In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the volume of a source, such as when a song is gradually reduced to silence at its end (fade-out), or gradually increases from silence at the beginning (fade-in). It can be used as either a verb or noun.

"For Henri Lefebvre (1971a:19), 'everyday life in the modern world' is a privileged site for the crucial fact of recurrence. The question of how to end a song now becomes pressing. The answer, often, is not to end: the harmonically inconclusive or artificially abrupt finish, or - quintessentially - the fade. As Sean Cubitt points out (1984: 210), this refers us"

to the activity of the auditor, with whom lies the only available fulfillment...[It] pledges that the performer...has an existence beyond the recording...This refusal of completion refers us, not back into the song, as is the case with the classic aesthetic object but outwards to the ways in which the song is heard.

"At the meta-song level, the prevalence of pre-taped sequences (for shops, pubs, parties, concert intervals, aircraft headsets) emphasizes the importance of flow. The effect on radio pop programme form [are] a stress on continuity achieved through the use of fades, voice-over links, twin-turntable mixing and connecting jingles."

A fader is any device used to accomplish this task, especially when it is a knob or button that slides along a track or slot. A knob which rotates is usually not considered a fader, although it is electrically and functionally equivalent. A fader can be either analogue, directly controlling the resistance or impedance to the source; or digital, numerically controlling a digital signal processor (DSP).

A crossfader essentially functions like two faders connected side-by-side to each other, but in opposite directions. It allows a DJ to fade one source out while fading another source in at the same time. This is extremely useful when beatmatching two phonograph records or compact discs.

References

• Middleton, Richard (1990/2002). Studying Popular Music, p.95-6. Philadelphia: Open University Press. ISBN 0335152759.