Talk:Audio Tracks

Need for explanation on this page of single tracks and splitting/joining

• Gale 29Nov11: Thanks, Bill. The problem is I think avoiding duplication as much as possible and deciding where to put the images for splitting/joining. I propose something more like the Talk page which lets a brief overview of the drop-down menu illustrate the difference between stereo and single tracks; then put the illustrations (even if we duplicate a couple of images) and text details on Track Drop-Down Menu#split. Much of the text is already there (or should be).
• Peter 29Nov11:I think that the section on splitting and joining tracks over-complicates this page which formerly was mainly a description of the basic elements of and Audio Track. The stuff on splitting and joinig is very valuable too though, but I think it should be a new topic in its own right as an additional item in "Help with Advanced Topics" on the Front Page - and linked to from this page with a brief mention of the split/join functionality. We have seen recently in this thread on the forum that spittting&joining is fairly complex and not always intuitive (hence an "Advanced Topic").
• Ed 29Nov11: I am with Peter in that it over-complicates the original design but might be tempted to extend the design to include it if.... It's also disruptive--if here it should be after the controls are all listed. I do like corralling related info one one page.
  • Peter 29Nov11:I can see Ed's point about corralling the info. on split/cut here and am minded to agree with him - but I definitely agree with him that if it does remain here then it should be moved to the end after all the controls are listed and explained.
  • Bill 29Nov11: I'd support moving the entire splitting/joining section either to Track Drop-Down Menu or to its own page (linked to from Track Drop-Down Menu and on the Front Page under Advanced Topics) with even more details, and use-case examples. Two use-case examples I can thinh of are: 1) quickly reversing the left and right channels; 2) applying EQ to one channel of a stereo track.
    • Peter 30Nov11: Having spent some time today staring at this page and the Audacity Tracks and Clips page (and the long thread on the forum on "split and join") I really do believe that "split and join" definitely should have its own page under "Advanced Topics" on the front page and thus be removed from this page. I also commented in Audacity Tracks and Clips that I agreed with Bill's suggestion to move the "Channels, Tracks and Clips" section to this page - I suggest as a footnote embedded in a note clas div.
    • Bill 01Dec11: New Splitting and Joining Tracks page created in my user space - when we are satisfied with the content and the name of the new manual page we can copy and paste the content to that page.
      Regarding "Channels, Tracks and Clips" I feel that information is too important to be relegated to a footnote. It should probably be at the top of this page so that everyone knows the terminology we will be using.
      • Peter 2Dec11: Good to see your start on the new page on "Splitting and Joining Tracks" Bill. Does that mean that we can now delete that section from this page?
        Regarding "Channels, Tracks and Clips" I am very far from convinced that it has any place on this page. I'm not even sure that it belongs on Audacity Tracks and Clips either - I'm thinking that "Channel", "Track" and "Clip(s)" may be better as Glossary entries.
      • Bill 02Dec11: Yes, my intention was that the "splitting and joining" stuff would be removed from this page. Given the Team's stated intention to get 1.3.14-beta out by "mid-December" I'd like to move quickly on "approving" the new content of all the pages affected by this discussion.
        Regarding channels, tracks and clips, please see User:Billw58/Channels_Tracks_and_Clips.
      • Peter 2Dec11: "Given the Team's stated intention to get 1.3.14-beta out by "mid-December" I'd like to move quickly on "approving" the new content of all the pages affected by this discussion." - yes a good aim Bill, I'll do what I can to help.
      • Gale 03Dec11: Thanks for the thought/work, guys. I only just caught up with it. I'll need to sleep on it to give my view, which means at least another 18 hours.
        • I agree we don't want full detail on splitting/joining stereo tracks here, hence what I put on the Talk page. I still tend to think some explanation of split/join, ideally with a comparison image of "stereo before", "left and right after" is wanted here. Why? Because this is the main reference section
        • Not sure if User:Billw58/Splitting and Joining Tracks‎ is needed as a separate page, or it should be in Audacity Tracks and Clips (ATM I support the latter). But is the information in Track Drop-Down Menu now too verbose?
        • I don't think we want a link to this page in the Understanding Audacity TOC which is already close to a "sea of links". I think what we are saying is that Audio Tracks seems to demand a certain level of prior explanation which is already duplicated in Audacity Tracks and Clips. The balance between these two pages seems the main problem to me.
        • Not clear what the purpose of User:Billw58/Working_with_Audio_Tracks is.
      • Bill03Dec11:
        • I think splitting and joining deserves its own page, complete with caveats and examples.
        • I agree with Ed on the Talk:Audacity Tracks and Clips page that that page should be about clips, and its title could be changed.
        • User:Billw58/Working_with_Audio_Tracks is to be an entry in the "Understanding Audacity" section of the main page, to deal with the "sea of links".
      • Gale 03Dec11: Removing most of the Tracks content from Audacity Tracks and Clips solves one problem but still leaves the confusion with pages about tracks, putting more weight on to Audio Tracks as an "Understanding Audacity" type of page. "Channels Tracks and Clips" seems weird, the "clips" content should be in the page we are thinking of calling Clips and it looks like the Tracks information (without labels) should be in Audio Tracks or in an "Understanding Audacity" page about "Tracks".

        "Working with Audio Tracks" doesn't solve the sea of links unless it replaces links, or possibly breaks it up by appearing as a main article and the pages you link to on it become second order bullets. Not sure Mixing belongs there. Hard to decide without seeing the proposed content for Audio Tracks under these schemes. Anyway, it seems like I'm being a bit negative here so will consider more tomorrow.

        • Peter 3Dec11: The idea behind "Working with Audio Tracks" was indeed that it should replace existing links (and provide a home for new related links) in the Understanding Audacity section. Now I've slept on too looking at Bill's "Working with Audio Tracks" there seem to be two classes of information there. The first two entries "The Waveform Display" and "Audio Tracks" do seem rightly to belong to "Understanding Audacity". But the remaining five entries are about using Audacity rather than just understanding the basics and thus possibly would reside more correctly under "Tutorials". If we did move them to tutorials then I would still support using Bill's uber-page "Working with Audio Tracks" but with the first two entries "The Waveform Display" and "Audio Tracks" removed (leaving these in "Understanding Audacity" - I agree with an earlier comment by Bill that Audio Tracks deserves a duplicate entry under "Understanding Audacity" in addition to its current entry in the "Reference" section under "Project Window".

        • Bill 03Dec11: I think we need to be careful about shoving stuff off into the tutorials category. Tutorials to my mind should be about accomplishing a specific task and/or demonstrating a way of using Audacity. The stuff under "Understanding Audacity" is more reference-like: it does not describe interface elements per se but describes the "deeper" functions and details of the interface.
          Beginning with the assumption that this is an interface reference page it thus describes the interface - stereo and mono tracks, the track control panel and how to resize the tracks. Details of how and why and when to use the controls and features are described on other pages. To that end, note that this page ends with
          "See Audacity Tracks and Clips for more details on using the waveform display."
          That should probably be "See User:Billw58/Working with Audio Tracks for more details on using and manipulating audio tracks". In that case the first two entries on that page would go away (as well as the Mixing section if thought appropriate).
          ATM I still think that what is currently on this page minus the splitting and joining material is appropriate for this page. Breaking out splitting and joining simplifies this page and allows this page to concentrate on describing the interface. If we find that more details or examples of splitting and joining (or selection, or clips, or sync-lock) are needed those can be added to the appropriate page without creating TL;DR for this page.
        • Peter 3Dec11: OK you've convinced me Bill, I agree now that it is better not to shunt this stuff over into tutorials (see also my comments on your draft page User:Billw58/Working with Audio Tracks ).
          And yes I still agree that this page works well minus the split/join material.
      • Bill 03Dec11: Added "About Tracks" section, thus further deconstructing the "Channels, Tracks and Clips" section that currently appears on the Audacity Tracks and Clips page.

Single Audio Track (Mono, Left or Right)

A single audio track has the same components as a stereo track, but with a single waveform and vertical scale rather than two. Here is how a recording might look if you had chosen to record "1 (Mono) Input Channel" in Device Toolbar:

Splitting stereo tracks and joining single tracks

The difference between stereo and single audio tracks can be easily seen if using "Split Stereo Track" in the Track Drop-Down Menu to split a stereo track into two single tracks. The most common case is to split a stereo track...

... into separate tracks for its left and right channels:

Gale: Perhaps above image should have one track deselected? However it doesn't show both tracks with their own TCP controls which defeats the object a little. I know this would mean a taller stereo track, but...

Because each channel now has its own single track, either channel can be separately selected and thus edited independently from the other channel.

Gale: Below paragraph could be dispensed with:

Less commonly, Track Drop-Down Menu can be used to split a stereo track into two separate mono tracks. A mono track plays out of both left and right of the sound device at the same time.

Another common scenario is to record single tracks which are meant for mono or left and right channels of a multi-track mix. The Track Drop-Down Menu also takes care of setting single tracks to mono, left or right and joining any two single tracks above each other into a stereo track with left and right channels. See the Track Drop-Down Menu page for more details and examples of splitting and joining tracks.

Gale 29Nov11: I suggest the below content and the detail I cut from the above should go on Track Drop-Down Menu: After selecting "Split Stereo to Mono" from the Track Drop-Down Menu on the original stereo track we get two separate mono tracks:

Selecting "Make Stereo Track" from the Track Drop-Down Menu of the upper track of a pair of mono, left or right channel tracks (in any combination) will combine those two tracks into one stereo track. The upper track will become the left channel of the stereo track and the lower track will become the right channel regardless of their current designation as mono, left or right. In the example below, two mono tracks are about to be combined into one stereo track. The result of this operation will be to re-create the stereo track as shown in the image above.

Image of stereo track

Ed 24Nov11: an alternate take on the main image. We could make the section "Audio Tracks" and in the text go into the differences between stereo & mono. The stuff in red show changes--I did not try to make the arrow line pretty for now; the words "display", and "channel" need to be Capped.

• Peter 25Nov11: Ed, my understanding is that the TCP does not contain the Vertical Scale - the VS is a separate entity AFAIR. Your diagram shows the VS as part of the TCP.
• Gale: Don't like putting channel in red very much as it might appear to suggest that actually is a background on the waveform. I think it might look better if the arrow for left was above the image and mostly horizontal with a small downtail, and that for right similar but below the image.
  • Peter 25Nov11: I don't like the red channel labelling on the channel - it looks as though that is what the user might expect to see in Audacity.
  • Peter 25Nov11:I changed the arrows as per this request.
  • Don't like "The waveform is displayed as linear, the default display" in "Stereo Audio Track" ; "linear" is not linked to or explained and I think it's throwing complications in too early given we have Audacity Waveform for details.
    • Peter 25Nov11: On reflection I agree, so I applied Occam's mighty razor and removed it. It is much better dealt with lower down the page in the "Vertical Scale" section. And thanks for your edits to the VS section Gale, reads much better now.
  • The arrow for vertical scale should ideally not obscure a number on the scale.
    • Peter 25Nov11: I fixed this
  • Can the image be max width 580px (rescaled in the image editor if needs be) - otherwise there are horizontal scrollbars.
    • Peter 25Nov11: It is now just sub 580px
  • I'm still -1 on displaying a mono track. It will look crappy if if small height or intrusive if real height. We have a mono track on Tracks (which I disagree with James that it is on its way out). Maybe we could mention the difference for a mono track as text (same except that only one waveform and vertical scale).
    • Peter 25Nov11: also -1 on displaying a mono track. And I agree that we need to retain Tracks.

Ed 25Nov11: I still think the words display and channel should all be Capped. I will harp on this one more time and then abandon the effort <grin> . The title of the page is "Audio Tracks" and we have two kinds of audio tracks. This manual is not exclusively for the proficient, we must remember that there will be naive users reading this (in fact, my guess is that those reading a manual are more likely to be on either end of the bell curve).

• Peter 25Nov11: Ed, I'm open about the capitalization and if Gale/James want it that way too then I will change it (fortunately this time I have kept the PPT file that generates the PNG for me). And as always I appreciate your attention to detail in my edits, thanks.
• Peter 27Nov11: Ed, Bill fixed the capitalization yesterday - I'm happy with that.

Ed 24Nov11: another possibility

I think it important to have some discussion and an image for both mono & stereo tracks.

Bill 02Apr11: The is the former content of the main page

An audio track containing digital audio has a Track Control Panel, a vertical scale with units (except in the Pitch view) then the representation of the track itself (by default this is the "Waveform" view as in the image below). New tracks are created whenever you import an audio file or record into your project , can be generated with particular types of tone or noise. You can explicitly add a new track to your project with the Tracks > Add New command.

Stereo Track:

Mono Track:

The panel on the left of the audio (the Track Control Panel) has controls on it which affect this audio track. Easily overlooked, the name in that panel has a menu with more functions

Track Control Panel

• X: To close the track
• Name: Clicking on this shows the drop-down menu giving various options that affect this track only. Newly created tracks are named "Audio Track". Options in the drop-down menu include changing the name, sample rate how the track is displayed and options for converting from stereo to mono.
• Track information: Gives in order, Stereo or Mono, the sampling rate in Hz and the manner in which samples are represented.
• Mute: Click to silence this track when playing. Click again to unsilence. Muted tracks are not exported.
• Solo: Click to play just this track. Click again to cancel. Solo takes precedence over mute - the mute buttons usually have no effect whilst any solo button is down. There are three options for exactly how the solo button operates, described in Tracks Preferences. One of the options is not having the solo button at all.
• Gain: For this track.

Double-click the slider to bring up a window where you can make precise adjustments or enter a gain value.

• Pan: To make signal stronger on left or right earphone.

Double-click the slider to bring up a window where you can make precise adjustments or enter a pan value.

• Collapse: Click on this to make the track 'fold up' into a smaller size. Click again, or drag the lower edge of the track to restore the size.

With the Gain and Pan sliders, holding shift down whilst dragging the slider will move in smaller increments.

Move the entire track up or down in the list of tracks by clicking on the Track Control Panel and then dragging up or down.

Vertical Scale

• The vertical scale displays amplitude when showing the waveform, frequency when showing the spectrum or is empty when displaying pitch.

  When the mouse is over the scale it changes to a magnify icon. Click to increase the zoom, shift-click (or right-click) to zoom back out. This is a zoom in the vertical direction, and is used more rarely than the zoom on the time axis. See Zooming which covers both vertical and horizontal zooming.

Display

Click and drag between the two waveforms to change their relative height.

See Audacity Tracks and Clips for more details on using the waveform display.