Why crossfade? When to crossfade? What's a crossfade?

i did a lot of speech editing lately. Used crossfades to maintain the background ambience/noises between takes.
If i just used fadeout<gap>fadein, it sounded like an unnatural break in the take.
 
Right.

And you want to use a cross-fade so as not to end up with clicks at the heads of your cuts/splices.
A cross-fade is well....a fade out and fade in overlap between two sections of audio.
 
I guess I don't understand why this is necessary in the digital domain. Aren't gaps in punches practically inaudible because they're so tight on the timeline? Is a crossfade something that should usually, or even always be done on a punched section?
 
A crossfade is often done on punched sections, but there are other uses to. For example, merging one sound into another over a period of time. Or merging two songs so that one leads straight to the other.

In any case, it's not so much about dealing with the 'gaps in punches' as it is about dealing with residual audio on the before and after takes. If this exists on one or both takes, a tight (digital) splice may cause clicks.
 
Bob F. said:
Aren't gaps in punches practically inaudible because they're so tight on the timeline?
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It's not about gaps, it's about the transition. Hitting two notes with a natural gap between them will not result in any clicks/pops.
However, when you cut an audio wave, you are removing it's normal/natural attack and decay, and then you have an abrupt start/stop to the audio wave (starts are the real issue). A cross-fade puts back that smooth attack and decay.
 
If you just cut audio together you can get steep slopes in the waveform and other sudden changes that are generally pretty unnatural sounding in most cases. A crossfade simply makes the transition more gradual between sections of audio to make those changes less noticeable.
 
bouldersoundguy said:
If you just cut audio together you can get steep slopes in the waveform and other sudden changes that are generally pretty unnatural sounding in most cases. A crossfade simply makes the transition more gradual between sections of audio to make those changes less noticeable.
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"less noticeable" ?

A properly done edit with a cross-fade should be absolutely not noticeable at all - even by the original musicians and the person who made the edit.

If I can hear even a hint of an edit, it's a failure and I re-do it.

samplitude3_l.jpg
 
A good example of when to use a crossfade is when you are compiling multiple takes for something like a guitar solo. If you have 3, 4, or however many takes and want to put together the best from each one, you'll edit down to the sections you want to keep, move them all to one track, then use crossfades to get them to blend together without clicks. At least that's how I do it....
 
John Willett said:
A properly done edit with a cross-fade should be absolutely not noticeable at all - even by the original musicians and the person who made the edit.
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Ahhh....another Samplitude user. :cool:

Yeah, I agree...at least I found with Samplitude that you could pull off some almost imposable looking edits and have them sound perfect. Sometimes it's down to a handful of samples...a little this way, a little that way...but when you hit the spot, it's 100% seamless.
Of course...trying to bring together two totally "unrelated" pieces (or Objects as we call them in Samplitude) with a crossfade, just may not work sonically, even though the crossfade is seamless.
 
Bob F. said:
I guess I don't understand why this is necessary in the digital domain. Aren't gaps in punches practically inaudible because they're so tight on the timeline? Is a crossfade something that should usually, or even always be done on a punched section?
Click to expand...

You will discover many amazing uses. :D Edit some music together and see what you think.
 
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