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Using Audacity:


JimLucas

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Your dragging-problem can be made easier by playing sound-markers before you actually play the tune. Play these markers in the tempo of the tune. When recording the second track try to play some of the markers at the same time you hear them in your headphone (from the first track). As these markers are rather "sharp" and isolated, it is easy to synchronize precisely when you have zoomed in. Use edit - snap on to get the line across the two tracks. It looks like this:

 

post-37-1106861162_thumb.jpg

 

It really is not that difficult ;)

Now that I've tried that, I don't see that it helps. But your display, Henk, differs slightly from mine. You seem to have a single locator bar across both tracks, while I haven't found a way to do that; clicking to place the bar in one track removes it from the other track. Meanwhile, "Snap On" only restricts the locations I can snap to; it doesn't align anything. Do you see different behavior? If anything, mine makes aligning more difficult for me, though zooming in helps me see better what I'm doing.

 

Meanwhile, if your upper track is your click marks, the marks are much broader than the ones I'm getting, which are as narrow as marks on a measuring rule. Anyway, I'm experimenting, and with luck I may even have a decent take before I go to bed.

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Now that I've tried that, I don't see that it helps.  But your display, Henk, differs slightly from mine.  You seem to have a single locator bar across both tracks, while I haven't found a way to do that; clicking to  place the bar in one track removes it from the other track.  Meanwhile, "Snap On" only restricts the locations I can snap to; it doesn't align anything.  Do you see different behavior?  If anything, mine makes aligning more difficult for me, though zooming in helps me see better what I'm doing.

Jim

There are several ways to get a single locator bar across more than one track:

  • From the top menu you choose: edit / snap-to / snap on. Place your "selection marker" in the first track, push your left mouse button and hold it down, while dragging the selection marker down to the lower track(s). In this case the locator bar will be snapped to a predefined time position.
     
  • Another way (I just discovered): disable the snap-function first (edit / snap-to / snap off). Put your selection marker at the right position in the first track, push your left mouse button and hold it down, while dragging the selection marker down to the lower track(s) in order to make a small selection in all the tracks.
    Now use edit / move cursor /. Depending on the situation use selection start or selection end

Pictures say more than words:

 

post-37-1106997080_thumb.jpg

 

I am sure there must be better ways, because I did not read the manual seriously up till now. I must admit that at a certain moment I had a dotted line across all tracks, but I could not repeat it :unsure: .

 

Meanwhile, if your upper track is your click marks, the marks are much broader than the ones I'm getting, which are as narrow as marks on a measuring rule.  Anyway, I'm experimenting, and with luck I may even have a decent take before I go to bed.

I can imagine that my click marks are broader, because they come from a midi-files, obtained by submitting the abc-file below to the ABC Covert-A-Matic on this website.

X:3
T:The Rover Reformed
C:(from the Playford Collection)
R:slowjig
M:6/8
L:1/8
Q:220
K:F
Az2Az2|Az2Az|:z|"Dm"z6|"Dm"z3"C"z3|"Dm"z3 "Gm"z3|"A"z3 z3|
"F"z3 "C"z3|"Dm"z3 "A"z3|"Dm"z3 "E"z3|"A"z5:|
z|"F"z6|"C"z6|"Dm"z6|"C"z6|
"Gm"z6|"Gm"z6|"C"z6|"F"z6|
"Dm"z6|"Gm"z3 "G"z3|"Em"z3 "E"z3|"A"z6|
"Gm"z6|"Gm"z6|"Am"z6|"Dm"z6|

 

BTW: it's a good initiative to start a separate topic on audacity here!

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There are several ways to get a single locator bar across more than one track:

... From the top menu you choose: edit / snap-to / snap on. Place your "selection marker" in the first track, push your left mouse button and hold it down, while dragging the selection marker down to the lower track(s). In this case the locator bar will be snapped to a predefined time position.

I tried that. It doesn't work for me. If it's a locator line and not a selection, I can only get it on one track at a time.

 

... Another way (I just discovered): disable the snap-function first (edit / snap-to / snap off). Put your selection marker at the right position in the first track, push your left mouse button and hold it down, while dragging the selection marker down to the lower track(s) in order to make a small selection in all the tracks.

Now use edit / move cursor /. Depending on the situation use selection start or selection end

But that's a selection, not a locator bar. However, now I'm concerned with other things.

 

I had serious problems with distortion, unrelated to volume, when recording from a tape. It was apparently caused by the panning (my line-in runs through an old mixer). When the two channels were set for maximum separation, there was this awful tin-room kind of distortion, but centering them both got rid of it. The strange thing is that the distortion was not audible either when simply playing the tape through the sound card or when recording, but only appeared on playback of the Audacity recording. It was really there in the Audacity file, though, since it remained when converted to .wav or .mp3.

 

Now some simple frustrations. I can't find a way to set the default directory for saving Audacity project files. It always opens up to the Windows Documents directory, which I never want, and then I have to click-click-click to select the directory I want... every time!

 

Similarly, I can't find a way to set the default format for the descriptive information on MP3 files. It comes up with the "less compatible" format selected, and I select the other, but for each new .mp3 file it again starts with the selection I don't want, instead of remembering the one I did want.

 

Another problem with the MP3 descriptive information is that once I've written and saved it, I can find no way to edit it, or even to view it. Do I need a separate MP3-editor program to do that? If so, does anyone have any recommendations?

 

Well, that's it for the moment. I'm now recording tracks from an old tape of a trio I used to be with. Only a couple hundred more after that. :o :)

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Already another problem/question:

Having learned how to split up a recording into individual parts, I tried recording an entire side of a casette tape in one go, while I did other things. When the tape finished I went back to the computer and found that the screen had gone black. Nothing I could think of to do brought anything to the screen or any other noticeable response, and I had to power off the computer with the manual switch.

 

After I turned it back on and restarted Audacity, it told me that there were unsaved files, giving me the option of deleting them, since Audacity couldn't recover them automatically, or leaving them, so that I could recover them manually. I kept them, and found them. Each individual sound clip apparently spans 6 seconds, and about 15 minutes was apparently recorded before my computer froze.

 

Now the problem is that I can recover each sound clip individually, but there are 154 of them, and apparently the only way to put them back together as a continuous stream is to open the first one, then open the next, then Copy from the one window and Paste into the other, then do the same with the next, until I've done them all. At 6 seconds per clip, it looks it'll be faster to re-record (in 10-minute chunks, to be safe? I don't know what caused the crash). Aaargh! :o

 

Well, here goes! (With only a face, I can't show crossed fingers. :()

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Not Audacity, really, but interesting, nonetheless: I just tried deleting a folder containing Audacity temporary files that I no longer need, and got the following message from Microsoft

The folder 'audacity_temp' is too big for the Recycle Bin.

Do you want to permanently delete it?

I didn't know there was a size limit, but that gives a bizarre answer to a problem I've had for a long time. There are times when I really want to delete a file, not stick it in a Recycle bin so that I have to go through further contortions to actually get rid of it. I guess the answer it to make it really huge! (Of course, that's also a lot of extra work. :()
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Well, I'm gradually making progress, but I've managed to (accidentally) repeat recording for slightly more than 15 min. at a stretch, and again it froze up my machine so that I had to use the manual power switch. In each case I re-recorded, breaking the continuity by stopping just before 15 minutes and starting a new set of files, and there was no trouble.

 

OK. Time for bed.

Edited by JimLucas
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There are times when I really want to delete a file, not stick it in a Recycle bin so that I have to go through further contortions to actually get rid of it. 

Just press SHIFT+DELETE for permanent deletion. The response will be slightly different for each Windows version, but its usually a 'Do you really want to delete..' type dialogue.

Edited by wes williams
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There are times when I really want to delete a file, not stick it in a Recycle bin so that I have to go through further contortions to actually get rid of it.

Just press SHIFT+DELETE for permanent deletion.

Thanks for the help. I'll try that.

(I still couldn't find it in my Windows Help.)

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I mentioned trying out Audacity, in my post in the Recorded Tune Links thread, and that I couldn't seem to get it to work for me.

 

Well, I did work that one out. I downloaded it again, but this time I also downloaded the LAME-(etc/something) file, so then I was able to 'export as MP3' and put the file at my website and all.

 

So...that's nice. But, I still got sound files with gaps, and I am just simply too stupid at this time to know how to fix that!

 

Soooo...I guess I'll stick with what I've been lucky with, and that's Cybercorder 2000, using the MPEG Layer-3 format (which I found by chance, not by understanding!). Previously, this didn't work for me, either, but I was using a different format on it.

 

There's probably a way to fix my problem with Audacity, too, but...I can only spend so much time at the computer, due to migraines and stuff, so...I tend to go along with whatever is already working for me!

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I can't find a way to set the default directory for saving Audacity project files.  It always opens up to the Windows Documents directory, which I never want, and then I have to click-click-click to select the directory I want... every time!

One quick and dirty workaround is to put a shortcut to the folder you want in the Documents directory, then it's just one clicky away.

 

Another problem with the MP3 descriptive information is that once I've written and saved it, I can find no way to edit it, or even to view it.  Do I need a separate MP3-editor program to do that?  If so, does anyone have any recommendations?

You can see it or edit it directly from Windows. Right click on the file and select "properties" from the menu (or select the file with the keyboard and press Alt-Enter). Click on the "summary" tab, then the "advanced" button to get at all the MP3 tags. You can also see and edit them in the Windows Media Player.

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I can't find a way to set the default directory for saving Audacity project files.  It always opens up to the Windows Documents directory, which I never want, and then I have to click-click-click to select the directory I want... every time!
One quick and dirty workaround is to put a shortcut to the folder you want in the Documents directory, then it's just one clicky away.
Nice thought, though still something of a pain. Besides, I don't really trust anything that Microsoft forces me to use. Seems to me there should at least be a Registry entry I could change, but I can't find it.

 

Another problem with the MP3 descriptive information is that once I've written and saved it, I can find no way to edit it, or even to view it.  Do I need a separate MP3-editor program to do that?
You can see it or edit it directly from Windows. Right click on the file and select "properties" from the menu (or select the file with the keyboard and press Alt-Enter). Click on the "summary" tab, then the "advanced" button to get at all the MP3 tags.

Unfortunately, it doesn't work for me. Maybe because I don't have the latest MS operating system?

 

You can also see and edit them in the Windows Media Player.

I haven't been able to find a place even to see them, much less edit them, and I updated to the latest version of WMP about a month ago. Unless I can be shown a control that I've missed, I think I need another program to do this.

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You can also see and edit them in the Windows Media Player.

I haven't been able to find a place even to see them, much less edit them, and I updated to the latest version of WMP about a month ago. Unless I can be shown a control that I've missed, I think I need another program to do this.

Hm, yeah, probably because you have an old version of Windows. I'm using Windows XP, and the name and artist show up on the "Now Playing List" in the Media Player. You can right-click it there and see the rest of the MP3 header. But, it may be getting that info from the operating system.

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There are several ways to get a single locator bar across more than one track:

... From the top menu you choose: edit / snap-to / snap on. Place your "selection marker" in the first track, push your left mouse button and hold it down, while dragging the selection marker down to the lower track(s). In this case the locator bar will be snapped to a predefined time position.

I tried that. It doesn't work for me. If it's a locator line and not a selection, I can only get it on one track at a time.

 

... Another way (I just discovered): disable the snap-function first (edit / snap-to / snap off). Put your selection marker at the right position in the first track, push your left mouse button and hold it down, while dragging the selection marker down to the lower track(s) in order to make a small selection in all the tracks.

Now use edit / move cursor /. Depending on the situation use selection start or selection end

But that's a selection, not a locator bar.

Jim

I made a demo to illustrate how to align. I hope this helps and at least I had lots of fun in making this!! ;)

Click here to see the demo.

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I made a demo to illustrate how to align. I hope this helps and at least I had lots of fun in making this!!  ;)

Click here to see the demo.

Thanks, Henk. That did help.

(And now I'm wondering what tool you used to create your cool demo. :))

 

The documentation and I had failed to "click". In my experimentation I had concluded that one could have either a cursor or a selection, but not both. I didn't realize that I could make a selection and then turn it into a cursor, much less that doing so would produce a cursor with different behavior from that which I could create directly.

 

I still find that I can't directly create a cursor that spans tracks. If I don't drag the mouse cursor sideways (timewise) at the same time as I drag it vertically between tracks, the resulting fine-line locator cursor is visible in only one track. But the indirect method you just taught me will do. Again, thanks.

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(And now I'm wondering what tool you used to create your cool demo.  :))

It's a MacroMedia thing called "Captivate". I received it last week for my work. It's great fun and I was playing with it a big part of the weekend. Nearly did'nt have time to play concertina :huh:

When I think of all the things I can do with it... :) :)

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There are times when I really want to delete a file, not stick it in a Recycle bin so that I have to go through further contortions to actually get rid of it.

Just press SHIFT+DELETE for permanent deletion. The response will be slightly different for each Windows version, but its usually a 'Do you really want to delete..' type dialogue.

Well, I did that, and it worked, but...

After using that procedure to delete about 150 Mb of files at once, every time I clicked on any file or directory in Windows Explorer, it took many seconds (sometimes half a minute or more) to return control to me. I finally shut down the machine and restarted, and then it was quick, again.

 

(I still couldn't find [documentation of SHIFT+DELETE] in my Windows Help.)

Try looking in help for keyboard shortcuts - and which Windows version are you using?

Right now I'm using Win98, and I also have available NT4.

 

In Win98, "keyboard shortcuts - general" lists various keys and key combinations that have special functions. DELETE is one of these, but SHIFT+DELETE isn't listed. The help for "to delete a file or folder" does include as a "Tip" that if I hold SHIFT down while dragging a file to the Recycle Bin, it will be deleted rather than stored in the Bin. But I don't normally delete files by dragging. There's also help on how to set "Properties" on the Recycle Bin itself to always delete files immediately, but doing that prevents me from having the option on individual deletions. SHIFT+DELETE does work in Win98, but I still haven't found it documented.

 

In NT4, a couple of the points under "shortcut keys" list some such keys and combinations, but neither DELETE nor SHIFT+DELETE is listed. Otherwise, the documentation -- or lack thereof -- is the same as described for Win98. SHIFT+DELETE does work in NT, maybe better than in Win98, since I didn't see subsequent delays, but I haven't found it documented in NT, either.

 

So thanks again for the information.

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