Drag audio onto another and "cover", rather than "add"

Hi all,

I'm a bit baffled by this, but once, when I dragged a smaller audio file onto another larger one in the editing window, this would cover the portion completely. Now, when I do that, the two audios are summed. I've no idea what I did or if this is a new feature from the latest updates, but I couldn't find a way to toggle this.

Can anyone help?

Thanks!

Ian

Hi Ian,

I am not sure what you mean by "the two audios are summed" exactly.

If you're talking about region overlaps, then that's a behavior you can control using the Drag pop-up menu in the Tracks area menu bar: Overlap means when you drag a region over another one, the two regions are going to be placed on top of one another. No Overlap means the region you're moving will cut the other one in the location where you drop it in order to make room for itself, so that there are no overlapping regions.

Hey Alan, thank you for taking the time.

My problem is this: if I drag an audio over another either with Overlap or with No Overlap, what happens is that if I do a crossfade to make the meeting point sound seamless, the wider the crossfade, the more of the audio that used to be there will be sounding. I don't get why placing a crossfade makes the audio I had previously cut out comes back out. Most of all, I don't understand how not to make this happen.

The same thing happens if I just shorten both audio files, then drag them so that the end of one matches the end of the other one, then I add a crossfade and the audio that used to be there comes back out and overlaps with the other one.

Hope I explained myself sufficiently well for you to understand my problem.

Thanks!

Alan?

:facepalm:

Sorry about that...

My problem is this: if I drag an audio over another either with Overlap or with No Overlap, what happens is that if I do a crossfade to make the meeting point sound seamless, the wider the crossfade, the more of the audio that used to be there will be sounding. I don't get why placing a crossfade makes the audio I had previously cut out comes back out. Most of all, I don't understand how not to make this happen.

Ok that's the whole point of a crossfade though, so the behavior you're getting is expected. The crossfade means you're starting to lower the level of the audio file referred to by the first region and starting to raise the level of the audio file referred to by the second region at the beginning of the crossfade. In the middle of a symmetrical crossfade, the level of the two audio files are the same. Until the end of the crossfade where you've finished lowering the level of the first audio file to zero while the second audio file has reached its normal level.

 

Example. In the screenshot below, the first Cross fade track is the equivalent of the two Automation tracks below:

 

cross-fade.png

Yeah, it does make sense. Yet I was convinced that it didn't happen before.

I do a lot of podcast post-production and sometimes words don't sound right, say, in the last letter. So what I do is cut at the end of the word, drag the right edge of the audio file so that it stops before the last letter, cut that same letter from another word and paste it there. Then, since there is probably a click where one ends and the other begins, I used to do a crossfade in order to eliminate the click. Now I'm hearing both the prior and the new letter.

I guess my questions are:

Has it always been like that and it just happened to work for me every time hearing a bit of the original letter?

Is there any way for the crossfade to work with silence rather than the eliminated audio?

Is there a better way to make it work?

Think I might be going a bit nuts during this quarantine!

Yes, it's always been like that because that is what a crossfade is. If it wasn't like that, it wouldn't be a crossfade! A crossfade with silence is a fade out on the first region, a fade in on the second one, not a crossfade. "Cross" in the word crossfade indicates that at some point the two audio files cross, meaning they play together at the same time.

However here's the thing: when you use a crossfade to remove a click, it needn't be that long that you can actually identify that you're hearing both files at the same time. Anywhere between 1 to 20 ms should be long enough to remove the click yet short enough that no human could ever possibly say "oh I heard two letters at the same time."

Hope that helps? To see the length of the crossfade (in ms), select the first region and look at the number in front of the "Fade Out" label.

Alan?

Hey, don't mention it, glad I could help.

Alan.

Hey, don't mention it, glad I could help.

 

Alan.

Brilliant, Alan, thanks so much for all the precious time and info.

 

Hope that helps?

It does! Thanks to you too for the minor help, I guess, David.

I'm glad you guys got a kick out of that. I might have some time to post a bit more regularly on this site now that my country has gone into Covid19 lockdown.

Stay safe everyone.

Alan.