Ridiculous n00b question about crossfades...

[AdamWathan]

This is the most embarassing question ever but coming from Reaper it appears that crossfades are handled a lot differently in other DAWS...

Basically, what the hell is happening in this scenario in Logic?

In Reaper, to crossfade regions they must overlap, and it fades the item on the left OUT over the overlap period and fades the item on the right IN over the overlap period. By the nature of how this works, you CANNOT crossfade items that don't overlap. If there are two items next to each other, one must be extended to create the crossfade. Even when autocrossfades are created at split points, it is overlapping the items automatically and you can visually see this.

In Logic, how the hell is it crossfading items that don't overlap? Is it extending the item on the right backwards and extending the item on the left forwards to the end points of the fade but just not showing it on the screen? And if that's the case, how come Logic will let me crossfade two items that don't even contain data past the ends of the regions? Like, how can you extend an item early to crossfade it if there is nothing earlier to extend? Like, in the example above, it looks like the first region starts to fade out then cuts abruptly at about 60% volume, then the next region cuts in abruptly at about 60% volume and fades up to full. This makes zero sense to me but I don't know what else it could possible be doing since there is no information from the right region to be faded in while the left side fades out and vise versa...

Hopefully this makes sense and someone can explain to me the mechanics behind crossfades in Logic, I really want to understand exactly what it's doing in these situation

 

[Tommy Gun]

Well, you can create a crossfade over just about any part of a .wav in Logic, Pro Tools, etc. Basically the audio is going to playback whatever your crossfaded part shows visually. But just because you CAN put a crossfade anywhere, doesn't mean you should, obviously. Reaper has tried to take the thought work out of it with the "auto-crossfades" bit. But, with pretty much any other DAW, you handle crossfading yourself (or I do anyway), so the software allows you to place any kind of fade pretty much anywhere you want. In your particular example, a crossfade isn't really appropriate. Perhaps two separate fades, a fade-out on the left, and a fade-in on the right, but that's just a guess from glancing at the wav forms.

 

[gabriel g.]

in logic 8 you have a lot of options like crossfade/overlap..... just strech one take till it overlaps the other take (with the auto crossfade mode logic will do the crossfade)

Also you can press ESC and 0 and you have a tool to make the crossfades (and fade in/outs by hand)

hope this helps

 

[AdamWathan]

Thanks for the replies but my question is still unanswered... When you create a crossfade, is Logic extending the regions on either side to fill the crossfaded area so that it actually has material to crossfade?

"Well, you can create a crossfade over just about any part of a .wav in Logic, Pro Tools, etc. Basically the audio is going to playback whatever your crossfaded part shows visually."

That makes it sound like it won't actually crossfade anything unless they visually overlap. If I have two regions next to each other touching and I draw a crossfade in Logic, this statement makes it sound like it won't play anything from the region on the right until the play marker gets past the split point between the two regions since you can't SEE any of the region on the right overlapping the region on the left visually in the fade...

 

[Tommy Gun]

Yeah, that's what I meant by it playing back exactly what you see in your crossfade. If there is no audio there, it won't have anything to playback. That's why a crossfade does nothing for you in your example above.... nothing useful anyway.

 

[AdamWathan]

Yeah, that's what I meant by it playing back exactly what you see in your crossfade. If there is no audio there, it won't have anything to playback. That's why a crossfade does nothing for you in your example above.... nothing useful anyway.

I am talking about even when you have two audio files right next to each other touching. You are saying they won't play back faded if I added a crossfade at the point where the edit is? That defeats the whole point of crossfading...?

 

[AdamWathan]

Okay I'm fucking around in Logic now that I'm home from work and in that scenario in my first post, there is NO dropout whatsoever. It plays seamlessly over the gap. Pretty sure I understand how it's all working now.

Edit: Yup, tested it using two regions that have no extra data to extend to crossfade and it just fades to silences during the gap that way, only fills the gap if there is a hidden section of the region that it can use...

 

[AudioGeekZine]

do you really want a crossfade? a fade-out and fade-in would make more sense IMO.

 

[Saculus]

Can't you just glue the two and volume automate?

 

[AdamWathan]

do you really want a crossfade? a fade-out and fade-in would make more sense IMO.

That is just a screenshot from the Logic 9 manual, I don't personally see the use for that situation ever, it's just an extreme example of what I was trying to describe. Point is at the end of the day, even with a gap between the audio there, it still crossfades both regions completely, so no, a fade in and fade out wouldn't accomplish the same thing. It plays those regions and overlaps/fades them together as if there is no gap at all when you crossfade.

 

[AudioGeekZine]

in pro tools the region boundaries would shift on a fade like that, if there was data past what was visible.

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

if you didnt crossfade in a region like that though wouldnt you hear like a pop or a click once it got back into the audio track?

 

[setyouranchor]

Sorry to bump this thread but it saves me making a totally new one I guess

Just wondering how you edit the times of crossfades in Logic 9?

10ms, 20ms etc