davegee, thanks very much for your helpful post. I ended up using Audacity, which for my purpose worked well. I appreciate you taking the time, your post was definitely a help.
As an aside, I am obviously a new user of PictureToExe. I must say I am mildly disappointed that the fade option is not somehow implemented in the base version. I understand the upgraded version is likely much more sophisticated, but it is always difficult, if not impossible, to really understand how the tool will perform until you actually purchase it. Overall, I am impressed, the capability is very impressive. But, I would be even more impressed if fade was included as an option. So be it. The Audacity solution worked very well indeed.
Thanks again.