Crossfade settings on a per song level (not just global)

AnthonyB

Hi Peter,

I know there's been many discussions about Crossfade feature requests, current limitations, and how Crossfade might evolve in ST4, e.g.

https://support.stagetraxx.com/d/1275-non-global-crossfade
https://support.stagetraxx.com/d/1822-crossfade-feature
https://support.stagetraxx.com/d/2003-timecode-for-crossfade

I've just hit a scenario where I was hoping that I could have different Crossfade Fade Out settings for different songs (which I can't in ST3) and thus thought I'd check in on what you are thinking of doing with Crossfade in ST4?

I use all multitrack audio and click tracks and timestamped lyric sheets and a lot of timestamped MIDI events in the lyric sheets.
The first use case I had for a crossfade was to allow me to split a song into 2 'half-songs' so we could do some undertermined legth crowd-work mid-song. I have a long click running at the end of the first song-half so the drummer has something he is locked onto, and then when we're ready to jump into the 2nd song-half, he hits a pad that triggers a Crossfade. We have Fade In/Out at zero and he knows exactly when to hit the crossfade trigger to allow for MIDI and multitrack file start latency.

Now I've been asked to make a set intro piece of music that we want to overlap with the start of a song. I was hoping there might be a way of having song-specific Fade Out, but no. So my choices are:

Change the Global Fade Out setting between sets to suit the different song requirements (quite undesirable as I'm sure I'll forget to either change it, or revert it, one gig 🙂 )
Create a brand new 'extended intro' version of the song, which is easy, except I then also have to create a new lyric sheet as all the timestamping will be thrown out by me adding an extra 60 sec. intro music piece at the start of the song. That then adds a lot of extra work.

Our songs all have 2 bar click and audio cues at the start so definitely don't want to use Fade In.
Ideally, I would love top be able to just 'overlap' 2 songs by about 5 seconds.

If anyone has any other options on how I easily solve this requirement please shout out!

peter

Version 4.0 will not have individual crossfade settings. Maybe a later version.

For your specific cases I would use a looped audio region for variable length parts. Once you want to continue just disable the loop. That‘s in my opinion way better than crossfading into the song part 2.

Regarding the longer song intro leading to timestamps being off: just use the offset tag to add 60 seconds or whatever you added to the intro to offset all timecodes in the song.

AnthonyB

Thanks for the update and suggestions Peter!

peter For your specific cases I would use a looped audio region for variable length parts. Once you want to continue just disable the loop. That‘s in my opinion way better than crossfading into the song part 2.

Yeah, I had previously considered that option, but put it on the backburner as the crossfade seemed 'neater' and easier at the time. I'll take another look at the audio region loop option.

peter Regarding the longer song intro leading to timestamps being off: just use the offset tag to add 60 seconds or whatever you added to the intro to offset all timecodes in the song.

Yep, I can use an offset or the app I created to re-stamp the timestamps in the lyric sheet based on an offset. I just didn't want to have multiple versions of a song (audio tracks, lyric sheet, etc.) floating around if at all possible as it means any other changes to the song have to then be reflected in multiple versions of the song (i.e. more maintenance).