Fade In A Group of Audio Cues

When a Fade cue targets a Group cue, QLab attempts to apply the result of that fade to all the child cues within the Group. Because the starting state of each child cue may be different, Fades which target Groups can only be relative fades.

This is a problem when your goal is to fade in several sound cues from -INF to some audible level, because -INF plus any amount is still -INF. What to do? The trick lies in starting your cues just slightly louder than -INF.

1. Create several Audio cues and place them within a Group cue to your taste.
2. Set the levels of all the Audio cues in that Group such that their master levels are the same. For now, let’s agree on -10 for that level.
3. If -10 is too loud or too soft, use the individual cue output levels for each Audio cue to get the right loudness.
4. Once all the Audio cues sound good, bring each of their master levels to 1 db louder than the minimum volume level established in Audio settings. By default this is -60 so if that has not been changed, set your Audio cues to -59.
5. Create a Fade cue targeting the Group cue, and in the Levels tab of the inspector, set the master level of the Fade cue to +49.
6. Now, when that Fade cue is triggered, the Audio cues within the Group will have 49 dB added to their level, bringing them to -10 as planned.
7. Do be very careful not to accidentally run that Fade cue twice while the Audio cues are playing. Since relative fades are additive, and the Audio cues are now playing at -10, you’ll end up with very very loud sounds.
8. Die Einde!