Fade
Origin
Middle English, from Anglo-French fader, from fade feeble, insipid, from Vulgar Latin fatidus, alteration of Latin fatuus fatuous, insipid
Definitions
- 1: to lose freshness, strength, or vitality : wither <fading flowers>
- 2: to lose freshness or brilliance of color
- 3: to sink away : vanish <a fading memory>
- 4: to change gradually in loudness, strength, or visibility —used of a motion-picture image or of an electronics signal and usually with in or out
- 5:of an automobile brake : to lose braking power gradually
- 6: to move back from the line of scrimmage —used of a quarterback
- 7: of a ball or shot : to move in a slight to moderate slice
Description
In wireless communications, fading is deviation of the attenuation affecting a signal over certain propagation media. The fading may vary with time, geographical position or radio frequency, and is often modeled as a random process. A fading channel is a communication channel comprising fading. In wireless systems, fading may either be due to multipath propagation, referred to as multipath induced fading, or due to shadowing from obstacles affecting the wave propagation, sometimes referred to as shadow fading.
In audio engineering, a fade is a gradual increase or decrease in the level of an audio signal. The term can also be used for film cinematography or theatre lighting, in much the same way (see fade (filmmaking) and fade (lighting)).
A recorded song may be gradually reduced to silence at its end (fade-out), or may gradually increase from silence at the beginning (fade-in). Fading-out can serve as a recording solution for pieces of music that contain no obvious ending.
Though relatively rare, songs can fade out, then fade back in. Some examples of this are "Helter Skelter" and "Strawberry Fields Forever" by The Beatles, "Suspicious Minds" by Elvis Presley, and "Thank You" by Led Zeppelin.
The term fade is also used in multi-speaker audio systems to describe the balancing of power between front and rear channels.
