[QLab] audio fade cue help please, Qlab 1

[James Corner]

Hi all at Qlab list.

I dont seem to understand the fade cue for audio files, I get the absolute fade in and fade out ok,
but when I try a relative fade so a track drops a littlle in volume over time, it keeps getting louder,
and the couple of times it did fade down it faded to nothing,
Can someone please spell it out for me step by step what I should be doing. Im sorry but I just dont get it.

Any help greatly appreciated.

Regards

James

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[Jason Knox]

James,

I pretty much always use the absolute fade type on fade cues.  If you've figured out how to fade out an audio file with a fade cue you know all the basics that you need to accomplish a lot of stuff.

To fade down an audio cue (or "sound" cue as it's called in version 1) it's basically the same as fading out an audio cue except you don't put the fade cue level faders all the way to the bottom and you don't stop the target cue when the fade is complete.

Here's an excerpt from an upcoming "fade and group cue" tutorial that I'm (slowly) working on.  Hopefully this will help explain absolute vs. relative fades a bit (ignore the cue number and tutorial specific references).

One simple key to understanding the difference between absolute and relative fades is to think of absolute fades as fades that adjust levels “to” a specific dB level, whereas relative fades adjust levels “by” a specific dB level.  Looking at Cues 2312 to 2315, which use absolute fades, you’ll see that the levels in 2312 begin at 0 dB, Cue 2313 then brings the levels down to -18 dB, 2314 brings the levels back up to 0 dB, and finally 2315 takes the levels to -INF and stops playback. So the level settings for the Audio cue and three Fade cues in sequence are 0, -18, 0, and -INF.  Notice that this exact sequence of values is used for the Audio and Fade cues in 2316 to 2319, but the outcome is very different because the Fade cue types are set to relative as opposed to absolute.  Therefore, the levels in 2316 begin at 0 dB, Cue 2317 adjusts the levels down by -18 dB, 2318 adjusts the levels by 0 dB, and… oh… there’s our problem.  Using a relative fade to adjust the levels by 0dB will not change the levels at all.  Therefore the level simply stays at -18 dB until the next cue fades it out completely.  Cues 2320 to 2323 use relative fades correctly, bringing the levels down by -18 dB and then back up by +18 dB before fading out.  As I mentioned before, I tend to be more comfortable using absolute fades, but Cues 2324 to 2327 illustrate the usefulness of relative fades.  If you wanted to change the overall level of the music complete with ducking you only need to adjust the levels on the Audio cue if the Fade cues are set to the relative fade type.

Hope this helps.

Jason

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