How to apply Fades in Pro Tools
This blog is part of our new series of tutorials based on Avid’s flagship Digital Audio Workstation, Pro Tools.
Want to learn how to use Avid Pro Tools in real time, with a professional digital audio trainer? It’s faster than blogs, videos, or tutorials. Call OBEDIA for one on one training for Avid Pro Tools and all digital audio hardware and software. Mention this blog to get 15 bonus minutes with your signup! Call 615-933-6775 and dial 1, or visit our website to get started.
Need a Pro Audio laptop or Desktop PC to run Avid Pro Tools software and all of its features at its best?
Check out our pro audio PCs at PCAudioLabs.
Getting started with how to apply Fades in Pro Tools
Pro Tools is a software that lets you produce, record, edit and mix audio as well as MIDI performances.
After you record your instruments and vocal lines, chances are you will notice sound discontinuities when the clips start and end. These discontinuities tend to sound as “clicks” and “pops”.
These artifacts can be covered by using fades.
Fades are non-destructive operations that you can apply to audio clips in order to progressively raise the level or reduce the level of the fader at the start and end points of the clip, effectively eliminating these artifacts.
Pro Tools has different fade styles that will benefit you depending on the case.
Today we will learn how to apply fades in Pro Tools.
- Open or create a new Pro Tools session. Make sure it contains at least one audio track:
Here we can see there is a single mono audio track labeled as “VOX”.
If we zoom in horizontally:
It is easy to see the abrupt signal discontinuities at the start and end of the clip.
If we press play, we will in fact hear the clicks and pops at those locations.
For the purpose of this tutorial we will create fade ins and outs in order to reduce this problem.
2. Make sure you have “SLIP” mode selected:
3. Zoom in even more on the start area of the audio clip:
4. Locate the mouse on the top left of the audio clip, click and drag to the right in order to create the fade in:
The fade in will be highlighted indicating its length.
5. Double click at the fade in. The “Fade In” window will appear as:
This window lets us configure the different parameters of the fade in as:
- In Shape: This parameter controls the shape of the fade. Options include the standard shape, the S-curve or the differeng geometric options.
- Slope: This parameter gives us the option of creating a fade that maintains equal power or equal gain.
For the purpose of this tutorial we will set this window as:
- In Shape: geometric exponential shape.
- Slope: Equal gain
6. Apply the previous configurations and the Fade In window will look as:
7. Press “OK” and the fade in will be created.
8. Repeat these steps at the end of the clip to create a fade out:
If we zoom out, the audio clip will look as:
If we press play, the sound artifacts from the start and end of the clip will not happen because we have added the fade ins and fade outs.
And that is it!
At this point, we have successfully explained how to apply Fades in Pro Tools.
Using Avid Pro Tools software to produce music would be ideal with one of our professionally designed PCAudioLabs Systems due our high-performance specifications in order to work with any of the Digital Audio Workstations supported. If you would like to order one of our PCAudioLabs computers, please call us at 615-933-6775 or click this link for our website.