Cross-fading solution?

[Jeremy Murray-Wakefield]

Does anyone have any bright ideas on how to use a MIDI controller to properly cross-fade between two channels with (e.g.) a 3db drop when balanced 50:50 ?

I've tried putting a couple of faders with "opposing travel" into a Control Group - but of course in the centre-position of the MIDI control, the faders have too much of a level drop, because 50% of physical travel is quite low volume-wise (and I wouldn't want to change the fader law).

Any suggestions gratefully received.

 

Rgds,
Jeremy.

[msmcleod]

Given the problems with the logarithmic behaviour of volume, I'd have thought it easier to just draw an automation curve on one channel, and draw the reverse on another.

[Jeremy Murray-Wakefield]

6 hours ago, msmcleod said:

 I'd have thought it easier to just draw an automation curve on one channel, and draw the reverse on another.

This is for sound-design/composing purposes, and as such needs to be under real-time control. I suspect that I may have to do something wild involving stereo splitting, mis-combining and the abuse of panpots... ?

Edited April 1, 2022 by Jeremy Murray-Wakefield

[Base 57]

9 hours ago, Jeremy Murray-Wakefield said:

I've tried putting a couple of faders with "opposing travel" into a Control Group - but of course in the centre-position of the MIDI control, the faders have too much of a level drop, because 50% of physical travel is quite low volume-wise

You can use "Offset Mode" to increase (or decrease) the actual level when the fader is at the 50% position.

But use this with caution. Much like Ripple Edit, Offset Mode can create problems if you forget to turn it off.

Edited April 1, 2022 by Base 57

[Jeremy Murray-Wakefield]

4 hours ago, Base 57 said:

You can use "Offset Mode" to increase (or decrease) the actual level when the fader is at the 50% position.

Not possible unfortunately, because offset/normal faders are always wired to the same control groups (which is odd, and I'm not sure why Cakewalk doesn't treat the "offset faders" to their own set of control group routings.)

[Base 57]

14 hours ago, Jeremy Murray-Wakefield said:

because offset/normal faders are always wired to the same control groups

Hold down the Cntrl key when changing a grouped control that you don't want the rest of the group to follow. 

[David Baay]

Not sure I completely understand the setup. Are you crossfading two different synths/patches  using MIDI volume or two audio tracks with volume controlled by MIDI? In the case of synths, the result is going to depend on the response of each synth to MIDI volume, and there's no standard/convention on this in the MIDI spec. And in the case of both audio and synth tracks, the result is going to depend on how you set the MIDI endpoints of the group, the volume of each track at the high endpoint, and how much correlation there is between the signals. With the right tweaks to the grouping end points and max track volumes, you should be able to get pretty close in either case, but it's going to take some fiddling; there's no simple recipe you can apply that's going to work for all sound sources.

[Jeremy Murray-Wakefield]

OK - I've managed it.

It looks a little crazy, but it works well.
(channel 1 is just the control fader - no audio goes through that channel)

The pan-pots are doing the crossfading between the two stereo channels, and the main faders are applying just the right amount of volume correction for the overall level to remain consistent (the synth channels themselves are not routed anywhere, they rely on their output being fed to the "Selector" aux channels for the cross-fading).

A much simpler solution would be to find a plugin that had a volume control where 50% of travel meant 50% of the volume, and apply it to each of two channels (with one in reverse). That is, after all, the only thing that I am trying to do here - a simple "constant volume" crossfade between two channels...

Edited April 2, 2022 by Jeremy Murray-Wakefield