Question: How to do Cross Fading between segment in Arrangements

[Sridhar Raghavan]

Hi All

I searched through the forum to my best and I could not find a relevant post to my need.

I looking for an ability to "cross-fade" between the segments of an arrangement (which has many segments).

Since the segments follow each other in many different orders in an arrangement, this is not possible to do this at all manually.

Has to be dynamic.

Also there is not way to use the built-in Cross-Fade as it can be applied only to Overlapping segments in a track or across segments. And this of course cannot be used with arranger segments, even statically, as they cannot overlap.

Any tips anyone. 

Hope the developers are reading this, as this is one of the tasks which has to be enabled/supported by Cakewalk.

For example, taking two neighboring segments in an arrangement, and apply the Cross Fade function (similar to how it is done now for overlapping segments in normal tracks).

Hope there is a workaround via Scripts/Macro or other, and also a more robust solution downstream.

Thanks in advance.

regards Sri.

P.S. I have read many posts (dating back to few years ago) which talks about "jumpiness" across arranger segments, and how do render and then go about tweaking the rendered sounds. Unfortunately this is One-Way and destructive and has to be done each time and number of such points of doing cross/auto fade can be a lot.

 

 

 

[Sridhar Raghavan]

Just so you know what I am exploring.

I add a Silence Segment between every Segment in an Arrangement,

That gives me all the zones where I have to manually go back and do Cross Fade in a Rendered (flattened) Output.

I can then manually remove the silence, overlap the left and right neighbor and apply cross fade.

If some one can tell me as to how to do this via an Automated Script/Macro it would be great.

Just go through the rendering and apply the DESIRED-Action for each of the Silence Zones.

That would take care of the need, while a better longer term more elegant solution becomes available.

 

br Sri.

[Sridhar Raghavan]

Serendipity wins, always.

Use of Silence trick lead me to do more powerful things I always wanted.

I am now able to create different "silent segments" and use them for adding Scripts and sending Midi Messages to  my Korg Pa600 for various things of interest to me.

Examples:

1) Change the Styles, Variations and others things in the course of a song.

2) Change the Volume, Effects, ADSR Parameters, Tempo etc.  over different parts of a song. etc.

3) I can also do All Sounds Off and add All Sounds On later. Effectively "Muting" the following segment(s).

3) After recording the audio of the song from Korg I remove the Silent Segments and add cross fades.

So overall in a better shape than before!! But good built-in support would be great - in due course.

br Sri.

 

 

[David Baay]

On 11/30/2024 at 8:43 PM, Sridhar Raghavan said:

For example, taking two neighboring segments in an arrangement, and apply the Cross Fade function (similar to how it is done now for overlapping segments in normal tracks).

One way or another, there has to be an overlap in order to do a cross-fade. In order to do that with Arrangements, Sonar would need to implement some non-visual setting where you specify that playback of each segment starts before the previous one ends and the resulting overlap is cross-faded. But I suspect that the way Arranger segments are currently processed would not easily allow this as it would require reading data from different parts of the timeline concurrently in real-time - or possibly buffering the different regions to RAM in advance - which doesn't currently happen in any other context.

The process you described will work for the kind of 5-10ms cross-fades needed just to eliminate pops between discontinuous segments. But for longer transitions - as in movie scenes - you would need to actually render individual segments with significant added time before and after to allow overlapping their boundaries without moving them closer together which will foul up the timing of rhythmic material.

 

 

Edited December 3 by David Baay

[Sridhar Raghavan]

David Baay

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 

Several thoughts run through my mind -- and are probably not aligned with current Cakewalk/Sonar design/implementation. You are already pointing to some of them. 

One of the main design issue here is that in the Arrangements - "the Seam"  between two Segments is not a Referenceable  / Actionable thing. Though that construct is natural for the Arrangement and as a Music Domain Construct. 

That would be the approach I would have used even with Auto/Cross Fade in normal tracks. Here Split point could serve as a SEAM - though there are some other issues and considerations that would enter it from a domain context. For instance, when you do a split, the general intent is to act on the split clip/segments independent of each other for example.   

This would enable referencing and specifying all kinds of properties to that SEAM.  

The process you described will work for the kind of 5-10ms cross-fades needed just to eliminate pops between discontinuous segments. But for longer transitions - as in movie scenes - you would need to actually render individual segments with significant added time before and after to allow overlapping their boundaries without moving them closer together which will foul up the timing of rhythmic material.

This does not pose any issues at all with my current "Silent Segments Approach" or with the above SEAM approach. . 

I am already using the "Silent Segments" approach quite a bit for all kinds of things, though I do not like Computer Systems that push the tedium on user - violating a very important design principle of Man-Machine collaboration in systems.     

Side Note. I do intimately understand that design tradeoffs have to be made to move forward. But it is also critical to recognize that they would evolve and change significantly as systems gets used.  So  periodic "harvesting and restructuring of architectures & designs & code" is an important part of Products (especially living ones, in this regard Cakewalk may waive itself).  These are important not only from pure theoretical/academical perspectives but also from economical and Ethical Perspectives.  The last may not be readily apparent -- but, with a bit of exaggeration to make the point, systems should not force Humans to waste Life/Times simply for their- self-centered view points. 

All in all, I hope Cakewalk Engineering is reading these exchanges and look into this as a feature suggestion.  Meanwhile I can leverage my basic approach to keep sailing!!

 

br Sri. 

P.S. Let us continue the exchanges for its many general systems design principles (without suggesting any shortcomings or burdens on Cakewalk). 

[David Baay]

26 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said:

with a bit of exaggeration to make the point, systems should not force Humans to waste Life/Times simply for their- self-centered view points. 

Keep in mind this applies to the lives and time of developers and companies ('corporations are people, too', you know) as well as users.

It may not be worth the time to develop a feature that does not have broad applicability/usefulness especially if it requires drastically re-architecting the underlying logic, posing the risk or introducing new defects or breaking backward compatibility.

That said,  I imagine that some basic implementation of cross-fading arranger sections could be very helpful to those who use it.

46 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said:

But for longer transitions - as in movie scenes - you would need to actually render individual segments with significant added time before and after to allow overlapping their boundaries without moving them closer together which will foul up the timing of rhythmic material.

This does not pose any issues at all with my current "Silent Segments Approach"

I'd be interested to see a simple example project showing how this works Right offhand, I don't see how it solves the problem of not having overlapping audio to cross-fade without moving segments in a way that affects their timing.

[pwallie]

5 minutes ago, David Baay said:

'corporations are people, too', you know

lol

[Sridhar Raghavan]

Preamble:  All, I am digressing here a bit, but taking the liberty to do so, as these are important in general for folks who are in and will be leading Products/Technologies.  

 

David Baay

You are not saying anything here that people do not know and/or I have not been deeply immersed in for a long time... I am not faulting for you to say it, but would have liked you to frame your comments better.

Keep in mind this applies to the lives and time of developers and companies ('corporations are people, too', you know) as well as users.

It may not be worth the time to develop a feature that does not have broad applicability/usefulness especially if it requires drastically re-architecting the underlying logic, posing the risk or introducing new defects or breaking backward compatibility.

What is the point you are making here?  It reads as a dubious copout for organizations to do what suits them.. read below..

This may feel like a digression. Yet.. Allow to let me share a bit from various other threads and initiatives I am involved in around Social Responsibilities of Organizations and Systems.  I take this opportunity to share things of far more importance beyond the current context.  Possibly some one may read and get inspired to orient things in action.

Corporations are given exceptional privileges by modern societies and legal frameworks. They have to create "true, responsible, sustainable values" to the societies in return for those privileges and for earning their revenues.  They are required to take risks, leverage economies of scale, technologies, creativities and other vantages to serve societies and not resort dumping all the burdens that are inconvenient to them, blatantly,  on to users and societies.  The pathways from these statements to your points -- I will leave it as an exercise.  

Let me also add an important point of view to all Product Owners... listen to your most savvy users as almost all your pioneering ideas will come from them. When you miss them, you will find that new disruptive corporations come and walk with all your customer base!!  they show your users what they need but never articulated and your were not listening to -- driven by myopic 80-20 rules. 

Needless to day, you can see that I  embrace a different philosophy and ethical thoughts that is being obliterated and negated by the "economics only and nothing else matters" world order.. 

That said,  I imagine that some basic implementation of cross-fading arranger sections could be very helpful to those who use it.

  Will do soon..

br Sri.

[David Baay]

36 minutes ago, Sridhar Raghavan said:

What is the point you are making here?

It's simply the converse of your "systems should not force Humans to waste Life/Times simply for their- self-centered view points."

Development resources are finite; the development or enhancement of any particular feature has an opportunity cost for other features that may be more broadly useful to more users. And individual users are as likely to make self-centered feature requests as companies are to make self-centered choices about which ones to implement.

[David Baay]

Out of curiosity, I did a quick search of the forum regarding cross-fading of arranger tracks and found this:

Auto Crossfades is applied to Section Split/Arrangement Commit

Section operations now respect the Auto Crossfade enable in the Track view. Section Split and Commit Arrangement operations will now have crossfades applied when enabled.

 

EDIT: I played around with this and found it has limited flexibility because the max auto crossfade is 25ms; it's really only suitable for removing pops and clicks. It needs a dedicated crossfade setting that's capable of a much longer transition which should be doable since it works offline on Commit Arrangment (or Insert Committed Arrangement which is what I used to test it).

Edited December 4 by David Baay

[Sridhar Raghavan]

David Baay

 

Thanks for the diligence and the above pointer(s).  I will process them to pick any wisdom I can.

It's simply the converse of your "systems should not force Humans to waste Life/Times simply for their- self-centered view points."

Development resources are finite; the development or enhancement of any particular feature has an opportunity cost for other features that may be more broadly useful to more users. And individual users are as likely to make self-centered feature requests as companies are to make self-centered choices about which ones to implement.

Regarding you comment above from the other post... I am baffled that you would talk about users and Corporation in the same vein.  An individual user is powerless (except to abandon the product or the organization that he/she cannot resonate with). While Organizations have all kinds of vantage to pursue their economic agenda agenda openly with significant impunity (with pathway to consequences nebulous or pretty long if at all). Tradeoff matrices for Users and Organizations are vastly different.

Transferring Costs and Burden on to users has been extensively and notoriously used by all Corporations.  Leading to famous satires like "How many people work for Microsoft?   Everyone. But 30K folks get paid!"   I am advising, purely Goodwill and Gratis, a Trillion $$ corporation which does not even have (and want to have) a system for acknowledging Customer Feedback and Inputs lest it become trackable!! 

I am not blind to these realities - I am immersed in from all sides. I am just an advocate for changing these order(s), not because it is easy, but it has to change on larger (inclusive of non-economical) grounds. 

I will close this thread as we do not have to "agree" at all on these. 

We can continue this further using PM. 

br Sri.

[pwallie]

20 hours ago, David Baay said:

Out of curiosity, I did a quick search of the forum regarding cross-fading of arranger tracks and found this:

Auto Crossfades is applied to Section Split/Arrangement Commit

Section operations now respect the Auto Crossfade enable in the Track view. Section Split and Commit Arrangement operations will now have crossfades applied when enabled.

 

EDIT: I played around with this and found it has limited flexibility because the max auto crossfade is 25ms; it's really only suitable for removing pops and clicks. It needs a dedicated crossfade setting that's capable of a much longer transition which should be doable since it works offline on Commit Arrangment (or Insert Commited Arrangement which is what I used to test it).

aaah, the project5 fx, good times

Edited December 4 by pwallie
5

[David Baay]

15 minutes ago, pwallie said:

aah, the project5 fx, good times

Interesting. I never tried it. Any other P5 features we should ask the Bakers to bring to Sonar?

[Amberwolf]

 

9 hours ago, David Baay said:

Interesting. I never tried it. Any other P5 features we should ask the Bakers to bring to Sonar?

if it's not already in sonar nowadays, you could ask for the keystroke to transpose audio clips up/down. that was pretty handy in p5.  been too many years so don't recall exactly, but it might've been ctrl+ / ctrl- ; i think it worked in realtime during playback/looping (many (most?) things in p5 worked realtime, which was really useful for messing around and grooving to come up wiht stuff; i'd usually take the idea over to sonar to build from there if it was any good....hmmm...tempted to install it and see if it still works in win10 to mess around with all the audio loops i have made, downloaded, and bought, these days). 

 

 

[David Baay]

14 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

you could ask for the keystroke to transpose audio clips up/down

That might be handy handy but I don't transpose often enough for it to be a big time-saver over entering  '+2' in the Event Inspector's Pitch field.

[Amberwolf]

7 hours ago, David Baay said:

That might be handy handy but I don't transpose often enough for it to be a big time-saver over entering  '+2' in the Event Inspector's Pitch field.

well, that requires selecting the event (clip) and opening the event inspector (unless that's something in new sonar taht's not in mine--mine i have to open clip properties, then go to the tab for times/pitches/stretches, check the box to enable either looping or pitch/tempo changes, then do the transpose, then close the properties dialog (because it's modal), for every clip i'm experimenting with...which really slows down the workflow and gets me out of the groove of creating). 

if i had a key shortcut i would be ablet o just tab from clip to clip and key up or down while looping a section to see what it sounds like.

Edited December 6 by Amberwolf

[David Baay]

5 hours ago, Amberwolf said:

that requires selecting the event (clip) and opening the event inspector

Selecting the clip(s) to be transposed would be a prerequisite for any  method. Event Inspector is a control bar module and always present in mine - nothing to open or close except possibly the control bar itself.

[Sridhar Raghavan]

David Baay, Amberwolf

 

Happy to see the on-going conversation here, though I have been distracted on other threads.

Will catchup and send a sample project which you (David) requested, asap.

 

br Sri.