[Ardour-Users] Crossfade Editor

[John Emmas]

I'm just trying to get my head around the crossfade editor which (until I
looked into it) seemed self-explanatory.  The actual contour editing is easy
enough to understand although I haven't yet used it.  It's the auditioning
that seems to be baffling me at the moment.  I just wondered if anyone could
either confirm or clarify what I'm finding.  I'm using Ardour 2.1 currently.

Let's suppose we have 2 overlapped clips called Clip A and Clip B.  they're
both 10 seconds long with an overlapping section of 3 seconds duration
(hence a 3 second crossfade).  Clip A is positioned at 30 seconds timecode.
Hence, Clip B starts at 37 seconds and ends at 47 seconds.

There seem to be 5 x auditioning modes called 'Out (dry)', 'Out', 'Fade',
'In' and  'In (dry)'.  Here's what I'm getting when I use them to audition
the crossfade (bear in mind that in timeline terms, the crossfade starts
at 37 seconds and ends at 40 seconds):-

1)  'Out (dry)' - this seems to play the outgoing 3 seconds of Clip A
without applying a fade.
2)  'Out' - this seems to play exactly the same thing as 'Out (dry)'.  This
doesn't make sense to me.
3)  'Fade' - this plays the crossfade, as it would be heard on the timeline
(i.e. what you'd expect).
4)  'In' - this seems to play the first 3 seconds of Clip A without applying
any fade.  In timeline terms, the audio being replayed runs from 30 seconds
to 33 seconds - i.e it seems to be playing the wrong clip.
5)  'In (dry)' - plays the incoming 3 seconds of Clip B, with no incoming
fade applied (this makes reasonable sense too).

There are also some buttons marked 'With preroll' and 'With postroll'.
However, these don't seem to do anything on my system.  Do I need to enable
them somehow?  Or set a preroll and postroll time somewhere?

Thanks.

John