User talk:Lsloan

Lance - I have made two comments below in green.

Gale --Galeandrews 12:51, 17 October 2007 (PDT)

Talk to me!
You can leave a message for me here! If you don't mind, please use the plus-button ("+") above to add a comment and give it a subject. That will enable automatic table of contents generation for this page, which you can see if you have that preference enabled (under the "Misc" tab in your preferences.)

Hello From James
Hello Lance. Can't contact you by e-mail without an e-mail address.

You say on your user page that you'd like to contribute to the community. We welcome more editors on the wiki. If you see something that you can improve, try making the improvements.

Also we are currently working on version 1.3.4 of Audacity. If you're interested in being a beta tester, we could give more details - let us know where your interests are. James 12:22, 16 October 2007 (PDT) Hi, James. Never mind my comment about sending private messages to me. I was under the impression that MediaWiki had a feature that let you contact registered users via a web form. I guess it doesn't.

I'm very new to Audacity and audio editing in general, though I've been interested for a long time. Maybe my point of view will let me see things that are not obvious -- things that experienced users might not notice. I will try to use the articles' talk pages before making changes, though.

My recent interests are mainly in editing MP3s. A recent project has been removing a couple sections that I didn't like from a song that is generally good. A more common need I have is to change the volume level of MP3s. iTunes will figure out a volume level adjustment if I tell it to, but it turns out to be good only in iTunes. It doesn't change the MP3 itself, so when I take them to my non-Apple MP3 player, I have to "ride the gain" from one song to the next.

Audacity is only of limited use here - you can make all files so that for example they are at -3dB but this does not say anything about how loud they really sound. The height of the lighter blue part of the waveform (RMS) is a rough guide to perceived volume. You can however analyse the audio with software that will write "Replay Gain" information into the tags. Replay Gain is a proposed standard for analysing the perceived loudness of a file and then allowing the user to set a "target" perceived volume. This target is not a target for maximum amplification, nor does it apply compression, but is a target (usually around 90 dB) for "overall perceived" volume which is similar to the RMS value. When you play a file with Replay Gain data in a media player that supports it, the audio's playback volume will be adjusted so that the perceived volume is at the target you specified. If you write all your audio files with Replay Gain set at the same target level, they will all sound about the same volume without you having to fiddle with the volume controls to make them sound as such. There is no lossy re-encoding of the audio. See:, , and if you are on OS X, an.

I would be happy to be a beta tester if there are changes to the application that would affect how I do these things. You could just let me know which parts of the application to pay attention to. --Lance E Sloan 06:47, 17 October 2007 (PDT)

Re: Comments on mixing stereo to mono
Hi Lance

I replied to your question at: Talk:Mixing_stereo_tracks_to_mono_in_your_Project

If you post an email address here, be sure to obfuscate it somehow e.g. lance (at) lancesweb (dot) (com).

The difficulty with asking/answering questions on the Wiki is finding out if they've been answered. If you check Special:Recentchanges you will always find out, or you can check "Watch this page" when editing, then click "my watchlist" which will list recent changes just for your watched pages. Otherwise, you will only get an active advice of a reply if the respondent edits your User Talk page as I'm doing now.

If you have not already seen it, there is some help with Wiki editing here but it needs improving. We're trying to improve the visuals of the Wiki as well as the content, so we can always do with help for example, applying some of the table styles we've put on recently edited pages to all similar pages.

Gale --Galeandrews 13:22, 16 October 2007 (PDT)

Thank you, Gale. I've set up a watchlist and notifications, so that should help me. I've edited pages in other wikis a bit, like WikiPedia, but one thing I've never figured out is personal talk pages. For example, should I reply to your comments on my talk page, or should my comments go on your talk page? If I reply here, does that mean you need to watch my talk page or do you notice via the recent changes page? :)

In case anyone else wants to follow the discussion, it's "generally" best to reply on your user talk page, then all the comments are together. I always look at Recent Changes anyway, but bear in mind that if you are replying to someone else and do so on your own Talk page, that other person won't know about your reply unless they are watching the page or checking Recent Changes. You could reply on your page *and* leave a note on their talk page that you have replied on yours. I suspect it might be better if the software was changed so that if you modify any discussion pages, you are notified on logging in when any of those talk pages have been changed.

I have set up a copy of MediaWiki for an employer. One of the frustrating things is the lack of "Help:" pages. I understand that there's a licensing problem that prohibits their distribution in a packaged form. I think your approach to creating a local help page that links to other pages is the simplest. I will probably do the same thing in the wiki for which I'm responsible.

And thank you for making those changes I suggested. You're very fast.--Lance E Sloan 06:47, 17 October 2007 (PDT)