How to achieve a transition effect?

For an audio drama, I’m attempting a sort of surreal language transition effect:

Character A (who is our point of view) stands some distance away from three other characters. At this distance, these characters are heard speaking one language.

As A approaches these three characters, this first language fades out as a second language fades in to replace it (the same dialogue, but different languages). When A reaches the others, the first language is at 0% and the second is at 100%.

Thinking about this:

  • The three characters are stationary but exist at different points in the stereo field. When Character A is still distant, the three others are nearer the center of the field, and as he gets closer they spread out. This has to match between both languages during the transition.

  • The reverb for the two languages should be generated separately (reflections from the first language should not appear in the audio from the second).

I can probably figure this out but I’m wondering if there is an immediately obvious most-efficent, most-accurate way to do this to someone who is experienced with Ardour (and DAWs in general, as I am not that experienced)?

Thanks!

you’d click on “a” in the track header, select the relevant parameter from “Plugins” to show the parameter for the plugin in its own lane, then draw the shape you want for that parameter. then put the parameter’s automation mode into “Play”.

of course, if the plugin has no such parameter, you’re out of luck.

Great, I will try that. Thank you very much.

I’ve been wondering about this myself: How can I, for example, let a pitch-plugin-effect, transition from a higher pitch to lower, over a designated time span?

Currently I’ve gotten it set up with one language like this:

  • each voice into its own automated pan bus
  • all pan busses into a reverb bus
  • reverb bus into an automated “proximity” fader bus (voices fade in as POV approaches)
  • proximity fader bus to master output

This sounds pretty close to what I want with one language - now I need to set this up for the second language, and fade between them.

Is there any notion of “inheritance” with the busses so I can reuse the exact same panning, reverb, and fade-in with the second language? And if I adjust it in one language the changes will propagate to the second?

I’m guessing once I have the output for both languages at the proximity busses, I then run each through a separate fader bus to do the fade-in/fade-out specifically for each language (I don’t think I’d want a perfectly symmetrical fade between them…)