# DaVinci Resolve Fairlight Audio Scrub Mode Tutorial (Full Guide)

> **Quick answer:** Audio scrub mode in DaVinci Resolve lets you hear sound as you drag the playhead. Turn it on with Timeline > Audio Scrubbing or Shift-S. Use JKL keys for variable-speed scrubbing, Loop Jog (Fairlight only) to loop an 80ms preview at a paused frame, and Alt/Option-drag for frame-accurate scrubbing when finding a sync point or edit.

*Published by [TryUncle](https://tryuncle.com) — the on-screen assistant that teaches DaVinci Resolve on your own screen.*
*Updated 2026-07-25 · DaVinci Resolve 21.0.2 (July 2026) · Canonical: https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-fairlight-audio-scrub-mode-tutorial*

I've lost count of how many times a stuck edit turned out to be a stuck ear. You're staring at a waveform, trying to find the exact frame where a word starts, and the only tool that actually helps is the one nobody explains properly: scrubbing the timeline and actually hearing what's there. DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight page has more than one way to do this, and the differences between them (a plain drag, JKL, Loop Jog, a fine-resolution modifier key) are exactly the kind of detail that never makes it into a beginner tutorial but saves you real time once you know it.

This is a full tutorial on audio scrub mode in DaVinci Resolve as of DaVinci Resolve 21.0.2, released in July 2026 following the version 21.0 launch that June ([source: CG Channel](https://www.cgchannel.com/2026/06/blackmagic-design-releases-davinci-resolve-21-0/)). It covers every way to turn scrubbing on, every scrubbing mode Fairlight offers, how editors actually use it to find sync points and edit marks, and the specific, documented reasons it sometimes goes silent on you.

## What Is Audio Scrub Mode in DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight Page?

Audio scrub mode is DaVinci Resolve's name for hearing sound as you move the playhead by hand, instead of only during normal forward playback. **Scrubbing is the general term for dragging a playhead across audio to hear it, borrowed from the physical act of dragging analog tape back and forth across a tape machine's replay head to find an edit point**, a definition Sound On Sound's own audio glossary traces directly to that tape-editing origin, describing the term as taken "from the practice of editing analogue tape where the tape was manually dragged back and forth across the replay head to locate the required edit point using an action similar to the cleaning action of 'scrubbing'" (source: Sound On Sound, Scrubbing glossary entry). The same glossary entry notes the modern usage carried straight over into software: "The term is now routinely used in DAWs and audio editing software platforms where the audio is played forwards or backwards at variable speeds, usually to locate an edit or cue point" (source: Sound On Sound, Scrubbing glossary entry).

In DaVinci Resolve specifically, the feature has a name and an on/off switch. Blackmagic's own manual states plainly that "audio scrubbing is enabled by default, meaning that you'll hear audio when dragging the playhead with the mouse back and forth," and that you toggle it by choosing "Timeline > Audio Scrubbing (Shift-S)" (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Timeline Options, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). That single toggle governs whether dragging the playhead on the Media, Edit, or Fairlight page produces sound at all, and it's the first thing worth checking any time scrubbing seems to have stopped working.

Fairlight itself is DaVinci Resolve's dedicated audio page, and it's where scrubbing gets the most capability. Blackmagic describes it as "the world's first and only audio post production software that's completely integrated with picture editing" (source: Blackmagic Design, Fairlight product page), and that integration is exactly why scrubbing matters here in a way it doesn't in a plain media player: you're not just previewing a sound file, you're navigating a synced multi-track timeline where the picture, the dialogue, the music, and the effects all have to line up frame by frame.

**Audio scrub mode isn't one single feature. It's a family of related tools, a plain mouse drag, JKL keyboard shuttle, Loop Jog, and a fine-resolution modifier key, and each one solves a slightly different listening problem.** The rest of this guide walks through each one, when to reach for it, and what to do when the sound stops coming out.

## How Do You Turn On Audio Scrubbing in DaVinci Resolve?

Audio scrubbing is a single toggle, accessible from the Timeline menu or a keyboard shortcut, and it's on by default the moment you install DaVinci Resolve. Choose **Timeline > Audio Scrubbing**, or press **Shift-S**, on any of the Media, Edit, or Fairlight pages, and DaVinci Resolve's own manual confirms this shortcut applies the same way across all three: "Choose Timeline > Audio Scrubbing (Shift-S)" (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Timeline Options, Blackmagic Design, mirrored).

Here's the sequence, step by step, if you're setting this up for the first time or checking why it isn't working:

1. Open any project and go to the Edit or Fairlight page.
2. Click the Timeline menu in the menu bar at the top of the window.
3. Look for **Audio Scrubbing** in the list. A checkmark next to it means it's currently on.
4. Click it to toggle, or just press Shift-S from anywhere in the timeline without opening the menu at all.
5. Test it immediately: click and drag inside the Timeline ruler, the thin strip above your tracks where the playhead and timecode live, and confirm you hear sound as you drag.

**A checkmark next to Audio Scrubbing in the Timeline menu is the single fastest thing to check before troubleshooting anything else about a silent scrub.** It sounds almost too obvious to mention, but it's the first item on Blackmagic's own troubleshooting path for this exact symptom, and it costs three seconds to rule out.

Why would you ever turn it off, given it's on by default? The manual is direct about the tradeoff: "While this can be useful when you're searching for audio cues, it can also be distracting if you're just focused on the picture" (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Timeline Options, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). If you're doing a picture-only pass, checking color, framing, or cutting for pace without caring about sound yet, a constant stream of chopped-up audio every time you drag the playhead gets old fast. Turning it off for that pass and back on when you need to hear something specific is a completely normal way to use the toggle.

**Audio scrubbing settings that matter**

| Setting | Where | Default | What it changes |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| Audio Scrubbing | Timeline menu, or Shift-S | On | Whether dragging the playhead produces any sound at all, on Media, Edit, and Fairlight pages |
| Loop Jog | Timeline menu (Fairlight page only) | Off | Whether a paused playhead loops a short audio preview instead of staying silent |
| Timeline Scrolling: Fixed | View > Timeline Scrolling, or the Timeline View Options dropdown | Off | Whether the playhead stays centered and the timeline scrolls under it during scrubbing |
| Output Device | Preferences > System > Video and Audio I/O | Whatever was selected on install | Which physical device actually plays the sound scrubbing produces |

One detail that trips people up specifically on a system with an external Blackmagic Decklink or UltraStudio card installed: the Output Device setting decides where scrubbed audio actually goes, and it's completely independent of whether Audio Scrubbing itself is checked. A Blackmagic Forum thread on this exact symptom, titled Fairlight No Audio Scrubbing, describes a user whose meters moved correctly on the Fairlight page but produced no sound, with the fix landing on the output routing rather than the scrubbing toggle itself, since Speaker Setup was pointed at a device the user wasn't actually listening through (source: Blackmagic Forum, Fairlight No Audio Scrubbing). This is covered in full detail in the troubleshooting section further down.

## How Do You Scrub Audio With the JKL Keys Instead of the Mouse?

A mouse drag gets you audio at exactly the speed your hand moves, which is intuitive but hard to reproduce precisely. JKL gives you the same scrubbing behavior from the keyboard, at fixed, repeatable speeds, and it's the method most editors settle into once they've been in Resolve for more than a few weeks.

The three keys map directly onto DaVinci Resolve's transport, and the manual states their base behavior in the plainest terms possible: "**J**: Plays 100% backward." "**K**: Stops playback." "**L**: Plays 100% forward." (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Using JKL to Control Playback, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). From there:

- **Tap L again while already playing forward** to step up to a faster forward speed, and again for faster still.
- **Tap J again while already playing backward** to do the same in reverse.
- **Hold K and tap J** to move exactly one frame backward.
- **Hold K and tap L** to move exactly one frame forward.
- **Hold K and J together** for slow-motion reverse playback, which the manual notes includes "slow motion audio playback" rather than silence (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Using JKL to Control Playback, Blackmagic Design, mirrored).
- **Hold K and L together** for slow-motion forward playback, with pitch correction applied on macOS.

Separately from JKL, DaVinci Resolve's dedicated transport bar has its own Rewind and Fast Forward buttons, and these have documented, exact speed steps that JKL's own manual page doesn't spell out with the same precision. According to the manual's page on transport navigation, "pressing either of these buttons multiple times speeds up this motion, cycling through 8x, 24x, 60x, 150x, and 360x play speeds" (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Transport Controls and JKL Navigation, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). That's five concrete speed tiers, and it's worth knowing even if your daily habit is JKL from the keyboard, since the same underlying shuttle mechanism drives both.

**JKL scrubbing speed reference**

| Key combination | What it does |
| --- | --- |
| L | Plays forward at normal speed |
| L, tapped again | Steps up to a faster forward speed each additional tap |
| J | Plays backward at normal speed |
| J, tapped again | Steps up to a faster backward speed each additional tap |
| K | Stops playback in place |
| K + tap J | Moves exactly one frame backward |
| K + tap L | Moves exactly one frame forward |
| K held + J held | Slow-motion reverse, with audio |
| K held + L held | Slow-motion forward, with pitch-corrected audio on macOS |
| Rewind / Fast Forward transport buttons, clicked repeatedly | 8x, 24x, 60x, 150x, 360x |

Why reach for JKL instead of dragging with the mouse at all? Two reasons come up constantly among editors who've made the switch. First, it's repeatable: the same key combination produces the same speed every time, where a mouse drag depends on exactly how fast and how far your hand happens to move that particular pass. Second, it keeps your hand near the rest of your editing shortcuts, since J, K, and L sit right next to most of the trim and mark commands you're already using, letting you shuttle to a spot and mark an edit point without moving your hand across the keyboard or the mouse at all.

**JKL turns audio scrubbing from something your hand does into something your muscle memory does, and that difference matters most in a long editing session where every extra motion adds up.** It's a small habit change with a real payoff: once J, K, and L are automatic, finding a specific word in a two-hour interview stops feeling like searching and starts feeling like turning a dial.

## What Is Loop Jog, and How Is It Different From Dragging the Playhead?

Here's the problem Loop Jog solves: you scrub to a specific frame, stop, and the audio at that exact moment is silent, because a single frozen frame of a waveform has no duration to actually play back. You're left staring at a spot on a waveform with no way to hear what's happening right there without nudging the playhead again and losing your exact position.

Loop Jog fixes this by turning a paused playhead into a tiny, repeating audio loop instead of dead silence. It's available only on the Fairlight page, turned on through **Timeline > Loop Jog**, and the manual describes exactly what it does once active: it "enables a brief sample preview to be heard while scrubbing the playhead through the Timeline, which can make it easier to recognize bits of dialog or music as you're quickly scrubbing through tracks" (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Using JKL to Control Playback, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). The Transport Controls manual page adds the specific behavior when you actually stop moving: the preview "loops endlessly" once you hold the playhead on a frame, playing "by default, the current 80 ms prior to the playhead" as it repeats (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Transport Controls, Blackmagic Design, mirrored).

**Loop Jog turns a single frozen frame into a repeating 80-millisecond loop, which means you can listen to a sound the same deliberate way you'd examine a still photograph, instead of catching it once as it flies past.** That's the entire value proposition in one sentence: it converts an instant into something you can actually study.

You can adjust exactly how much audio loops. The **Loop Jog Width** field lets you set that duration yourself, and the default 80 millisecond value scales differently depending on your project's frame rate. At 25 frames per second, where each frame lasts 40 milliseconds, 80 ms works out to exactly two frames of looping audio. At 24 fps, where each frame runs about 41.7 milliseconds, that same 80 ms default covers just under two frames, roughly 1.92 frames. At 30 fps, where a frame is about 33.3 milliseconds, 80 ms stretches to about 2.4 frames. None of that math changes what you hear day to day, since the default setting is tuned to catch a short spoken syllable or a percussive hit regardless of frame rate, but it explains why the loop feels marginally longer on a 24 fps timeline than a 30 fps one at the same width setting.

**Loop Jog versus a plain playhead drag**

| Behavior | Plain scrubbing (drag or JKL) | Loop Jog enabled |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Playhead moving | Hear audio at the speed of the movement | Same, no change while actively moving |
| Playhead stopped | Silence, since a single frame has no duration | Loops a short preview, 80 ms by default, endlessly until you move again |
| Best for | Locating the general area of a sound quickly | Confirming exactly what's happening at one specific frame |
| Only available on | Media, Edit, and Fairlight pages | Fairlight page only |

Where does this actually matter in practice? Picture a dialogue edit where you've scrubbed close to the start of a word but you're not sure if you've landed a frame early or a frame late. Without Loop Jog, stopping on that frame gives you nothing to listen to. With it on, that same stopped frame becomes an 80 millisecond loop of exactly what's there, which is often enough to tell whether you're catching the tail of the previous word, dead air, or the very beginning of the consonant you're trying to cut on.

**One of the recurring questions we hear in our 100,000+ member video editing community is some version of "how do I hear what's actually at this exact frame instead of just around it," and Loop Jog is the specific tool built for that exact question.** It's a narrow feature, and that's exactly why it doesn't show up in most beginner tutorials, but it earns its place the first time you're trying to trim a breath out of a voiceover without clipping the word on either side of it.

## How Do You Scrub Slowly for a Frame-Accurate Edit Point?

A plain mouse drag is fast to learn and hard to control precisely, since the relationship between how far your hand moves and how far the playhead travels stays constant no matter how carefully you try to move. DaVinci Resolve has a dedicated modifier for exactly this problem.

Hold **Option** on a Mac, or **Alt** on Windows, while dragging the playhead, and the drag-to-distance ratio slows down, giving you finer control over small movements, documented across DaVinci Resolve's own transport controls reference (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Transport Controls, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). The same small mouse movement that might jump five or six frames at normal scrub speed covers a single frame or two with the modifier held, which is exactly the precision you want when you're closing in on a specific syllable or a click you need to trim out.

Pair this with **Fixed Playhead** mode for long timelines, and scrubbing stops feeling like a chase. By default, DaVinci Resolve's playhead moves across a stationary timeline view, which means scrubbing any real distance eventually runs the playhead off the edge of your visible window, forcing the timeline to jump and reorient. Fixed Playhead flips that relationship. The manual describes it directly: "When enabled, the playhead remains fixed in place, and the Timeline scrolls underneath it as you use the transport controls or JKL to play, shuttle, or scrub forward or back" (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Playhead Modes, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). Turn it on through **View > Timeline Scrolling > Fixed**, or the equivalent option in the Timeline View Options dropdown in the toolbar.

There's one real limitation worth knowing before you go looking for the option and can't find it. The same manual page states plainly: "Fixed playhead scrolling is not currently available when using Focus mode" (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Playhead Modes, Blackmagic Design, mirrored). If Fixed Playhead appears greyed out in your menu, Focus mode is almost certainly the reason, and switching to Pointer Mode or Range Selection Mode instead resolves it every time, a fix documented directly in a Blackmagic Forum thread specifically about this greyed-out symptom (source: Blackmagic Forum, Fairlight, fixed playhead greyed out).

**A greyed-out Fixed Playhead option almost always means Focus mode is turned on somewhere in your editing mode settings, not a broken feature or a missing license.** That single sentence resolves a genuinely confusing moment for a lot of editors who go looking for a setting that looks disabled and assume something's wrong with their install.

Putting the two together: hold Option or Alt for precision while you're closing in on a spot, and turn on Fixed Playhead first if you're working across a timeline long enough that the playhead would otherwise keep running off-screen. Neither setting depends on the other, and you can use either on its own depending on what you're actually fighting, imprecision or a wandering view.

## What's the Difference Between Scrubbing on the Edit Page and the Fairlight Page?

Everything described so far, Audio Scrubbing, JKL, Fixed Playhead, and the fine-resolution modifier, is available on both the Edit and Fairlight pages. Loop Jog is the one exception, restricted to Fairlight only. But "available on both" doesn't mean "behaves identically," and this is worth understanding before you assume a problem on one page means the same problem exists everywhere.

Multiple Blackmagic Forum threads describe scrubbing behavior diverging between the two pages on the exact same project, with the exact same audio. One thread, specifically about middle-mouse dragging with Timeline Fixed enabled, documents that this interaction "will scrub with audio in the Edit Page" but doesn't behave the same way on Fairlight (source: Blackmagic Forum, Fairlight Fixed Playhead Audio scrubbing). Other reports describe the reverse pattern, audio scrubbing working normally in Fairlight while behaving inconsistently on Edit, and still others describe audio scrub working via frame-by-frame arrow key stepping in Fairlight even when a dragged scrub produces no sound there at all (source: Blackmagic Forum, No Audio Scrub in Fairlight).

**Scrubbing on the Edit page and scrubbing on the Fairlight page run through two distinct paths inside DaVinci Resolve, and one working while the other fails on the identical project is a known, reported pattern, not a coincidence unique to your machine.** That's genuinely useful to know before you spend an hour reinstalling drivers over a problem that's actually specific to one page's audio pipeline.

Practically, this means your first diagnostic move, any time scrubbing seems broken, is to test the other page. If Fairlight goes silent, switch to Edit and try the same drag over the same clip. If it works there, you've narrowed the problem to Fairlight's specific playback path rather than your audio hardware, your driver, or your project settings generally, which changes where you look next considerably. The troubleshooting section further down walks through both branches.

There's also a workflow reason to prefer one page over the other depending on the task. The Edit page's scrubbing is what you'll use constantly while cutting picture, since it's the page you're already living in for most of a rough cut. Fairlight's scrubbing, layered with Loop Jog and the mixer's per-track solo and mute controls, is built for a deeper listen: isolating one voice out of three, checking a specific track's levels while everything else stays muted, or confirming a sound effect lands on the right frame after you've already moved past the rough-cut stage. Neither page is strictly better. They're built for different depths of the same job.

## How Do Editors Actually Use Scrub Mode to Find a Sync Point?

All of this tooling exists to solve real editing problems, and the clearest one is manual audio-video sync when you don't have timecode, a clapperboard, or a clean slate to work from.

Editor Chadwick Shoults documents exactly this workflow in a tutorial on manual sync without a slate, describing a technique built entirely around audio scrubbing: watching for a hard **B** or **P** sound in speech, because "your mouth closes completely" for either consonant right before the sound releases, giving you a precise, visually identifiable moment on picture that you can then match against an equally precise spike on the audio waveform (source: Creative Video Tips, Mastering Sync: The B and P Trick, by Chadwick Shoults). Scrubbing is the mechanism that makes this practical at all. Shoults is direct about the prerequisite: "If you don't hear audio while scrubbing through clips, enable audio scrubbing by going to the Timeline menu and selecting Audio Scrubbing" (source: Creative Video Tips, Mastering Sync: The B and P Trick, by Chadwick Shoults), because without it, you'd be trying to match a visual mouth-closing frame against a waveform spike you can't actually hear, working blind on the audio half of the comparison.

**Finding a sync point by ear on a hard B or P works because your mouth closes completely before either sound leaves it, giving you one unambiguous visual frame to match against one unambiguous audio spike.** That's the whole technique distilled into a single sentence, and Shoults' own framing captures exactly why scrubbing matters here: "This feature allows you to hear the audio as you navigate through the timeline, which is essential for syncing" (source: Creative Video Tips, Mastering Sync: The B and P Trick, by Chadwick Shoults).

Here's how that actually plays out step by step, combining the scrubbing tools covered earlier in this guide with the B and P technique:

1. Load your camera clip and your separately recorded audio onto adjacent tracks, roughly overlapping in time.
2. Zoom into both waveforms until individual spikes are clearly visible rather than a solid block of sound.
3. Scrub with JKL or a slow mouse drag through the picture, watching for a word that starts with a hard B or P.
4. Hold Option or Alt for fine-resolution scrubbing as you get close, narrowing in on the exact frame where the speaker's lips close completely before the sound releases.
5. Switch to the separate audio track and scrub the same way, this time listening for the matching spike in the waveform rather than watching picture.
6. Turn on Loop Jog if you need to confirm you've landed exactly on the plosive itself rather than a frame just before or after it.
7. Slide one clip against the other until the visual mouth-close frame and the audio spike line up, then lock the sync.

This same core skill, using scrub mode to isolate one precise moment by ear, extends past manual sync into everyday editing. Finding the exact frame a word starts so a cut doesn't clip the beginning of dialogue. Confirming a sound effect lands on the frame an action actually happens rather than a frame or two late. Catching a click, a mouth noise, or a breath that needs trimming out of a voiceover without cutting into the word around it. Our sibling guide on [syncing audio in DaVinci Resolve](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/sync-audio) covers the full automated sync workflow, Auto Sync Audio and the Sync Bin, for when you do have a usable shared sound event across two files. Scrub mode is the tool underneath all of it, the thing that lets you actually hear what you're looking at closely enough to make that call by ear instead of guessing from the shape of a waveform alone.

## How Do You Use Scrub Mode to Check a Multicam or Podcast Recording?

Scrub mode's usefulness doesn't stop at finding a single sync point. It's also the fastest way to spot-check a longer recording once it's captured, before you commit real editing time to it.

For a **multicam interview**, where you've synced multiple camera angles to one shared audio track, scrubbing lets you quickly confirm that sync held across the entire recording rather than just at the point where you originally matched it. Drag the playhead across a section well past your sync point and listen for drift, a lip-sync mismatch between what you see and what you hear. If sync was solid at the start but drifted by the ten-minute mark, that's a sign of a sample rate mismatch between your cameras and your audio source rather than a bad initial sync, and it's a problem worth catching with a quick scrub before you've cut half the interview around footage that's quietly out of alignment. Our full [multicam editing workflow for interviews](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/davinci-resolve-multicam-editing-workflow-for-interviews) covers the sync and cutting process end to end.

For a **podcast recorded directly in Fairlight**, scrubbing right after you stop recording is genuinely part of the job, not an optional extra step. Our guide to [recording a podcast in DaVinci Resolve using Fairlight](https://tryuncle.com/learn/davinci-resolve/how-to-record-a-podcast-in-davinci-resolve-fairlight) recommends scrubbing through every track individually right after a session, not just the one you happened to be watching while recording, since it's common to catch a track that stopped early, clipped partway through, or dropped out in a way that wasn't audible while you were focused on the conversation itself. Loop Jog is particularly useful here: pausing on a suspicious-looking flat spot in a waveform and hearing an 80 millisecond loop of it tells you immediately whether that's genuine silence, a dropout, or just a quiet pause in the conversation, without needing to play the whole section back from a running start.

**A five-second scrub through every track right after you stop recording catches the kind of failure that a full playback review, done later, sometimes misses entirely because it happened in a stretch nobody was actively listening to.** This is the cheapest insurance a recording session gets, and scrub mode is the specific tool that makes it fast enough to actually do every time instead of skipping it under deadline pressure.

## Why Isn't Audio Scrubbing Working in DaVinci Resolve?

This is the single most reported problem tied to this feature, and it's been reported, in slightly different shapes, across nearly every version of DaVinci Resolve going back years. Multiple genuinely distinct causes produce a symptom that looks identical from the outside: you drag the playhead, meters might move, and no sound comes out. Here's every documented cause, organized around the exact circumstances that separate one from another.

**Problem: Audio Scrubbing is simply switched off.**

Check the Timeline menu for a checkmark next to Audio Scrubbing, or just press Shift-S and try scrubbing again immediately. This resolves the issue often enough that it's worth ruling out first, every single time, before you touch anything more complicated.

**Problem: meters move, but no sound comes out, and you have a Blackmagic Decklink or UltraStudio card installed.**

This is an output routing problem, not a scrubbing problem. A Blackmagic Forum thread titled Fairlight No Audio Scrubbing describes exactly this: meters responding correctly on the Fairlight page with zero audible sound, ultimately traced to the audio output being routed through the Decklink device rather than the computer's own speakers or headphone jack, with the fix landing on enabling Speaker Setup > Use System Audio Output (source: Blackmagic Forum, Fairlight No Audio Scrubbing). A related thread, specifically involving a Decklink Studio 2 card, found the same category of fix by switching the output device from the Decklink's audio out to the motherboard's own audio out in Preferences (source: Blackmagic Forum, No Audio Scrub in Fairlight). Check Preferences > System > Video and Audio I/O and confirm the output device actually matches whatever you're physically listening through.

**Problem: scrubbing works fine when you drag fast, but goes silent when you drag slowly.**

This is a documented, reported behavior specific to certain versions and configurations, not something wrong with your technique. One Blackmagic Forum thread on this exact symptom describes a Windows 10 user experiencing no sound at all unless scrubbing quickly, with frame-by-frame stepping via the mouse also silent, and the issue eventually resolving after restarting DaVinci Resolve a couple of times (source: Blackmagic Forum, No audio when scrubbing slowly?). If you hit this, a restart is worth trying before anything more involved, since it's cleared the problem for other users experiencing the identical symptom.

**Problem: neither Shift-S nor the Timeline menu option seems to do anything at all.**

A thread specifically titled Resolve 20, Audio Scrubbing won't work describes this exact failure, and the most useful reply asks a diagnostic question worth applying to your own case: are you dragging the CTI (the playhead itself) with scrolling disabled, or dragging the ruler above it with Fixed Playhead enabled (source: Blackmagic Forum, Resolve 20, Audio Scrubbing won't work). These are two different interactions with two different expected behaviors, and confusing one for the other can look identical to a genuinely broken toggle when it isn't one.

**Problem: scrubbing works on one page but not the other.**

Covered in detail in the section above. Test the same drag on both the Edit and Fairlight pages before assuming your whole install is broken; a difference between the two pages is a documented, known pattern rather than something uniquely wrong with your setup (source: Blackmagic Forum, Fairlight Fixed Playhead Audio scrubbing).

**Problem: Fixed Playhead is greyed out and won't turn on at all.**

Focus mode is almost certainly enabled. Switch to Pointer Mode or Range Selection Mode instead, since Fixed Playhead scrolling isn't available while Focus mode is active, a fix confirmed directly on a Blackmagic Forum thread reporting this exact greyed-out symptom (source: Blackmagic Forum, Fairlight, fixed playhead greyed out).

**Problem: forward playback has audio for the first few frames, then goes silent and plays randomly afterward.**

This is a more specific, less common symptom, reported after a particular build update, where moving forward frame by frame produces audio only briefly before dropping out and behaving unpredictably (source: Blackmagic Forum, Audio scrubbing on timelines not working properly). If a restart doesn't resolve it, this pattern points toward a corrupted cache or a build-specific regression rather than a settings problem, and it's worth checking whether a Resolve update has shipped since you last updated, since this category of bug has historically been fixed in subsequent point releases.

**Scrub mode troubleshooting quick reference**

| Symptom | Most likely cause | Where to check |
| --- | --- | --- |
| No sound at all when scrubbing, on any page | Audio Scrubbing toggle is off | Timeline menu, or press Shift-S |
| Meters move, but genuinely no sound, Decklink or UltraStudio installed | Output routed to the capture card, not your speakers | Preferences > System > Video and Audio I/O; Speaker Setup > Use System Audio Output |
| Fast scrubbing has sound, slow scrubbing doesn't | Documented version-specific behavior | Restart DaVinci Resolve; try again |
| Shift-S and the menu both appear to do nothing | Dragging the ruler with Fixed Playhead versus dragging the CTI directly, a mismatched interaction | Confirm which element you're actually dragging |
| Works on Edit page, not on Fairlight, or the reverse | Two distinct playback paths inside the same app | Test the identical drag on both pages before troubleshooting further |
| Fixed Playhead option greyed out | Focus mode is active | Switch to Pointer Mode or Range Selection Mode |
| Audio present for the first few frames, then drops out randomly | Build-specific bug or corrupted cache | Check for a newer point release; clear render cache |

**A quick worked example.** A YouTuber editing a long-form video on Windows notices audio scrubbing has gone silent on the Fairlight page specifically, though it still works fine on the Edit page. First check: Timeline > Audio Scrubbing is checked, ruling out the toggle itself. Second check: the same drag on the Edit page produces sound, confirming the audio hardware and driver are fine, and narrowing the problem specifically to Fairlight's own playback path. Third check: no Decklink or UltraStudio card is installed, ruling out the routing issue. Fourth step: restart DaVinci Resolve. Scrubbing on Fairlight comes back working immediately, matching the documented pattern where a restart clears an inconsistent scrubbing state without any settings actually needing to change. Total time from noticing the problem to a working fix: under two minutes, almost all of it spent confirming the toggle and testing the other page before the actual restart resolved it.

**If you'd rather not step through a checklist like this one every time scrubbing goes quiet on you**, that's exactly the kind of moment where having something point at the specific setting in your actual project, instead of matching your screen against a guide in another tab, saves real time. More on that below.

## Does Scrub Mode Work the Same on Mac, Windows, and Linux, and in the Free Version?

Almost entirely yes, with a couple of specific exceptions worth knowing before you assume a difference you're seeing is a bug rather than expected behavior.

**Platform differences.** Audio Scrubbing, JKL, Loop Jog, and Fixed Playhead all work identically across Mac, Windows, and Linux, since they're core Fairlight and timeline features rather than anything tied to platform-specific audio drivers. The one confirmed platform detail worth flagging: slow-motion forward playback via K+L includes pitch correction specifically on macOS, per the manual's own description of that key combination (source: DaVinci Resolve Manual, Using JKL to Control Playback, Blackmagic Design, mirrored), a detail that doesn't come with an equivalent statement for Windows or Linux in the same manual section. The fine-resolution scrubbing modifier does differ in its key name only, Option on Mac versus Alt on Windows and Linux, though the behavior it produces is the same slowed drag-to-distance ratio on every platform.

**Decklink and UltraStudio-related scrubbing silence**, covered in the troubleshooting section above, is specific to systems with that hardware installed and configured as the audio output, regardless of which operating system that hardware happens to be running on. A laptop with no external capture card installed simply doesn't have this particular failure mode available to it.

**Free version versus Studio.** Every scrubbing tool covered in this guide, Audio Scrubbing, JKL, Loop Jog, Fixed Playhead, and the fine-resolution modifier, is available in DaVinci Resolve's free version with no restriction at all. None of it sits behind the Studio paywall. Studio's Fairlight-relevant additions are elsewhere entirely: additional Fairlight FX plugins, Dolby Atmos and immersive audio mixing, and object-based audio automation, none of which touch how you scrub, hear, or navigate audio on the timeline. A free-version editor troubleshooting silent scrubbing is working with the identical tools and identical fixes as a Studio editor hitting the same symptom.

**Version history.** Loop Jog and the current Fixed Playhead behavior are established features as of DaVinci Resolve 21.0.2, the build this guide is written against, released in July 2026 following the version 21.0 launch that June (source: CG Channel, Blackmagic Design releases DaVinci Resolve 21.0). If you're running a substantially older version and something described in this guide doesn't match what you see on screen, the update itself, not a settings change, is usually the actual fix, since Fairlight's playback tools have received real refinements across recent point releases.

## Is There a Faster Way to Learn Fairlight's Scrub Tools Than Trial and Error?

Everything in this guide is genuinely learnable from a manual and enough patience. We've spent more than seven years cutting commercial video professionally, we run a video editing community with more than 100,000 members, and we're an official Udemy Business Partner having taught over 100,000 students, and even with that much time in the software, the honest answer is that a feature like Loop Jog or a Fixed Playhead setting hiding behind Focus mode is exactly the kind of detail that takes a wrong turn or two to actually find the first time.

**TryUncle is the on-screen assistant for DaVinci Resolve on macOS.** Ask in plain words and Uncle points at the exact control on your screen. If you're mid-edit and can't remember where Loop Jog lives in the Timeline menu, or you're staring at a greyed-out Fixed Playhead option with no idea why, you can ask Uncle directly, out loud or by typing, and it looks at your actual DaVinci Resolve window and points to the setting, live, without sending you out of Resolve to search a video tutorial for the right timestamp.

It's worth naming honestly where TryUncle sits next to the rest of what's out there for learning Fairlight. Blackmagic's own free training and manual, which this guide draws on directly, remain the authoritative source for exactly what a feature does. YouTube creators covering Fairlight in depth are genuinely useful for watching a full workflow start to finish. Reddit and the Blackmagic Forum are where you'll find other editors who've already hit the exact bug you're hitting, described in their own words, which is where a meaningful share of the troubleshooting facts in this guide actually came from. None of those, though, is watching your specific project while you work in it.

The category also includes tools that solve a different problem entirely, worth naming so the comparison stays honest rather than pretending they don't exist. Sottocut and heyeddie.ai answer chat-style questions about your editing without watching your live screen. CutAgent and PremiereCopilot automate parts of an edit for you rather than teaching you to do it yourself. None of the four currently offer a Fairlight-specific scrubbing tutor that watches your actual project.

**How Fairlight-learning options actually compare**

| Option | What it actually does | Where it falls short for this specific topic |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Blackmagic's official manual and training | The authoritative source for exact feature behavior, referenced throughout this guide | Doesn't watch your project or answer a question about your specific stuck point |
| YouTube tutorials | Good for a full workflow demonstration start to finish | Fixed order and pacing; you wait through everything to reach the one detail you need |
| Reddit and the Blackmagic Forum | Real editors describing the exact bug you're hitting, in their own words | Answers are historical, not live, and you have to find the right thread first |
| Sottocut, heyeddie.ai | Chat-style answers about editing questions | Doesn't see your actual DaVinci Resolve screen |
| CutAgent, PremiereCopilot | Automate parts of an edit for you | Does the task instead of teaching you the control, which doesn't carry over to your next project |
| TryUncle | Watches your DaVinci Resolve screen and points at the exact control, live, in your own project | Doesn't scrub, patch, or sync anything for you; it points and explains |

**Guided practice inside Resolve beats watching a tutorial about Resolve.** That's the whole case for an in-app tutor over a pre-recorded video: a course teaches Loop Jog in whatever order it was scripted, whether or not that's actually where you're stuck, while an assistant watching your screen answers the question you actually have, about the project you're actually scrubbing through, at the moment you're stuck on it.

Being direct about what this is and isn't matters more than the sales pitch. TryUncle is a paid macOS subscription, currently in founder pricing at $29.99 a month for the first 100 seats, cancel anytime, and it points and explains rather than acting on your timeline directly. It doesn't turn on Audio Scrubbing for you, doesn't drag your playhead, and doesn't fix a silent scrub. What it does is put you in front of the exact menu item or setting faster than reading a guide like this one side by side with your own project window, which matters most in the moment you're actually stuck, not after the fact.

If you're specifically fighting a silent scrub mid-session, that's the moment Uncle is built for: it can look at your actual Fairlight page and point at whichever of the settings covered above, the Audio Scrubbing toggle, your output device, or the Fixed Playhead option, is the one actually worth checking on your screen right now.

## The Setup, One Last Time

Turn on Audio Scrubbing with Shift-S if it's ever off. Drag the playhead or use JKL to hear sound at any speed. Turn on Loop Jog on the Fairlight page when you need to actually study one frozen frame instead of catching a sound as it flies past. Hold Option or Alt when you need precision, and turn on Fixed Playhead if a long timeline keeps running out from under you. That's the entire toolkit, and every piece of it ships free in DaVinci Resolve, on every platform, in every recent version.

The failure points are almost never the feature itself. They're a toggle switched off, an output routed to the wrong device, a Fixed Playhead option greyed out by Focus mode, or a scrubbing quirk between the Edit and Fairlight pages that a restart usually clears. Check the toggle first, every time, before you go looking for anything more complicated. It's the fix that resolves this more often than every other cause in this guide combined.



## FAQ

### How do I turn on audio scrub mode in DaVinci Resolve?

Choose Timeline > Audio Scrubbing from the menu bar, or press Shift-S, on the Media, Edit, or Fairlight page. It's a toggle, on by default in a fresh install, so pressing Shift-S again turns it off if you want to drag the playhead silently, for example while reviewing picture only.

### Why can't I hear audio when I scrub the timeline in DaVinci Resolve?

Check four things in order: that Timeline > Audio Scrubbing is actually checked, that your audio output device in Preferences > System > Video and Audio I/O is the one you're actually listening through, that you're not scrubbing too slowly on an older build (a documented Fairlight bug where fast scrubs play sound but slow ones don't), and that a Blackmagic Decklink or similar capture card isn't the selected output when your speakers are plugged into your computer's own jack instead.

### What is Loop Jog in DaVinci Resolve's Fairlight page?

Loop Jog is a Fairlight-only scrubbing mode, turned on with Timeline > Loop Jog, that plays a short looping preview of the audio sitting just before wherever you pause the playhead. By default it loops the 80 milliseconds prior to the playhead, repeating that same fragment until you move again, which makes it far easier to identify a specific word, note, or sound effect than a single silent frame ever could.

### What's the difference between audio scrubbing on the Edit page and the Fairlight page?

They're two different signal paths inside the same application, and Blackmagic Forum reports across several versions describe scrubbing working on one page while failing on the other, with the same project, the same audio, and the same output device. If scrubbing works on Edit but not Fairlight, or the reverse, that's a known, reported pattern, not something uniquely wrong with your setup.

### How do I scrub audio slowly for a precise, frame-accurate edit in DaVinci Resolve?

Hold Option on a Mac or Alt on Windows while dragging the playhead for fine-resolution scrubbing, which slows the drag-to-distance ratio so a small mouse movement covers a small span of the timeline instead of jumping several frames at once. Combine it with Fixed Playhead mode, under View > Timeline Scrolling > Fixed, so the timeline scrolls underneath a stationary playhead rather than you chasing a moving one.

### Is there an AI tool that helps me learn Fairlight's scrubbing and playback tools faster?

TryUncle watches your DaVinci Resolve screen and points at the exact menu item or button you're asking about, including Audio Scrubbing, Loop Jog, or Fixed Playhead, live, inside your own project. It's a paid macOS app in founder pricing, and it doesn't scrub, edit, or sync anything for you. It teaches you where the control is and what it does, on the project you're actually working on.

### Does audio scrubbing work the same in DaVinci Resolve's free version and Studio?

Yes. Audio Scrubbing, JKL playback, Loop Jog, Fixed Playhead mode, and fine-resolution Option/Alt scrubbing are all identical between the free version and DaVinci Resolve Studio. None of it sits behind the Studio paywall. Studio's Fairlight-specific extras are things like additional FX plugins and Dolby Atmos mixing, not the scrubbing and playback tools covered in this guide.

## Sources

- [DaVinci Resolve Manual: Timeline Options, Audio Scrubbing (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part818.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Manual: Using JKL to Control Playback (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3552.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Manual: Transport Controls (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3551.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Manual: Transport Controls and JKL Navigation (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3550.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Manual: Loop Jog Scrubbing (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3555.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve Manual: Playhead Modes (Blackmagic Design, mirrored)](https://www.steakunderwater.com/VFXPedia/__man/Resolve18-6/DaVinciResolve18_Manual_files/part3485.htm)
- [DaVinci Resolve - Fairlight (Blackmagic Design product page)](https://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/davinciresolve/fairlight)
- [Blackmagic Design releases DaVinci Resolve 21.0 (CG Channel)](https://www.cgchannel.com/2026/06/blackmagic-design-releases-davinci-resolve-21-0/)
- [Blackmagic Forum: Fairlight No Audio Scrubbing](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=103447)
- [Blackmagic Forum: No Audio Scrub in Fairlight](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=143195)
- [Blackmagic Forum: No audio when scrubbing slowly?](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=141143)
- [Blackmagic Forum: Fairlight Fixed Playhead Audio scrubbing](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=204913)
- [Blackmagic Forum: Resolve 20, Audio Scrubbing won't work](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=223144)
- [Blackmagic Forum: Audio scrubbing on timelines not working properly](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=183840)
- [Blackmagic Forum: Fairlight, fixed playhead greyed out](https://forum.blackmagicdesign.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=196633)
- [Mastering Sync: The B and P Trick in DaVinci Resolve, by Chadwick Shoults (Creative Video Tips)](https://creativevideotips.com/tutorials/manual-sync-hack-no-tc-slate-or-clap-required)
- [Scrubbing (Sound On Sound glossary)](https://www.soundonsound.com/glossary/scrubbing)
- [Scrubbing (audio), Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scrubbing_(audio))