Ok - so what shape of fade-out is this then ?
And will one be able to assign a k/b shortcut to it?
Update: oh, and will you be providing a “Professional Fade In” too?
Peter.
It’s the “professional” shape 
Yes. (how cool is that?)
No.
How often do you hear “fade-outs” on the radio and compilation albums?
How often do you hear fade-ins in those contexts?
This is a one trick horse, but I think it does that trick really well - try it.
Most interesting - nice fade 
I just experimented, on 10 seconds of generated sound wave (so I could visually see the shape) with the three fades that I now have:
-
Fade Out: delivers a linear triangular shape which is ok but leaves something to be desired.
-
Cross Fade Out - delivers a bell-end shape (if you’ll excuse the term) which seems to cut off a little abruptly.
-
Pro Fade Out - delivers an ogival shape which sounds much better to my ears than either of the other two. I like the early drop-off and the dimimished tail.
Curse you Red Baron for making this nice tool after I have done hundreds of digitizations of LPs/tapes/MDs with ordinary consumer-grade linear fades (and no I am not going to go back and start over … ) 
Am I right in assuming this is a simplified version of the fade tool you were working on earlier, just without any user controls to keep it nice and simple (and thus readily usable)?
Is 10 seconds the professional “recommended length” to apply the Pro Fade over or can/should that vary?
Update: I also just tested this on real music and this confirms that Pro Fade will now be my preferred tool from now on - 5-stars
Peter.
It’s über-cool 
Just tested and can confirm that it works - now set as my standard shorcut for fade-out ( Alt + → )
Peter.
10 seconds is a rough guide. Adjust it to taste. According to the material it may sound best anywhere between a couple of seconds an twenty seconds or more. 10 seconds is usually about right.
An important note that I forgot to add (I’ll edit the original post)
The selection must stop at the point where you want the fade-out to end. Unlike the Audacity fade-in/out effects, if additional white space is included in the selection, Nyquist plug-ins treat that as being valid audio and you’ll end up with this type of effect:
Glad you like it. I’ve been using similar fade-outs to this for years, but using a slightly fiddly process to make them. Back in the days of CoolEdit Pro I set up a custom fade that would do this. Just realised/got round to coding one up for Audacity. I wonder why it took me so long, it only took half an hour from start to finish.
Fade-ins are more problematic because they are much more dependent on the material. Often a fade shape similar to this will sound good, and can be easily created by applying the normal Audacity Fade-in effect, then repeating the effect a few times (Ctrl+R). The more often you apply the Fade In, the more “curved” the fade will be, staying quiet for a longer part of the fade. Often works well for very short fade-ins.
Well I never new that bog-standard fade-out worked that way ignoring trailing white space that is selected - you learn a little every day 
I note that Cross Fade Out behaves the same way as your pro-fade.
Is it worth thinking about changing pro-fade so that it ignores trailing silence? Is this tecnically achievable? Is it worthwhile?
Peter
Interesting (and useful) tip - thanks !
I’ve always woked on the basis of short fade-ins and long fade-outs (I thought that was the pro-approch) 
Peter
Nyquist can’t distinguish the difference between white space and silence.
I think that most folk assume (like you) that the selection needs to go to the end of the track for all fades, even the Audacity fade, so it’s not really a problem.
There is a slight plus side to the behaviour in that if the user wants the fade-out to end more abruptly they can do so by selecting a little way past the end of the track.
On balance I think “keep it simple”.
Usually, yes 
If anyone is interested in the technical details of the “Pro Fade Out” effect, open the plug-in in a text editor. I’ve included a brief description of what it is actually doing in the code comments. The technical details are not important from a user perspective, it is just intended as a nice sounding “musical” fade-out.
+1
that’s part of its beauty (and utility)
Peter
Just to provide some further feedback: I’ve been using Pro-fade on some proper musical recordings and I must say I really like the result, much better than the linear fade.
And the multi-use for “Fade In” was a good tip too, and very easy to do if you have set up a k/b shortcut.
Thanks from a very satisfied customer,
Peter.
Steve, what are the chances of getting this incorporated into an Audacity release - otherwise I’ll need to rember to add it to every alpha and future release download that I do?
Peter.
That’s be fine with me, and there’s probably enough documentation in this forum topic that could transferred to the manual. You’d just need to convince the release manager.
UPDATE: today I have been using the Pro-Fade on some LP tracks I captured. All of these tracks were already faded by the engineers many moons ago (Elvis Presley LP). So this time I was using the Pro-Fade on shoter 1-2 second chunks to fade down to “silence” in the intersts of cleaning the inter-track gaps. Results absolutely excellent.
What do we need to do to get a campaign going to get this nice little add-on bundled into Audacity (post 2.0.2 that is)?
Peter.
P.S. the multi-use trick with Fade-in that you suggested also worked a treat on t’other end of the inter-track-gaps.
P.P.S if we do get the Pro-Fade included I will need to look at reving the LP capture workflow tutorial.
Select intro
Effect → Reverse
Effect → Pro Fade Out
Effect → Reverse
You might think I’m kidding, but I’ve done this sort of thing many times.
You might think I’ve tried it with Pro Fade Out, but I, er, haven’t actually had a chance to, um…
Anyway, Steve, thanks for another well-tooled tool!
Cute tip whbjr
I used to do similar with Brian Davies’ ClickRepair to avoid false positives on percussives - but then Brian added reverse processing to his tool
Peter.
Please fix the typo “profressive” before publishing it anywhere
I like how it sounds too but I hardly think Audacity should have three fade-outs. I think you would have to argue for it to replace “Cross Fade Out” and then you would need an analogous “Cross Fade In” with the pro shape.
And either way, a real cross fade is needed from one of Steve’s offerings.
Gale
Done.
Only two “below the line” 
I’d be happy to argue for it to be a replacement for “Cross Fade Out” as a useful alternative to the linear Fade Out. I suspect that “Pro Fade Out” will be more useful to more people, more frequently than the “Cross Fade Out” effect. Custom keyboard shortcuts work great with this.
I don’t think that there is a directly equivalent “Fade In”, because there tends to be a lot of variety in the most appropriate type of fade in for particular jobs. I’d rather replace the Cross-Fade In with a more versatile effect.
The “Fade By dB” effect is pretty popular: https://forum.audacityteam.org/t/simple-plug-in-for-creating-partial-fades/16055/1
The main “selling point” of this effect is that it can do a partial (not to silence) fade.
The version of “Fade by dB” that I use has 4 fade shapes - “Sine” (“S” shape), “Convex” (like “Cross-fade in/Out”), “Linear” and “Log” (like “Envelopes”).