Can you believe the Audacity?

Kill Me Sarah · Post by **Kill Me Sarah** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 2:21 pm

Okay, so I'm trying to incorporate drums into a quick mix I'm doing and I'm having my first troubles with latency in Audacity. So I'd like to make little cuts in my audio track so I can push things around to make them line up. This is really easy to do in Krystal, just grab the scissors and snip and push...is there an easy way to do this in Audacity?

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 8:36 pm

I've never really liked how this works in Audacity, but what I've always done is just created a new layer for the track I want to move around, put it in that layer, and click on the move side to side button -

after you've done that, you can drag it from side to side, using the mouse. If that's any help, you're welcome. If it's not, make the question clearer and I'll try to give you a better answer.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:15 pm

Here's a nickel. Buy yourself a real multitrack DAW.

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:16 pm

fluffy wrote:Here's a nickel. Buy yourself a real multitrack DAW.

They're that cheap?

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:20 pm

Pretty close, if your namesake has anything to do with your Internet behavior.

Actually if you want to go legit, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0789499657/">Logic Hit Kit</a> is rather good and something like $30. Or at least, a hell of a lot better than Audacity. (Seriously.)

blue · Post by **blue** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:21 pm

man, someone needs a refresher in "help forum" behavior.

Reist · Post by **Reist** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:27 pm

blue wrote:man, someone needs a refresher in "help forum" behavior.

Why? We're getting help on how to get a good recording program. And I'm not much of a pirate ... I don't like to steal. Jolly Roger was just the only sort of original thing I could come up with.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:34 pm

You totally stole that name.

:D

Anyway, yeah, seriously, Audacity is probably the worst piece of multitrack software I've ever tried to use. I don't know why it gets so many apologists when there are so many better alternatives out there on every platform supported by it, many of which are also free. kill_me_sarah already mentioned Krystal which seems pretty slick (though I haven't used it), and there's a bunch of other free/opensource/etc. projects out there which I can't remember the name of because nobody ever remembers them because everyone's so hung up on Audacity.

Hell, if you're running Win'98/Me or MacOS 9, <a href="http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/">ProTools LE is free</a>! If you can't afford $30 for Logic Hit Kit then it's likely that you're probably the sort who has one of those OSes still lying around anyway...

There's also a bunch of other <a href="http://www.mymusictools.com/download/mu ... ng-looking tools out there</a>.

I really don't know why people spend so much time putting up with and apologizing for Audacity. (Especially people on the Mac. C'mon, just spend the $50 for GarageBand if you don't have it already.)

blue · Post by **blue** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 10:38 pm

jolly roger wrote:
blue wrote:man, someone needs a refresher in "help forum" behavior.
Why? We're getting help on how to get a good recording program. And I'm not much of a pirate ... I don't like to steal. Jolly Roger was just the only sort of original thing I could come up with.

not you, man.

i was marvelling that a) someone was using audacity and b) there is someone alive who can help other people with it. good job.

Kill Me Sarah · Post by **Kill Me Sarah** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:07 pm

jolly roger wrote:I've never really liked how this works in Audacity, but what I've always done is just created a new layer for the track I want to move around, put it in that layer, and click on the move side to side button -
after you've done that, you can drag it from side to side, using the mouse. If that's any help, you're welcome. If it's not, make the question clearer and I'll try to give you a better answer.

The time shift I do know how to do. What I'm wondering is how to split the track and only move one part of it. Like if the first 30 seconds are okay, but then after that you want to time shift it, can you separate the audio into fragments and move them around?

Fluffy: This is actually the only complaint I've had so far with Audacity. I've had more problems w/ some of the software I've paid for. Krystal is pretty slick, but has some drawbacks of its own. I usually end up using both.

blue · Post by **blue** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:17 pm

on a wild guess.. the scissors.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:27 pm

Splitting tracks is one of those things that Audacity makes needlessly difficult, and whenever I managed to do it (and I forget how) it'd always crash on me.

I think what you can do is duplicate the track and then convert it from stereo to mono. (mix one 100% L 0% R, the other vice versa.)

Kill Me Sarah · Post by **Kill Me Sarah** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:32 pm

blue wrote:on a wild guess.. the scissors.

The scissors are actually "cut" as in "cut & paste"

Fluffy: One thing I've liked about Audacity is that it has never crashed on me. But you're right, splitting audio, if possible, shouldn't be nearly so difficult. Krystal is very intuitive about it. Guess I may just have to switch to that entirely.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:36 pm

Well, to be fair, Logic makes splitting a stereo track kind of difficult too, but Logic also makes it easy to record to two separate mono tracks to begin with instead.

Crashiness might be a problem only with the OSX version of Audacity, which is the only one I've spent any real amount of time using.

Kill Me Sarah · Post by **Kill Me Sarah** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:48 pm

fluffy wrote:Well, to be fair, Logic makes splitting a stereo track kind of difficult too, but Logic also makes it easy to record to two separate mono tracks to begin with instead.

Crashiness might be a problem only with the OSX version of Audacity, which is the only one I've spent any real amount of time using.

Actually I"m probably not describing the problem properly. I'm not talking about creating two separate "tracks". I'm talking about splitting a track up horizontally (that's the only way I know to describe it). Like breaking it into independent chunks. Actually splitty tracks in the way you are describing is VERY easy in Audacity.

fluffy · Post by **fluffy** » Thu Mar 02, 2006 11:50 pm

Okay, you mean splitting a track into separate sections? Like a block-edited multitrack, which is the big places where Audacity most falls flat?

I think you just want to cut-and-paste the data. I don't know if Audacity provides a way to precisely position the pasted stuff though, but you could always paste the data into a new track and move that around, then maybe merge it with the track it originally came from.

But this is the sort of thing that block-level editors excel at.

Tonamel · Post by **Tonamel** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 12:36 am

I think the functionality you're looking for is only in the 1.3 beta that was released a while back.

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:30 am

that sort of chopping tracks and moving them about is real easy to do in acid (it can be used for chopping song-length tracks as well as looping).
there's a demo version available here... there's a max of 8 tracks in the demoversion, but you'll be able to pingpong them down a la a 4 track.
starfinger hates acid, but it's mostly what i use. try a few apps out and see what works best for you. i do admit its midi handling is kind of whack.
-bill

Calfborg · Post by **Calfborg** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 8:57 am

I think Acid is probably the easiest to use software of its kind and I really love it for that. That's why I'm extremely excited about this (which they apparently just delayed the release a month).

Kill Me Sarah · Post by **Kill Me Sarah** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:31 am

HeuristicsInc wrote:that sort of chopping tracks and moving them about is real easy to do in acid (it can be used for chopping song-length tracks as well as looping).

Looping would be excellent. I actually have ACID XPress 5.0 on my PC. Does it actually allow you to record directly to it? I opened it up and fidgeted with it for a couple minutes a while back but couldn't get it to DO anything. Is it just a mixing/editing suite, or does it allow you to record to it also?

Edit: I just opened it up again and I still can't figure any of it out. Are there any good getting started tutorials for ACID? It looks like it has cool features, but nothing reacts like I expect it to. Also, is it possible to use the soft synth w/out having to use a MIDI keyboard to control it, or is that clickable piano just there to taunt me?

HeuristicsInc · Post by **HeuristicsInc** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 9:48 am

Yeah, there should be a round record button somewhere... unless that's disabled in the XPress version. Hmmm... I've not used that since I own the software already.
Anyway, yeah, recording to it while the other tracks play is basically what I do when I record vocals or live guitar/synth parts or whatever, I do it all the time.
I never really use MIDI so, uh, I can't answer that either

You might try poking about the sony site to see if there's a tutorial there.
-bill

Kill Me Sarah · Post by **Kill Me Sarah** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 10:06 am

HeuristicsInc wrote:Yeah, there should be a round record button somewhere... unless that's disabled in the XPress version. Hmmm... I've not used that since I own the software already.
Anyway, yeah, recording to it while the other tracks play is basically what I do when I record vocals or live guitar/synth parts or whatever, I do it all the time.
I never really use MIDI so, uh, I can't answer that either
You might try poking about the sony site to see if there's a tutorial there.
-bill

Figured out the record function. It looks like that works, but the MIDI stuff is disabled in the demo, so that answers my soft synth questin...I think.

Anyway, here's another dumb question. When you're recording a vocal track, how do you make it not play at whatever speed the tempo is set for your loop track? And is there a way to reset the tempo to whatever the orignal wav file was?