A song's ramp is its instrumental intro: the stretch of music from the first note until the singing starts. The Ramp sub-tab is where you mark how long that intro is.
Once a song's ramp is marked, AutoCast knows how much of the voicetrack before it can overlap with the song. It starts the song under the announcer, timed so the singing begins just as the announcer finishes talking. Radio people call this "hitting the post", and it's what makes a voicetracked station sound live.
The Ramp marker sits at the moment the vocal comes in. Everything before it is the ramp: music with no singing, which an announcer can talk over. Everything after it should be heard on its own.
The longer the ramp, the more of a voicetrack can overlap it. A song with a 15-second intro leaves room for a good deal of talk; a song that starts singing right away has no ramp at all, so the voicetrack simply finishes before the song begins.
The ramp belongs to the song itself. It isn't about how one song blends into the next; that's what the EOM and Cue markers on the Cue / EOM sub-tab are for.
The Ramp canvas shows two waveforms side by side:
The arrangement is intentional: you're looking at the handoff from left to right. The announcer talks on the left while the song's intro plays underneath, and the Ramp marker shows exactly where the singing takes over.
The target song (right waveform, cyan) loads automatically from your selection in the middle pane. Click Load test-with file to load an announcer intro or voicetrack for the left waveform. It doesn't have to be the one that will really air before this song; any typical piece of talk lets you hear how the overlap will sound.
Press Space to start playback. The test-with file plays first, with the target song coming in under it. Listen for where the song's vocal starts.
When you hear that moment, press R to drop the Ramp marker. The marker appears as a vertical line on the cyan waveform at that position. Press Escape to clear it and start over, or drag the marker line to adjust its position precisely.
Place the Ramp marker right on the first sung word. If a song opens with a spoken line, a shout, or a signature riff you wouldn't want talked over, place the marker there instead: the ramp ends wherever the announcer should be finished.
The zoom slider works the same way as on the Cue/EOM tab — drag it to zoom in for more precise marker placement. At high zoom levels you can see individual transients in the waveform, making it easy to place the Ramp marker exactly on a specific beat or syllable.
Ramp values are saved automatically when you navigate to a different song, exactly like EOM and Cue markers. The Ramp field is stored in seconds in the library. A song without a Ramp marker has no Ramp value, and AutoCast won't overlap a voicetrack with its opening.
Not every song has a ramp worth marking. Leave the Ramp marker unset for:
When in doubt, listen to the first few seconds and ask yourself: would I mind an announcer talking over this? If you would, skip the ramp.