This article is included to show the state of the art in automation in the sound control industry.

Interesting notes:

1. wait and fade are described, but no notion of "delay". In my controllers I define three idle states and one active state:

stopped (waiting for a signal from the user or elsewhere)

wait (after signal idle for a specific amount of time)

fade (the active state where stuff happens. Can be instantaneous)

delay (after completing a fade, an idle period for a specific amount of time before continuing)

In addition, there are two flow control parameters: auto/stop and inc/jump #. Auto/stop determines if an auto follow occurs after the wait/fade/delay cycle. inc/jump # determines where the next cue is found.

Finally, two parameters control the behavior of the process: instant on/off and run/break. Instant on/off determines if timing is to be used or not. When on, all timing during operation is set to 0 (i.e 0 fade time, 0 wait time, and 0 delay time) regardless of the specified times. run/break determines if auto follow is active or not.