Why a quiet scene has to be asked for explicitly
A default is a design decision disguised as a parameter. Where sound arrives unless it is switched off, every call made without reading the parameter list returns music, and silence becomes something a prompt has to request. As of 2026-09-12.
| Situation | What arrives by default | What it costs to change |
|---|---|---|
| A benchmark against a silent tool | A finished-sounding mix | A comparison that was never fair |
| A scene written to play dry | Music under it | A regeneration, not a mute |
| A shot for a montage with its own score | A second score underneath | A regeneration, or a fight in the mix |
Inclusion rule. Situations where a default audio track changes the result, drawn from the documented defaults in this register. Order. Alphabetical by situation.
1A baked track cannot be muted later
Where speech, effects and music arrive mixed into one file, an unwanted bed is not an edit decision. The shot has to be generated again with different instructions, which turns a small aesthetic objection into a cost and a delay.
One entry in this register documents a mode returning speech alone, which removes the problem without removing the feature. It is the only published arrangement here that lets an editor own the score.
2Write the negative, and write it the way the vendor showed
Where a vendor documents the phrasing for asking for silence, that phrasing is worth copying verbatim into a shot-list template. An explicit negative is more reliable than an absence, and absence is what a writer naturally produces.
The same habit applies to everything a default decides. A production that writes out the things it does not want has a shot list that survives a change of model, because the intention is recorded rather than implied.
3A default also distorts an evaluation
A tool returning a finished-sounding mix will feel further along than one returning silent footage, regardless of which produces a better series. Comparing the two without noticing is the commonest way a platform decision goes wrong early.
The fix is to evaluate both against the same deliverable: picture with a guide track, or picture alone. One vendor also notes that switching audio off does not reduce the price, which removes the last reason to conflate the two.
4Where the published detail is logged
What is described above is how the techniques work in general. Which models document which of them, in whose words, is kept in the speech controls table with a date on every field.
- Speech without the bed — who documents isolating it
- What silence costs — and who says anything about it
A mechanism note rather than a documented field. Nothing here is attributed to a model, and nothing here is a claim about one. The sourced material is on the speech controls table. Related: Sizing a scene, A cast list.