How to Fade Pre-show Music

Lots of folks like to use a Group cue full of Audio cues set to auto-follow for pre-show music, and then use a single Fade cue targeting the Group to fade out and stop the pre-show music when necessary. This works perfectly well.

Another common need with pre-show, however, is not quite so simple, and that’s the case of lowering the level of pre-show for an announcement, and then fading it back up. Everything is great until that one night when you fade down during one song, and then the song ends and the next song begins before the fade back up. When this happens, the following song starts off playing at its original volume, which is a louder, non-announcement level. What to do?

The secret lies in this fact: Fade cues can only fade levels on a target cue which is either running, paused, or loaded. So…

1. Create your Group cue for pre-show music, with all the cues set to auto-follow, and all levels set as you like them at the “loud” level.
2. In the Basics tab for the Group cue and for each Audio cue, make sure the Auto-load check box is checked.
3. Now, when the Group cue is started, all the Audio cues within it will load, and thus be subject to any Fade cues which target the Group.
4. Färdig!