Crossfading Stingers

Question

Hi there,

I'm looking for a way to improve the transition between ending of stingers and underlying music. 

I'm currently using an RTPC driven by the stinger's RMS to duck the underlying music, but this doesn't produce the seamless result that I need. 

Tweaking the graph to have a steeper rolloff often produces unwanted ducking release, if stinger is only some drum fills with gaps inbetween. 

 

I would like the stinger to stop ducking the music before the final stinger beat (where the blue play cursor is) 

Other things I've tried

• Auto-Ducking - splitting the final beat into a separate audio track, then bussing the 1st part of the stinger to a "Auto Ducking" bus for the music, and the 2nd half (stinger tail) to a bus without the auto-ducking
  • Caveat : I can't randomize between stinger variations if I use different music tracks, as random track type is only applicable per track type, not by music segments.

 

I'm thinking the only way to achieve this is by using custom cue and set volume :

• When stinger event is triggered :
  • Play trigger 
  • Set Volume of music bus to -12dB
     
• When "stinger_end" custom cue received :
  • Reset volume of music bus

So my questions are..

1. Are there any other currently available ways to achieve seamless "back to main music" transition?
    
2. If custom cue is the way to go, will code be able detect "custom cue" from the "play stinger" sound instance, being that the sound event doesn't actually play a sound file, but a trigger event?
    
3. Any plans to simplify workflow of "randomizing between variations" so that it's more intuitive? 
   Using "music track > random type" doesn't really follow with other randomization workflow that users are used to eg: "Random Step" in "Music Playlist" container
   Or perhaps allowing "Music Playlist" container in the "Stingers > Segment to play" , it could solve some of these problems.

Thank you !

Answer 1

Have you played with the transitions tab at all? Sorry if this is too obvious/outside what you are attempting, but it's quite flexible if you haven't explored it yet. Found on Music Sequence and Switch containers, you can build in a lot of customization in terms of how different segments of music interact with one another...

 

Answer 2

Yes, you could ride the music bus as you are suggesting.  Or you could also use States to similarly control the bus voice volume.  However you still have the same problem of when to release.  If the stingers were a fixed length you could manually set a delay on the event action.  But as I suspect they may be different lengths you ideally want a solution that is content driven.  Custom cues is a great idea if you can work it out with a programmer to read the cues and return a "Sting_In" and "Sting_Out" state, then you could use that to ride the music volume.