Pending Feature Requests

This locked page is for the use of sysops to transfer feature requests from the Audacity Forum and other sources. They will be reviewed and where appropriate transferred to the Wiki Feature Requests page. For this page, it is best not to summarise, but paste in verbatim, so the context of the suggestion can be understood.

Not yet reviewed

• Default recording scale: When I start recording a new waveform, I'd prefer for it to default to the dB scale instead of 0 to 1.0 display. Also, I notice that in the dB scale, the increments are linear, the spacing between 0, -10, -20, -30 and -40 are evenly spaced. Any other dB or VU meter I've ever seen have a more logarithmic spacing. (Plus 3 votes)
  • Koz comments: I would like to set the defaults, too. I'll see if maybe one of the advanced Alpha pre-1.4 versions has that. Nobody is going to change version 1.2. The spacing is linear, but the numbers are in dB which is logarithmic. -20 dB is ten times less. -40dB is one hundred times less. -60dB is one thousand times less. You're right. The zero to one scale will only take you down to about ten to one (0.1) before you can't read it any more. That's only 20dB.
  • Koz notes: "default to the dB scale instead of 0 to 1.0" - I can set that in the pre-release 1.3.7, so it's possible it's already available in the earlier versions like 1.3.5 or 1.3.6 which you can download now. You can install 1.2 and 1.3 at the same time, but you can't use both at once.
  • WC comments: And I add my vote for this too - the dB scale is a much better option for default IMHO.
  • Original poster adds: In Cool Edit 2000 (and I assume CE Pro and Audition), the waveforms displayed in dB run from -oo (how do you type the infinity symbol?) to 0. A -30dB signal barely shows, but so does a -40. In Audacity, if you set the scale to -36, a -30dB signal looks fairly significant while even -36 looks like dead silence. At -96 and higher scales, the same signal looks like it would be quite loud, while it's actually very quiet (I don't run my speakers at max volume). What I'm saying is that I'd like the option at least for the scale to have a log taper like what I'm used to in CE2k and most other audio devices' meters. Whether tied to waveform display or separate, the same goes for the input/output meters at the top.
  • SteveTF comments: I like my sine waves to look like sine waves and I like my measurements to be in dB (though I'm getting more used to -1.0 to +1.0, and that scale is very useful when developing plug-ins). Add my vote.

• Under Edit > Select, I would like to see more choices than just 'All' or everything fore or aft of the cursor. It would be neat if in that same area a list of all my markers came up so I could also choose something like 'Cursor to Markername'. And/or select Cursor to ... then flyouts to Label Track(s) > Markername(s). This would really help when recording albums and you now want to split the songs quickly. Other selection features maybe cursor to allow more than one cursor? Or something like 'splices'. Splices could be set in just like markers? Then a script could run for batch exports. I'm just thinking I could set all these splice markers, then click Export > Splices, then either one dialogue for batch naming the files (I would edit the tags later individually later) or the dialogue comes up with each splice and I edit all names and tags as processes.

• PulseAudio: Is there any plans for native supporting of PulseAudio in Audacity? I can't work without PulseAudio, because I use remote (via LAN) small computer with good audio card, due to noise in main PC. Now i run 'padsp audacity' but get strange results in 'Audio device info', etc., and not sure about true 24bit 96kHz really recorded. My OS on both computers is Ubuntu/Linux. My goal is to have sound card on remote computer, so it is works as external DAC/ADC and I get some benefits from this, like low noise and short analog audio cables. PulseAudio is latest and user-friendly system for audio transfer via LAN, so it built-in in Ubuntu and work out-of-box. Fortunately it all is already works, no fail, no lags etc., all fine, except one thing. My experiments shows only 16-bit recording due to not glueless connect from Audacity to driver, as I described here http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/443. So I search for native support for PulseAudio in Audacity, PA devices need to be shown in list of available choices, like OSS and ALSA sources (in Ctrl+P -> Audio I/O).
  • SteveTF comments: You could perhaps create virtual device in Alsa to allow Audacity to work with Pulseaudio. This is not something that I know much about, but there is some information on the subject here: http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? ... pulseaudio - If you get it working, it would be interesting to hear how you did it

• I miss the button in "Normalize" that says [x] Apply the Same Correction to Both Tracks. And yes, I know what the "Amplify" work-around is. I don't like it. (Plus 1 vote)
  • SteveTF comments: I could make a plug-in for you that does that except that I don't know how to make the DC offset correction part, so it would just be "Normalise channels independently / Normalise channels to same value". The first option would be identical to the normalize function in the "Normalize" effect, and the second option would be identical to the "Amplify" effect. How would you want Normalize to behave if multiple tracks are selected? Would you want each track to be treated independently, or all the same? For example, if you select "Normalize to -1 dB", and that requires that the loudest channel of all of the selected tracks needs to be amplified by 2dB, should 2dB amplification be applied to all channels of all tracks? (this is what the "Amplify" effect does). Alternatively, should 2dB amplification be applied to all channels of that track, but different amounts applied (as required) to other tracks?
  • oz responds: "I don't know how to make the DC offset correction part" Yes, well, that's another discussion isn't it? Why do you need that? DC isn't audio--ever--and has no business in an audio channel. That's a work-around and should probably have its own tool. That will make it easier delete when it isn't needed any more. But back to business. The design center for "Normalize" is simplicity. All selected audio tracks are changed so the hottest peak arrives at one selected value either A) using the hottest one, or B) independently. Default is A. If you select B, you are given a warning about damaging the musical stereo image. That's it. One sentence. Any decisions or requirements above that are the providence of Amplify or other effects tools. This business of trying to explain that to Normalize what a lot of people consider "correctly" requires the Amplify tool is a work-around.
  • WC votes and adds: And I agree that the DC offset removal should be an entirely separate tool.

• Audio Vectorscope: We keep dancing around this, and yes, there are really painful ways to derive this information, but I would kill for an audio vectorscope. Either version; left is vertical and right is horizontal, or the (I think) CCIR/EBU version where In-Phase is vertical and Out-Of-Phase is horizontal. Failing that, a Phase Meter. Bouncing lights to the right are in phase and bouncing lights to the left are out. It's something you can turn on if you need it, like the monitor mode for the record meters. 1.4 will tell you somehow graphically when you're in monitor mode, right? 1.3.5 and earlier doesn't tell you a thing...I didn't check the other two higher versions.
  • Koz adds to his original post: Typically, it would be... View > Show Vectorscope. I was going to put it under Analyze, but a simple version of this can be left running all the time, not launched once for a simple test and then put away.

• Default Sample Rarte: At present, if Audacity opens or imports, into a new project, an audio file that is at a different sample rate to the default (as set in Preferences), then the project rate will change to that of the imported audio. However, this is only true for the first file that is opened or imported. All subsequent files will leave the project rate unchanged. I find this behaviour to be both confusing and inconvenient. If I have the default sample rate set to 44100, that is because I want my project to use 44100. On more than one occasion I have opened a bunch of files, and only after noticing that the sound quality of the whole project was rubbish, realised that the project rate was set to an unacceptably low rate simply because the first audio clip that I imported was at a low rate. This behaviour can also cause problems for users that have sound cards that only support, or only play back at the correct speed, projects at specific sample rate settings. I would like Audacity to use the default sample rate for projects unless I explicitly change the project rate to another value (for example by using the "project rate" setting in the lower left corner of the main Audacity window).stevethefiddle
  • Gale Andrews responds: The switching of project rate to that of the first imported file (if different from the current rate) wasn't actually working on Mac/Linux if the rate of the file was unsupported, and one of the "fixes" in 1.3.7 is to make that switch always happen. The rationale is that there would have to be resampling if the project rate differed from the rate of the file; but that subsequent files should not change the rate again so that there would be a mix of rates. As you know, all resampling is lossy, and resampling has to be done somewhere if files at different rates are involved, in spite of the general recommendation to keep the project rate at a rate supported by the device. It was the best compromise we could come up with. Audacity (Beta) should if necessary always resample playback from the project rate to the next highest supported rate, so that the sound card is sent a *supported* rate. You can see the rate it's actually playing (or recording) at in the far right of the Status Bar. The Vista Default Format Issue using MME is the exception that proves the rule, where the system is resampling (badly), instead of Audacity doing it. I can't help thinking If the (Windows) world had better device drivers we wouldn't get half the reported problems with speed difference when recording and playing at the same time, and devices that cannot cope with resampling. I agree there is a weak case for not changing the project rate upon file import given how a minority of devices behave in the real world, and your point about project playback quality being destroyed by import of a low rate file is valid. I think a much stronger use case for not changing the rate is presented by people who want a fixed rate for export to CD or DVD. Anyway, the plan is to leave default rate behaviour when importing files as it is, but add a preference (probably after 1.4) to let the project rate remain fixed until the user changes it.
  • STF replies: That would solve the issue nicely, but I think that the default should be to not change the project rate.

Looking at the pros and cons:

Reasons why the project rate should change if the first (and only the first) file loaded is at a different sample rate:

1. There would have to be resampling if the project rate differed from the rate of the file.
2. .... I can't think of another.

Reasons why the project rate should remain at the default project rate setting, unless changed by the user:

1. Changing the rate on account of the first, and only the first file opened is inconsistent with all other situations.
2. Audacity is designed for high quality audio production and is, in the vast majority of situations, set to a default of 44100Hz (CD standard) or 48000Hz (DVD standard). Up-sampling a file from a low sample rate to either of these rates incurs negligible losses, but down-sampling a project to a low sample rate produces significant losses. Failure to notice that the import of one low quality audio clip has changed the sample rate for the entire project will result in the Exported audio all being resampled to the low rate, causing significant damage to the sound quality, whereas up-sampling a low bit rate sample into a higher bit rate project will result in a larger file size and insignificant loss in sound quality.
3. A file that has been imported, then exported at a higher bit rate may later be down-sampled to a lower bit rate. Up-sampling a low quality audio clip, and then down-sampling it again will produce a very small degrading of the sound quality. The reverse of this (down-sampling a file then up-sampling it) will produce a large and irreversible degrading of the sound quality.
4. Many users use Audacity for CD or DVD production, in which case it is an unnecessary inconvenience for Audacity to change the project rate from the default values, forcing the user to manually change it back again. This is also a behaviour that users need to be aware of (and they only become aware of it when they get caught out and ruin a project).
5. Some sound cards do not handle re-sampling properly, and in these cases the project rate needs to be set and stay set. This may be the "fault" of the manufacturer, but this situation exists for a significant proportion of users.
6. Vista (sometimes?) has problems resampling audio. Does this issue disappear if the project rate is set to a "compatible" setting?
7. Since the sample rate switching was not previously working on Mac/Linux, I guess that it would be no great challenge to make it "not work" by design.
8. The argument regarding "avoiding resampling" does not hold very well, since most/all of the processing in Audacity is done in 32bit, thus necessitating resampling (and dither) for any audio that is at a lower bit depth.
9. In an open project that has, for example, one track with a sample rate of 44.1 and the project rate is 44.1, if a second track with a sample rate of 16kHz is imported, then the original track is deleted, the project rate will remain at 44.1 (and so when Exported will be at 44.1). However, if the original track is deleted and then the second track imported, the project rate will change to 16kHz. It does not seem logical that in this case the outcome should vary according to the sequential order, since in both cases we are just replacing one track with another.
10. The bit depth of imported audio is always changed to the default project setting, whether it is the first file to be opened or not.

I agree that some (all) Save Sound File As, of the arguments lack much weight, but on balance I would find the arguments for not changing the project rate to be more persuasive.

• Ability to use Audacity as a simple WAV editor, or other imported format: Given that 4 out of the 5 primary features of audacity[1] involve editing a single file, would it not be worth making that process easier? e.g. if you load a file, modify something, and press control-S, it should save the file, instead of prompting you to create a project?
  • PS notes: this led to a discussion between Kozikowski and the original poster - and largely revolves round the previously much-discussed issue of Save versus Export. For more details see this thread in the forum: http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=7816&p=34759#p31137

• Default Preferences I deploy Audacity (1.2.6 currently) in a lab environment. Is there a way for me to edit the default preferences for Audacity? The "audacity preferences" text file gets created in ~/Library/Preferences (user space) when someone runs it for the first time. I would like to be able to put an "audacity preferences" file in /Library/Preferences, so that it could be used as the default for ANY/all users, but apparently Audacity does not look in that location like a normal Mac OS X application is supposed to do (placing a prefs file there seems to be ignored by Audacity). For example, I would like to be able to specify the location of the LAME dynlib, for example, in the preference file ahead of time, so that the users are not prompted to tell Audacity where the library file is the first time they run it (a user confusion issue.) [MP3]MP3LibPath=/usr/local/lib/audacity/libmp3lame.dylib
  • Kozikowski comments: It's actually worse than that. The early Audacity used one place and file, the medium Audacities used the one you referenced, and the New Portable Audacity uses yet a third. The developer helpers have the opposite problem. We have to clear the decks for each upgrade and change so that there is no trace of the old one around. Sometimes that's a chore.

• Auto Complete Equalizer Graph: I created a simple equalizer graph to get somebody out of trouble recently. I think it was a lot more bother than it needed to be. Here's an illustration of an Adobe Photoshop tool. See: http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Image:Curves2.jpg Note that there's only one new data point on the right-hand brightness curve, and yet Photoshop automatically produced a graceful, gentle, useful curve typical of a picture whose natural lighting had actually changed. It did not produce two straight lines and depend on me to painstakingly calculate the new points and put the rest of the curve in by hand. I want the equalizer work window to run like that.
  • SteveTF responds: Since Audacity does not currently support graphical interfaces for effects (which rules out the "CoolEdit Pro FFT filter" type GUI), could this be done using a bunch of sliders?
  • Koz responds: It could, but to figure out where the sliders go, I'd be curled up on the living room floor with my Toshiba adding machine, my Terman's book of six place log tables, number two lead pencil, and nice legal pad. If only we could make a machine to do these laborious calculations for us....

• More transparent "Sample format" display to left of track: This might be implicit in some questions I've asked before, but I thought I'd say it explicitly: I think it would be helpful if the "Sample format" displayed at the left of each track reflected the actual current bit depth of the audio in that track. What it displays now seems to have some obscure relation to either one's default settings or to the type of audio imported.
  • SteveTF comments: In most situations the "Sample format" displayed at the left of each track does reflect the actual sample format. However, you have noticed that when opening an Audacity project, the bit depth of existing tracks is (incorrectly) displayed as the default bit depth and not the actual bit depth of the track. You suggested previously that you thought this was a bug, and Gale agreed with you. For what it's worth, I also agree. At present, the developers are looking into another issue concerning bit depth and I would hope that when they have fixed that, this issue will also be addressed.
  • Allen McBride responds: You're right... I only decided to make a formal suggestion when I discovered that the actual behavior was more complex still when it comes to imports (the other thread I linked to). I know it's not the biggest deal.

• Frequency values without selection: I am now developing a plug-in for Audacity. My problem now is on how to automatically get the values on the input or recorded medium without highlighting a portion of it. I mean...is it possible to get the frequency values even if the user will not be able to highlight a portion of the wave?

• Equalizer Accuracy/Readouts: Where is the readout in the graphic equalizer tool to tell me exactly where I am in both dB and Frequency? If I launch the Spectrum Analyzer tool, I can find an offending frequency to surgical accuracy by moving my cursor over the culprit. 3129 Hz. Then when I launch the graphic equalizer to rid myself of the offending frequency, the best I can do is guess at a point somewhere between 2000 and 5000. I used to be able to get better with China marker/grease pencil and a ruler, but that only works with glass monitors. The China marker will not come off flat panels. I'm using that as an example. I know there are notch tools and I can write my own equalizer, etc.
  • SteveTF comments: The Equalizer does have a grid now (Audacity 1.3.8 alpha), which is a big improvement.
  • Koz responds: Much better than a plain white frame, yes.

• Long duration recording and auto saving: I need to record audio for days for a project I am working on. I would like to be able to save the audio automatically every hour to WAV file. Is it possible to make Audacity do this???
  • Koz comments: Audacity is a pretty simple program so Exporting and Capturing at the same time can't happen. It's already writing to the hard drive during Capture, so it would have to suspend that process in order to write the Project.
  • Plus one vote from Jaws78: I would like to second this. I want to record long sessions 6hours + and would like to break them up automatically in to smaller segments, so I can just press record and forget about it until i am done.
  • SteveTF comments: I doubt that Audacity would be able to continue recording smoothly while simultaneously writing a 600MB file to disk. Would it be acceptable for the recording to be automatically paused while the file was being saved?

1. Alternatively:

How about if Audacity just started a new project file each hour, so that when you have "Split long recording projects" selected, it will create a new .aup file each hour? (myshow001.aup, myshow002.aup. myshow003.aup ...) I don't know if this is technically possible either, but it seems more likely than trying to dump 600MB of data to disk at the same time as recording.

1. Another alternative:

After completing a long recording, how about an option to "Split project to multiple projects"? So you start with a 3 hour recording and instead of: "Save As..." > myproject.aup you select: "Split Save As..." > "Options = split after 60 minutes" > myproject001.aup, myproject002.aup, myproject003.aup Where "myproject001.aup" contains the first hour, "myproject002.aup" contains the second hour, and so on.

• Need longer filenames: I would like for Audacity to be able to use long (up to 255 characters) filenames

without adding in its own arbitrary codes. I also checked it on a filename that doesn't contain parenthesis, and the same problem still occurs. I start up Audacity and it has a blank project window. Then I import my first audio. file. The name of the input file is "RAH 08 Out On the Edge (itunes)". However, once it's done importing, both the project window and the tracks within it are named something like "RAH 08 Out On the Ed#4330D7". Currently using Audacity 1.2.5 on Mac OS X (10.4), with Intel processor. Update: In a previous session of Audacity, I had saved the project. Then after quitting Audacity, I had renamed both the .aup file and the _data directory to be my "correct" filenames (and matching each other). Today I tried to reopen that project, and it was unable to. Then I renamed the _data directory back to its old name, and the project opened OK.

• Rename-able and movable projects:It should be possible for Audacity to find the _data directory based on the current name of the .aup file. It should be possible for people to rename both of these and have the project still usable.

• Several ideas for navigation features: Currently using Audacity 1.2.5 on Mac OS X. I've only been using it a short while, so my experience with it is pretty limited so far. The other audio editor that I've been using is Sound Studio, and some of the navigation features in that program would be nice to also have in Audacity. The following would be nice additions to be able to move the cursor, scroll, and zoom:

1. PageUp and PageDown keys: these should page the window horizontally left or right.
2. It would be good to make use of the scroll ball on the Mighty Mouse (or similar devices). At least, it should be able to move the scrolling thumbs of the active window. In Sound Studio, in addition to the left/right motion of the scroll ball doing left/right scrolling of the window, any up/down motion of the scroll ball is used to adjust the horizontal zoom.
3. Need better control over the vertical zooming of each track. Need it to be easy to keep the zero line centered within the track. Need it to be easy to set several tracks to the exact same zoom amount.
4. For listening to a single track(-pair) at a time, there should be a way to select which track(-pair) to listen to, with a single button press. Currently, doing this by either the "mute" or the "solo" buttons requires two button presses (turn off that button for one track, and turn it on for the other). Two button presses is too much to require for such a common operation. Perhaps the "solo" buttons could be made smarter so that pressing the "solo" button on one track automatically releases the "solo" setting that might already be on for any of the other tracks.

• Media INFO I imported a clip into Audacity. What was it? What was the format? Filesize? Where is File > Media INFO? (plus 1 vote)

• Frequency band splitter: I find this feature in Fscape (an xplatform app similar to Soundhack) http://www.sciss.de/fscape/ - to be very useful and would like to see it or a Nyquist script written to do something similar: a panel would appear when Band Splitting function is selected and would allow the user to

1. define bands as freq/bandwidth -or- crossover freqs
2. add new bands/crossovers as needed
3. processes the bands or crossover parameters on a soundfile or a selection of a soundfile
4. output these as separate files into a selected directory -- similar to splitting soundfiles according to label regions

• • STEVETF comments: Unfortunately this is not possible with Nyquist in Audacity, at least not a one-click automated method, because Nyquist in Audacity can only access one track at a time. It is however possible to make multiple copies of a track (Ctrl+D) and then apply band-pass filters to each track.
  • Anechoic responds: you only need to access one track. How it could work: create a multi bandpass run the track thru it and split out the results (ind bands) into n-number of separate tracks.
  • SteveTF adds: That's the bit Nyquist in Audacity can not do - it can only access (reading or writing) one track. If you process multiple tracks (select several tracks and apply a Nyquist effect), each track is processed in Nyquist independently of other tracks. The audio data is passed to Nyquist in a single variable ("s") and the result that is returned by Nyquist is written back to that track. Audacity currently supports single channel (mono) and 2 channel (stereo) tracks. In the case of multi-channel sounds, the "s" parameter is a vector with two elements (aref s 0) and (aref s 1) which contain the data from left and right channels respectively. You could write a Nyquist script that would split a track into 2 frequency bands by processing a stereo track and returning one band to the left channel and the other band to the right channel. If Audacity supported tracks with more than 2 channels then you would be able to write each frequency band to an available channel, but currently Audacity only supports mono and stereo tracks. Creating multiple duplicates of a track and then extracting a frequency band from each track is a bit tedious to do, but it does work.
  • Anechoic responds: sorry I meant that it created 'n' number of FILES not tracks so it would behave much like how split function works
  • SteveTF adds later: However, due to Nyquist being upgraded, it is now possible.(I have tested this and it does work).

• Open-Append: Cool Edit has Open - Append: - it will join a list of audio files in order into a single waveform. I don't think Audacity does this (Plus 2 votes)
  • SteveTF comments: No it doesn't but I agree that it would be a nice feature. In Audacity it would probably be called "Import append".

• Track hover help hovering the mouse over a track should give the filename (going to Track | Name... is less convenient) (Plus 1 Vote)

• It would be nice if scaling multiple tracks vertically could be achieved without the need for additional controls. Perhaps one way this could be done would be if manual vertical size adjustment affected all selected tracks. This way, if you want to zoom vertically on tracks 1,2 and 4, you just need to select those tracks and as you adjust the vertical height of one, the vertical height of the other selected tracks would follow suit. What do you think - would that do it? (perhaps with an option in Preferences to switch this behaviour on or off).
  • Peter notes: this and the above request for Track hover help are boiled down from a longer thrad discussing track viewing. I transferred the thread to Audio Processing - see here http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=11098&start=0

• Embedding controls in a (any) presentation document: I made a PDF of a song book with Acrobat and added a play button to one of the songs which played a recording of that song on my default player (Media Player). I thought how cool would it be if I could add bars that ran the length of the piece of music to pause, stop and play. Then I thought about how if Audacity could be embedded, the tempo of the song could be changed which would really be helpful in trying learn music. Is there any chance of Audacity teaming up with Open Office to provide something like this? Perhaps with Open Office PDF Editor which I hear is in the works?

• Online (web-based) Audacity: Is there any way that someone can make a version of Audacity that can be used on my website (or here). You see last year my phyics teacher had my class do podcasts (fun right). Of course we had to edit it so we all got audacity. Most of the class had no idea how to install a program onto a computer much less how to use it. I think I can teach them how to use it because I am doing a few demonstrations on how to use forums, wikis, etc. and one more couldn't hurt. I think the problem was that people did not want to install a program that they would use once (or twice) at most. So I think having the program on a website would be more efficient. I think it could work with licencing because you could make people accept a terms of service before loading the program. If someone could make this, give me a link if its already made, how to do it myself, or tell me why this can't be done that would be awesome (well not all the options).
  • SteveTF comments: Audacity is a Desktop application and will not run on a web server. However, you can run it fromm a USB stick

• Noise Renoval UI" when I want to do noise removal, the window asks me to select the section of noise. when I click on get noise profile, the window closes and then I have to open the noise removal window again. Is that the way it is supposed to work?
  • Koz comments: Yes, but that doesn't mean it's desirable.
  • SteveTF comments: Adobe Audition has a nice feature in their Noise reduction effect - after grabbing the noise profile the window stays open and you can click on a button to "Select all of track". This allows both stages of Noise Reduction to be performed without having to close/reopen the effect. Audacity has the ability to "Repeat Last Effect", but I would like the facility to "Recall Last Effect". (Perhaps Ctrl+SHIFT+R). When using Noise reduction, one could then recall the Noise reduction effect in order to apply it without having to go through the full list of effects to find it. "Recall Last Effect" would also be useful in many other situations - for example, you apply Equalization, but on listening back you decide that it is not quite right, so you Ctrl+Z to undo then "Recall Last Effect" and make a slight change to the setting and apply again. I think this would be really useful for many effects where it is not always easy to get the optimum settings just from the "Preview" (and "Preview" is not available for Nyquist effects).

• real time loop editing: the fact that Audacity has partial functionality in making loops i.e. allow you to select and play a loop but NOT adjust the loop points in real time seems to me a half baked implementation of loop editing. Please - if you are going to allow someone to select and play a loop then go ALL the way and also allow them to edit it in real time?
  • SteveTF comments: but that would still be a half baked loop editor wouldn't it? Would you not then want forward/backward looping, Acidized loop support, Sound Designer, Apple Loop, and CAF loop position marking, simultaneous viewing of start and end points, mouse drag time stretching, auto zero crossing adjustment, real-time editing, beat slicing.....
  • OP replies: YES! Mouse drag time stretching is essential. The rest of that isn't, but mouse drag stretching is an obvious feature that is sorely needed.
  • SteveTF replies: It depend what you are doing. If you want seamless loops for creating continuous pad sounds, then simultaneous viewing of start and end points, and auto zero crossing adjustment are pretty essential. For editing drum loops then beat slicing is pretty important. For exporting into many samplers, Acidized loop support, (or some other format) can be essential.

• Mouse Drag Time Stretching: Right now my procedure for resampling a particular guitar sample is:

1. Cut it into little bite size pieces in Audacity, where pretty much each and every strum has it's own file
2. Make each piece into a track in FL Studio, and use the mouse to stretch/shrink these pieces until they fit the BPM / rhythm I'm lookin for
3. Drag these samples back out of rhythm so that there is silence at any place where they overlap, keeping the newly stretched tempo of each individual piece
4. Bring the resulting wave back into Audacity, where I again separate all these into separate tracks, and shift and trim until they match up with a click track in my new desired BPM.

• • OP adds: It's really annoying to have to go out of Audacity to complete steps 2 and 3 ... it would be nice if I could do all this in Audacity because then FL Studio would become just a source of synth sounds rather than an audio editor, and I could do sampling in all Free Software. Also, this takes hours when it should take minutes. So I want Mouse Drag Time Stretching, like Adobe Audition has, in Audacity. There should be two varieties - one that simply stretches the waveform and another that, like "Change Tempo", stays in the same pitch. (The same pitch one is the most important one) Could someone give me a basic idea (since I don't know much about the programming involved) how hard this would be to implement? What are the challenges preventing this from being done?
  • SteveTF responds: The "time stretch" in Audition is excellent. The algorithm was developed by a couple of very clever chaps that created the company "Syntrillium" (the company that made "Cool Edit"). The code that they used is a closely guarded secret that was sold along with the rest of Cool Edit Pro to Adobe. Time stretch in Audacity uses "soundtouch" which is an open source library that is compatible with Windows, Mac and Linux (Audition is Windows only). There is an excellent program that automates most of what you are doing called "ReCycle". Unfortunately it is not freeware. There is an open source clone of ReCycle called "FreeCycle" http://freecycle.redsteamrecords.com/ but it is only available for Linux. However, if you are looking for a free and open source solution, the FreeCycle is the one to go for as it does not require a non-free operating system.
  • OP responds: This isn't a request for a new algorithm though (I don't think) but just mouse control for the existing algorithm. (which currently only accepts control via numbers entered in a text box) As I can figure, this would just be an alternative method of generating the input for the algorithm we've already got.
  • SteveTF replies: It may end up as a request for a new algorithm. I don't know if you have noticed yet, but time stretching in Audacity is not exact. Try time stretching ("Change Tempo" or "Change Pitch") on some very short samples (less than one second). You should notice that the length of the processed audio is often slightly out, or may have a bit of silence on the end. There have been a few requests for various improvements to these features in Audacity, which IMHO would best be served by the developers looking at this from scratch. I'm not a programmer myself, and I think it is extremely unlikely that there will be any significant changes before Audacity 2.0 is released. While I agree that "Mouse Drag Time Stretching" would be a useful feature for many users (+1 from me) I think it will be a while before we see any progress in that direction. While we are waiting - if you know the BPM then you should be able to work out the desired length. For example, at 120 bpm, there are 120/60 beats per second and each beat is 60/120 seconds duration. So if you have a sample that needs to last for 4 beats, the length needs to be 4 x 60/120 = 2 seconds. You can use the "Change Tempo" in Audacity 1.3 to set the target length to 2 seconds and the job is done.
  • OP replies: Oh drat. It's pretty much the short samples that I wanna drag around.

• Audacity for speech recognition and assimilated: I'm working on semantical tagging of non-words in speech. I did a laugh detector and now I'm on to semantical tagging of hums. I do not mean artificial humming noises, I mean people saying "hum" or "hum hum" either as a way as saying "Wait, I'm searching in my mind for the next word" (fillers) or to express agreement, disagreement, and the neutral "I'm listening, go on". I already have a tool to record, visualise and analyse sound files (coded for the laugh detector) but I'm using Audacity to pre-process audio files so I was wondering about using it for the analysis and displaying the results. This would mean - changing the display mode so that it doesn't jump when the cursor reaches the end of the currently displayed audio section. Instead the cursor would stop in the middle and the audio wave starts scrolling underneath it. - having a new window scrolling in synchronicity where tags could be displayed on demand in text mode. These tags would include the output of speech recognition and additional tags such as "h+" to indicate a agreeing hum. Tongue clicking, lip smacking, laughter, change of speaker, stutter, etc. could also have their tags. This would make it easy for me to check the sound file and see where the tags are correct and where they are not. It could then lead to a tool to clean speech audio files, for example before releasing an interview on the radio. From an AI perspective these tags give indications regarding the mood of the speakers. I work in CADIA (cadia.ru.is), this is part of my work. I'm a researcher there (who else would write a work-related post on a Sunday night?). See this trhread moved to Audio Processing: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=13233&p=50654#p50654

• Error Opening Sound Device - a tool to help resove it: Given that this will never actually get resolved internally, how about A Tool to help resolve it? There are very nice tools to help you piece your show back together after your Project explodes in a plume of sparkling fragments, how about A Tool that does the same thing you would be doing to resolve a capture problem? Stand behind somebody as they crank through all the variations of all the settings to find one that works. Write down what they did. I like to refer to this as "Work The Computer Should Be Doing While I Make A Nice Cuppa." You can use my silly USB microphone as an example. It runs perfectly and correctly at 44100, 16-bit, Mono. Given that Audacity does not wake up with those settings, how many iterations would you need to try to find that one. That one's simple, but it took me a long time to resolve partly because I wasn't sure what I was doing. Like most of our befuddled posters.

• Reverse Noise Reduction: I think it was SoundSoap that had an interesting tool. It would let you hear what it took out. If you listen to the reject signal and you heard just the air conditioner rumble, then you did a good job. If you hear the performer's voice in there, you certainly did a bad job. (Plus 2 votes)
  • Waxcylinder comments: Brian Davies' ClickRepair tool lets you do that (and I think his De-Noise has the have the same/similar UI) - It lets you select between raw (noisy) signal, the cleaned up signal without noise, or just the noise. The "noise" option is very useful as it enables you know if you have set the paramemetrs too aggressivley and are taking out too much of the genuine signal.
  • Billw58 adds: Try this:

1. Duplicate the bit you want to process, to a new track (maybe start with a small selection to experiment)
2. Apply the noise reduction or de-clicking to one track
3. Invert the other track
4. Play the two tracks back together

• • OP - Koz comments: Yes, I could do that, but I can't see trying to explain that to Mrs. Dougherty from the verger's office in Midleton, County Cork while she's trying to get the noise reduction to work, especially since it needs to happen multiple times.

• Chains enhancement: a shut down program and computer option from chain would be nice for long chains

it would be nice to be able to call another program like a cd burn program and it would also be great if you could Separately pick the mp3 settings in the chain feature

• Make Plot Spectrum "WINDOW" a real window: The problem:

Got a multi-track project open.

Wanting to compare the spectra of different tracks

Using the Mixer Board to switch between tracks (it can show more tracks at one time than the track window)

Switching between one screen and another is a pain because:

The Spectrum Window is always on top of the main window

The Spectrum window can not be minimised

It can not be reduced in size below a fairly large size

The Spectrum Window does not appear on the Desktop Task Bar

Ideally I would like;

The Spectrum window to be a real window (with a minimise button)

To be able to resize the window like other windows (with scroll bars when reduced below the minimum size)

To see the Spectrum Window on the Desktop Task Bar

A tick box on the Spectrum Window for "always on top"

• Reduced height meter tool bar: I find it useful to have a long scale on the meter toolbar, but because it is so wide it uses too much screen space. Several options here:

1. Half width meter toolbar (only need to see the numbers an a thin line for each channel)
2. Vertical meter tool bar that can be docked on left or right edge of main window *(see note below)
3. Toolbars that can be "collapsed".
4. A global "hide/show toolbar" switch (that retains the same toolbar positions - preferably accessible through the keyboard).
5. Make the Mixer Board dockable at the side of the main window.
6. Option to show Record/Playback meters independently
7. Any combination of the above

• • Re item 2) The meters CAN be made vertical, but can not be docked and they are ridiculously wide.
  • Plus 2 votes
  • Irish adds: A nice narrow vertical meter that you can shove to one side of the screen.

• Float control toolbar to be set on top of other apps: This feature was available in 1.2.xx and now is dropped on 1.3.xx . When floating the control tool bar (or any tool bar) it is not on top of other applications. Making it on top of other applications makes it possible to record while Audacity is in the background. That was possible in 1.2.
  • SteveTF comments: You can still record with Audacity in the background - the only difference is that Audacity will come to the foreground when you press record. You can still pull another window in front of it while it is recording. However, if another program grabs exclusive access to the sound card while Audacity is in the background, then the recording will stop (this is the same for any version of Audacity) so you need to be a bit careful running Audacity in the background. There are also performance considerations - if you are running another program in the foreground and it robs Audacity of the necessary resources or disk access (even for a moment) then it will mess up your recording.

• Music analyzing features: Have you considered adding musical analyzing features (also useful for speech analysis) like in the following program? Transcribe! http://www.seventhstring.com/ The underlying capacity might by now already be there in Audacity, there would be a difference in acting on and presenting the data. In Audacity, actions are considered for editing and stacked. In musical analyzing, one mostly chooses a different presentation. Also, there are some musically oriented actions, such marking up the piece into sections, measures, and beats, and then one can compute the frequency in beats per minute (for metronome settings). There is a promitive keyboard, for playing pitches. Also, there is this program, which not only presents the spectrum, but one can change it, and listen to it. In a music setting, one would like to be able to compare it against a tuning system. http://www.klingbeil.com/spear/ This program is for no charge, but it does not say if the sources are open.
  • SteveTF responds: Audacity already contains several tools including Spectrum Analyasis, Beatfinder, and support for VAMP plug-ins: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... p_Plug-ins Plug-in developers are welcome to make new plug-ins for Audacity, and it is also possible to create add-on "modules" for Audacity, though I believe this is still in its early days. I doubt that Transcribe! will ever be supported as it is a standalone commercial program, so unless the author is prepared to release the source code under a GPL compatible open source license, or create a plug-in for Audacity, then it cannot be used in Audacity. Their software licence does not allow anyone else to modify the program to allow it to work with Audacity, so it's stand-alone or not at all.
  • SteveTF adds further: <there are some musically oriented actions, such marking up the piece into sections, measures, and beats> I would LOVE to see that feature. It would open up the power of Audacity to a whole different type of music production. There are already these features on the "Feature Request" page of the wiki
  • Peter: see the full discussion thread in the forum/Audio Processing: http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=15608

• Narrow Meter Toolbar: When switched from horizontal to vertical mode the meter toolbar is way too wide. It can be made approximately 115 pixels narrower. Currently the only resizable toolbar is the Meter Toolbar. Because all toolbars are set to a default minimum width (approximately 290 pixels) the Meter Toolbar may not be made any narrower than 290 pixels. This is not too bad in the horizontal mode but when switched to vertical mode is too wide. Adding three lines of code to Audacity allows just the Meter Toolbar to be made narrower; I chose 160 pixels as the new minimum width although 155 might also be acceptable.

Floating toolbars lose focus so need side-docking

• SteveTF responds: I don't find the vertical meters to be a useful feature, much less so due to the current minimum width, but even with narrow meters I think I would find it rather cumbersome unless it was dockable at the edge of the Audacity window. With floating toolbars, either the fight is to keep the appropriate window on top (if Audacity is maximised), or manually adjusting the Audacity window so that there is room for the floating toolbar at the side. In either case you lose the Audacity keyboard shortcuts when focus moves to the meters, so, for example:

With a docked meter toolbar:

Click on recording meter to test recording level.

"R" start recording.

With a floating meter toolbar:

Click on recording meter to test recording level.

Either, Alt+TAb, Alt+TAb, Alt+TAb,....

or Click on Audacity main window,

"R" start recording.

Either way it is an unnecessary disruption to the work flow. Also, with a floating toolbar, if you move either the toolbar, or the Audacity window so that you can see what you want to see, it is very easy to inadvertently dock the meter toolbar and it snaps back to a not-so-useful minimum size. I guess floating toolbars are more useful on multi-monitor set-ups, but like most users I'm on one monitor. On a single monitor, vertical docking on the side could be useful on wide screen monitors.

• Device Toolbar: One major piece currently missing from the Device toolbar is the "Channels" pop-up menu for the recording device. If you are switching from a mono source (e.g. a USB mic) to a stereo source, you have to go to Preferences > Devices to set the recording channels to "2". IMO this makes the Device toolbar almost useless.

• UNDO Projects: Projects will not save UNDO. How about a selection that will allow it to do that? If I went to the trouble of Saving As Project, I know the first thing I would want it to do is UNDO the last thing I did that the client didn't like. If you know your machine is large and fast enough to handle "Copy files into Project (Safer)," then you should be aware enough to allow multiple UNDO inside a saved project. (Plus 1 vote)
  • SteveTF comments: I certainly think that this should not be a default, but I do a lot of work on small (less than 5 minutes) but complex (tens of audio clips) projects and would find it extremely useful to be able to save a project complete with the full Undo history.

• Recording single channels: It would be great if Audacity could record single channels. Right now, if one records in mono, it is the sum of two channels at half volume instead of being real individual channels.
  • SteveTF responds: I can see good reasons for why that would be a nice feature, but also see a lot of users getting upset that they have no input when set to mono (because Audacity is recording the other channel). The simple workaround is to record 2 channels, then use "Split to Mono" and delete the unused channel. (I'm not sure if the behaviour of "1 channel mono = mix of left + right" is actually an Audacity feature, or a sound card / driver issue)
  • Gale writes: What happens when Audacity requests mono from a stereo source on the sound device depends on the sound device. Using cheap USB sound cards or the inbuilt sound device on a large number of Windows machines over the years, I've never got anything other than a mono mix when Audacity requests mono from a stereo source. I think that higher end sound cards would more typically give you just the left-channel in that scenario, which is what happens on a friend's computer using a PCI sound card. So it isn't anything that Audacity can control.
  • OP Kizzume responds: I'm simply asking for an option, not a default behavior. Have it default to recording both channels like it normally does, but give an option to record single channels (left OR right) if one wishes. It's still a workaround that wouldn't be necessary if there was an option to record single channels. I don't know either. If Audacity can support VST's, something generally limited to high-end audio programs, it should be able to handle high-end audio devices more appropriately as well.
  • Kizzume adds: Is this card you speak of one that has EAX effects or other options that are solely designed around gaming? If the card in question is a Creative Labs card (no matter how expensive or how "professional" it claims to be) or another card that has EAX and a number of other options related to gaming, those cards may have something built into them that may actually do what you're claiming *because* of their focus on gaming (so a mic in for in-game chat will always be the right volume), but Creative Labs, no matter how expensive the audio device, does NOT make professional high-end audio devices. For anyone to attempt to claim otherwise is like saying that a Crate solid-state amp and cab gives a great, very professional warm and smooth sound for electric guitars. M-Audio and PreSonus audio devices are *not* designed in ANY way around gaming whatsoever, and there are some games in which their devices actually cause a number of issues.
  • SteveTF responds: Most high end audio programs are not open source and so have the luxury of not having to use Windows drivers. Because Audacity is open source it is not able to ship with ASIO support (though if you build Audacity from the source code it is possible to build in ASIO support for your own use. Another alternative is to use Jack http://jackaudio.org/ which is a high performance, low latency audio system. (I don't know how easy/hard it is to get it running on Windows - I use it on Linux). I've heard talk from the developers about looking at channel mapping in the future - primarily for multi-channel support - so the issue is not completely outside the frame. The current priority is the release of Audacity 2.0 and no new features are being added until 2.0 is out.
  • Gale writes: My friend's card is a rather old Turtle Beach - certainly a company that is now gaming oriented. By "higher-end" I'm thinking of anything over say $80 and not commenting on quality - I think not everyone would call m-audio "higher-end". I was only talking about the case where the application asks for a single unspecified mono track when the sound device is sending stereo, where AFAIK Audacity can't control whether the card sends a mono mix, just the left, or is clever enough to send just the right if only the right is connected. Whichever, only the left-channel of the Audacity recording meter will illuminate. This isn't to say at all that some future Audacity can't do what you want, but like Steve suggests I think the first priority will be to get this working in the case where you actually have a multi-channel sound card in the first place (that the drivers present to Audacity as such). Being able to choose the channels you want from those presented, and being able to allocate them to the channels you want are things Audacity multi-channel support doesn't do yet. Do the applications that do what you want already offer multi-channel support under ASIO? Equally obviously the workarounds for recording a single channel in stereo and deleting the empty track (your case) and recording both channels and splitting them to mono (which others want to do) are purely mechanistic and could be done after the recording if there are reasons why we couldn't do channel mapping with a stereo only device. I'll certainly note this as a Feature Request. But even improving multi-channel recording isn't likely to happen very soon, in my estimation, even though a couple of developers are known to be interested in it. BTW I don't think Jack works well from casual reports I've seen and isn't being actively developed AFAIK.
  • SteveTF responds: Just to clarify: Jack is being actively developed for Linux (http://jackaudio.org/node/28 ) but it looks like development on Windows is currently at a standstill.

• Changing mp3 bitrate - a few suggestions: Basically, what I do is open Audacity, drag a bunch of mp3 files (typically an album) onto it, then use "Export Multiple" to produce 128kbps mp3's. My problem is that Audacity saves these as different files (I would like it to save over the originals), and what's worse, appends a " 1" to every filename and mp3 title tag. This is a killer, since it makes me have to change everything back one by one... not feasible for dozens of albums. Just let me export over the originals or, at least, allow me to leave filenames and tags exactly as they are (exporting to a different folder, if necessary).

• VU meters during record:I'd like to (have the option to) see VU meters instead of a waveform when doing recording in Audacity. I'm normally recording live events - 10-16 channels, piped over ADAT into my Frontier Dakota/Montana cards. At the moment the waveform is normally at least a couple of seconds lagged, and appears in batches - I'd find it much more useful to have 16 level meters which are better able to sync with the live audio.
  • SteveTF comments: Have you seen the "MixerBoard" in Audacity 1.3.11? Unfortunately it only shows playback levels - if it also worked for record levels, would that suit what you are asking for?
  • No response from OP

• Tempo Grid:this is a simple bit of interface modification, but extremely important, especially if we want to introduce the hip-hop crowd to audacity.... not to mention the drum and bassers, african drummers, house, garage, and all sorts of instrumentalists really. There should be an option whereby instead of a time grid in seconds at the top, you could choose a beat grid. You choose to set the project at a certain tempo, and hooray, theres it all laid out, grids of bars which music can weave through, to carry us all... this way, samples can be brought in and snapped to the tempo. Editing and moving and copying and pasting can be done in a breeze, if a player is playing to a click track. I know such a thing exists in the form of Acid Xpress, but alas, I wiped windows off my drive when i installed ubuntu, and I no more can get it back...
  • SteveTF responds: Great idea, I suggested it myself about 2 years ago. There are a number of closely related features listed on the "Feature Requests" page of the Audacity wiki http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Feature_Requests but I think that the "simple bit of interface modification" that you suggest is the most important, and probably simplest to implement of these features. Improved beat detection etc would be very nice, but just having an option where the "snap to grid" can be set to a tempo (other than 60bpm) would have enormous benefits for many musicians. Perhaps we should club together and buy a copy of e-jay for the developers so that they can see the easy gains to be made from this feature. As you are on Ubuntu you may be interested in looking at Ardour and LMMS.
  • OP:I must say that about midnight last night, I found ardour, and I was very happy. It seems to mark out the difference between the two programs - audacity as an audio editing/conversion/single channel effects/live recording .... and ardour as a multichannel, multilayered song producing program. At least that's how it is to me...
  • SteveTF: Much of what you can do in one program you can also do in the other. Audacity can (and I often use it this way) work with multi-track projects. While there is a high degree of cross-over in functionality, the work-flow is somewhat different in the two programs and tend to be better suited to different types of project. They can of course be used side by side. I find that Eq'ing and balancing instrument tracks is easier to do in Ardour, especially as you can make adjustments in real time, but if I want to, for example, remove an unwanted click from a track, I'll import the track into Audacity, fix the click, then put it back into the Ardour project. The main problem historically with running the two programs side by side has been Audacity having trouble working with Jack (Jack audio server). Fortunately the new 1.3.11 version of Audacity is being pretty well behaved with Jack (at least on my machine). Making any exotic signal routing with Audacity and Jack is still awkward, but at least straight record/playback is now working smoothly.

• Mass export every project in a certain folder: Why not make a program (or another feature to audacity) that would enable you to mass export every project in a certain folder. Every file would be named the name the project had, and correspond to the date the project was saved, to enable proper sorting of the files. They would be saved as either midi, or mp3, so that itunes could be used as a library. However, a mass exporter would not allow the exported songs in the library to stay current with edits to your projects-you would have to re-export every time an edit was made. Therefore, I still like the idea of having a library program that can look at the audacity files and make temporary midi files, or some other crafty way of getting around this.
  • Waxcylinder: You would probably also want the ability to mass-export in Export Multiple mode so that those projects with trackbreaks for individual songs in an associated label track are exported as a set of WAV/MP3/whatever files (rather than exporting the whole project, a side of an LP say, as a single music file).
  • SteveTF: It sounds to me like what you really want is an Audacity Project Jukebox. You could try lobbying Apple for them to add support in iTunes for Audacity Projects, but I doubt that you will get much response.
  • OP: Thanks for the responses. Well, I don't have any of my projects exported yet, so I guess I'll have to cut some serious time out to do each project indiviually. Also, you made a good point wax, that some projects contain more than one segement that you would want in an individual file. Also yes, I meant to say wav, not midi, sorry lol. And thank you for informing me that the projects can be easily broken, this only adds more stress to the fact that I need to get off my lazy ass and do some exporting. However, if they ever did make an 'audacity project jukebox' i would be very pleased, seeing that it would allow me to a) avoid exporting and b) allow projects that are constantly being edited to be automatically updated into the player.
  • Edgar: Audacity is open source -- if you, a friend or employee were a C++ programmer it would be quite doable to create this "Audacity Jukebox". The easiest solution would be to take Audacity in its entirety and add the enhancement -- this would leave a lot of excess code and ability because the Jukebox would not need to be an editor. It would only take a few days of work to give Audacity the ability to have a folder full of projects dropped on it then for Audacity to go through the folder (in whatever order the operating system delivered the files) open all the projects and play each one (there is a limit of approximately 34 open projects at a time for Windows and approximately 90 for Mac and Linux). The real time-consuming part of this project would be all those esoteric details of the interface -- how do we deal with things like the time it takes to load the next project (assuming there are not enough resources to open them all) -- it would be best to load the next project while the current project is playing; next, some user would want to be able to randomize the order, another user would want to create playlists (then there would need to be conditional playlists); and the feature requests just keep going on and on!
  • OP: Thanks Edgar, your post interested me. Maybe you'd like to email me (iamsomeone <underscore> stuff <at> msn <dot> com) or pass me your email. I'm in first year university, so I don't know much complicated code as of yet, but I've taken four languages, and now working on C++. I've made a Call of Duty editor (saves kills and deaths and outputs statistics that will be saved to files). It's basic enough but I'm thinking of making a game at some point. I think that maybe this project would be attemptable, or at least I could contribute a decent amount of code for it (to the limit of my abilities), and maybe learn a lot while I'm at it. Can we maybe chat through IM and you can give me some ideas where to start? I have some ideas myself, and could get to work straight away.
  • Edgar: Done.

• "Cursor Position" indicator on Selection Toolbar: It's great to have the start / stop of selection and the song position on the Selection Toolbar. I think it'd be real handy at times to have the Cursor Position as well. I know I can just click on the track and it'll tell me where I'm pointing, but sometimes I'd like to know before I click. Photoshop has X/Y info about the cursor position while the mouse is being moved and I use that a lot. I can see it'd come in handy in Audacity too, if it doesn't take a lot of resources to do it.

• CR/LF in metadata: a way to enter Carriage Returns/Line feeds into the 'Comments Tag' field in the Metadata Editor? I find that Audacity truncates pasted text at the first CR/LF - most unhelpfully! mp3tag can insert such comments (see an example below) into both mp3 and flac files. And streaming devices (e.g. SqueezeBox Duet controller) displays them nicely. This is consistent with http://www.id3.org/id3v2.3.0 which states that newline characters are allowed in comments.
  • SteveTf comments: As it says on that site, id3v2 is an "informal" standard. The implementation of id3v2 varies quite widely. Audacity attempts to provide basic support for metadata that will work across multiple file types and multiple operating systems with a relatively simple user interface. I guess that this particular limitation has more to do with the metadata interface than any technical constraints (the interface provides a single line text box).
  • Edgar comments: I do not believe that this would be too horribly difficult to achieve. Look at the way this situation is handled in Microsoft Visual Studio; in this case there is a single-line edit box with (what I will call) and "expansion" button. The single-line edit box displays the multiline data by ignoring the new lines; clicking the "expansion" button opens a new dialog with a multiline editor. I am currently working on a multiline dialog for a different part of Audacity -- it could be easily adapted and accessed by adding a button to the Metadata Editor.

 

Reviewed but not added - unclear

• A "Macro" facility for menu items: A "Macro" facility that allows one or more of the standard menu items to be applied in sequence to the current selection or project. These macros to be definable by the user and assigned to key combinations (for example M+1 to M+9). It would be useful if effects could be added with their current/last used settings so that the user does not need to memorise lists of parameters for each effect. (Plus 1 vote)
  • SteveTF comments: I suspect that if a macro facility was developed, it would probably open up ways to implement the "Add missing menu commands in keyboard preferences" FR

Gale: What is the distinction between macros and extending the chains feature?

• • Edgar adds: the only conceptual difference that I can imagine is that users expect to be able to "record" a macro whereas with a chain the user must create the chain and an editor (in this case a dialogue). My guess is that in the user sophisticated enough to want to employ either a macro or a chain would be comfortable with the "chain" environment. I have not looked at the chain dialogue extensively for implementation, I would expect that it could be extended to include any command listed here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/index.php?title=Talk:Keyboard_Shortcut_Reference
  • SteveTF adds: The main difference in the idea that I was putting forward is the idea of "Favourites". If there is an effect, or series of effects (macro/chain), that the user is using frequently, then they can add it to the list of favourites. The effect, or macro can then be recalled with a keyboard short cut (suggested M+1 to M+9 for the favourites - M+0 would open the Macro dialogue to create a new macro/favourite). Making a string of effects may indeed cross over with the "Chains" feature - I'd not considered that. Perhaps there could be an option in the "Edit Chains" dialogue to add a chain to the Macro menu (thus making it available within a project through M+number) and/or in the Macro dialogue > "Save Macro as Chain". Following the conventional way of creating Macro's, it would work something like this:

Recording.

1. M+0 (open macro dialogue) > "Start Macro Record"
2. Apply one or more effects.
3. M+0 > Stop Macro Record
4. Select "Options" and Save.

"Options" would include:

1. The number of the macro "slot" that the it is being saved in (M1 to M9)
2. "Pause at each effect / Run without pause".

If "Run without Pause" is selected, then pressing the appropriate M+number will run the effect(s) with the settings are stored in the macro. (For a single effect, this would be identical to "Repeat Effect").

If "Pause at each effect" is selected, then the user has the opportunity to change the effect settings for each effect (running the macro calls up the Effect dialogue screen, but does not auto-run the effect). An obvious use for this is for people that regularly use "Noise Removal". They could set (say) M+1 to call up the Noise Removal effect, then it would just be : M+1 > Get noise profile > M+1 > apply noise removal.

"Typical" uses of the macro feature could be something like:

1. (with "Pause" option) M+1 > Get noise profile > Apply Noise Removal > Equalize > Fade In > Fade Out > Export.
2. (with "No Pause" option - uses settings stored in the macro) M+2 = Apply Noise Removal > Equalize > Normalize.

Reviewed but not added - discussing internally

• Improving the Noise Removal effect in Audacity by adding the "threshold" control that was used in Audacity 1.2.x and offering both a full version (with the additional slider) and a simplified interface that used a single slider for more/less noise reduction. I think that in the simplified interface, could combine both the "threshold", and the "amount by which the noise should be reduced" in a single slider, and fixed values for "attack/decay" and "smoothing" (probably fixed at the current default values that are used in Audacity 1.3.x). At low amounts of noise removal, the effect would be more like the 1.3.x effect, then as the slider was increased it would become more like the 1.2.x effect. Plus 1 vote
  • SteveTF adds: The upshot of all this, is that it would be good to have the threshold slider back, but in addition to the refinements that we currently have in 1.3.x - If the developers think that this makes the effect too complicated, perhaps with the categorisation of the effects menu, there could be two versions, a simple, and an advanced interface.
  • See this Forum topic.

Reviewed but not added - intending to delete

These pending FRs were posted here but on review, appear to be inappropriate for the reasons stated (for example, the Beta already supports this feature). Unless reasons for adding them/more explanations of usefulness/purpose are given, they will be deleted.