since regions and cross-fade
times can be resized at any time, it’s easy to move the point at which the cross-fade occurs and
adjust the cross-fade length for a smooth-sounding transition. Zooming in to the cross-fade area
will help you to visualize what you’re hearing, but you should always evaluate your edits by ear.
When performing musical edits, it is important not only to place the edit so that musical timing is
correct, but also to choose a splice point so that the splice is inaudible. Experiment with cross-
fade time and splice position to obtain the smoothest edits.
You’ll find the AUTO X-FADE button in the Drag/Edit section of the GUI
tools panel.
The AUTO X-FADE button toggles between a cross-fade extending over the
entire overlapping area (AUTO X-FADE On) and fixed 10-millisecond cross-fade at the
boundary of the two overlapping regions (AUTO X-FADE Off). On or off, however, there will
always be a finite cross-fade time when regions overlap unless you manually shrink it to zero.
The cross-fade curves (rate of change of volume) come in three flavors - slow, fast and linear.
These can be selected from the Region Editor or from a pop-up menu when right-clicking in the
cross-fade area. The cross-fade is represented in the on-screen waveform view by a red line
which is easily visible when zooming in to a splice.
When splicing together two continuous waveforms that are close to full-scale amplitude (editing a
didgeridoo solo, for example), it’s possible that they’ll attempt to sum to a greater-than-full-scale
value in the cross-fade region. This will both sound ugly and look ugly if you zoom in on it.
Attack this problem by changing the shape of the cross-fade curve so that both sections aren’t
near full gain simultaneously.
Technical Reference 113