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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 resistanceElectrical resistance is a measure of the degree to which an electrical component opposes the passage of current. It is the ratio of the potential difference (i. voltage) across an electric component (such as a resistor) to the current passing through it: or impedanceIn electrical engineering, impedance is a measure for the manner and degree a component resists the flow of electrical current if a given voltage is applied. It is denoted by the symbol Z and is measured in ohms. Impedance differs from simple resistance i to the source; or digitalA digital system is one that uses discrete values rather than a continuous spectrum of values: compare analog. The word comes from the same source as the word digit: the Latin word for finger (counting on the fingers) as these are used for discrete counti, numerically controlling a digital signal processorA digital signal processor (DSP is a specialized microprocessor designed specifically for digital signal processing, generally in real-time. DSPs can also be used to perform general-purpose computation, but they are not optimised for this function. Rather (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 beatmatchingBeatmatching is a mixing technique employed by DJs. While originally it involved counting the tempo with a metronome and finding a record with the same tempo, today it involves changing the speed at which a recording is played back so that its tempo match two phonographThe phonograph or gramophone was the most common device for playing recorded sound from the 1870s through the 1980s. Usage of these terms is somewhat different in British English and American English; see usage note below. In more modern usage, this devic records or compact discCD re-directs here; see Cd for other meanings of CD . A compact disc (or CD is an optical disc used for storing digital data. It was originally invented for digital audio and is also used as a data storage device, a CD-ROM. CD-ROM reading devices are a sts.