Automatically adding track silence

Audacity 2.0.0
Windows 8RP

Hello,
I am a very basic user of Audacity. I have recently been copying LP tracks. I then user Analyze>Sound Finder to mark and split the tracks using Export Multiple.
This does a good job but removed any silence that was there. What I have been doing is to reload each track file and add 2 seconds of silence manually at the end. This is a bit of a fiddle.

My question is can I automatically add silence to each track file before exporting and if so how?

Thanks
Robert…

When you use Sound Finder, you can specify how much silence is included before and after the detected sound.
It is the “Label Starting Point” and “Label Ending Point” settings that do this.

If you wish to retain all of the silence between sounds, use the “Silence Finder” instead. This places “point labels” between sounds (in the silences) so that Export Multiple will export from one silent point up to the next silent point.

Steve,
Thanks for the quick reply. I started off using the Silence Finder but it was putting too many makers in even going to -70db I was still getting problems, The Sound Finder worked great and as I have just played with it again I find I am chopping sound off if I extend “Label Starting Point” and “Label Ending Point” settings. The “Sound Finder” does however do an excellent job of identifying tracks.

Robert…

What settings are you using in Sound Finder?

If that is to give you the two second silence between tracks on a CD, your CD burning software may (should? will?) have a feature to turn that on or off at burn time.

AH! perhaps I should have mentioned this in the first place. The tracks are not going onto a CD. I play my music through Logitech Squeezebox as FLAC files so the tracks play one after another. The 2 second cap is what I would like and I put it on manually. I am wondering if there is a way to automatically split the tracks withing Audacity then it would be easy to add the silence to each track then export it.
As for settings I have found default the best moving the sliders does not help. I have tried to insert silence after running “Sound Finder” but this messes everything up by shifting the markers.

Robert…

If you change the “Label Starting Point” from 0.1 (default) to 1.1, then that will add an additional 1.0 seconds to the start of the label position. Similarly if you change the “Label Ending Point” from 0.1 to 1.1 that will add an additional 1.0 seconds to the end of the label.

Hi Steve,

I still got no silence. To be honest after working a few albums I think manual is quicker. All I do there is mark the end of the track then Shift+J,^X, ^N, ^V and then export the track. Albums like Bathory “Twilight of The Gods” with the use of a wind machine cannot automatically split anyway.

Thanks for the help.

Robert…

I must admit that I find this rather puzzling.
If I write out some step by step instructions, would you be prepared to spend a few minutes running a little test just to check if soundfinder is actually doing what it should be doing?

I totally agree (and I’ve done hundreds)

I place markers with Ctrl+M as the LP is playing and recording in Audacity. I clean up the inter-track gaps to true silence and usually do fades (in and out) to the silence. Often I shorten the inter-track gap.

Steve has just introduce what I think is an excellent new fade-out plug-in (called pro-fade) which IMO gives amuch better fade than the current Audacity linear fade out. See this thread: Professional sounding fade out.

WC

Hi,
Thanks for your post I have just been playing around with ProFade as I was looking for something a little better. It gives a very nice even fadeout. I mainly use it for cleaning up some Audiobooks and drama I have downloaded from the BBC. I also discovered ^B by accident. I think the terminology of “Labels” confused me and I was thinking in terms track markers.

Still I am happy to try anything Steve wants me to do.

Robert.,…

Cool thanks Robert.
I’ll try and keep this brief and to the point:

  1. Close all instances of Audacity, then restart Audacity (so that we know where we’re starting from).
  2. Generate menu > Tone > 30 seconds, 0.8 amplitude Sine 440 Hz (probably all set by default)
  3. Select from about 10 seconds to the start of the track.
  4. Press Ctrl+L This will silence the first 10 seconds.
  5. Select from about 20 seconds to the end of the track .
  6. Press Ctrl+L This will silence the last 10 seconds.

You should now have a project that looks like this:
start.png
7) Select the entire track (double click anywhere on the waveform).
8) Analyze menu > Sound Finder
9) Set the Sound Finder settings to:
Level: 26
Minimum duration: 1.0
Label Starting Point: 0.1
Label Ending point: 0.1
Add label at end: 0

  1. Apply Sound Finder.
  2. Change the name of the label from “1” to “0.1”

The project should now have a label like this:
first-label.png
12) Select the entire track (double click anywhere on the waveform).
13) Analyze menu > Sound Finder
14) Set the Sound Finder settings to:
Level: 26
Minimum duration: 1.0
Label Starting Point: 1.1
Label Ending point: 1.1
Add label at end: 0

  1. Apply Sound Finder.

You should now have a second label like this:
second-label.png
That’s all, test complete. Did you get the same results as shown?

Hi Steve,
Yes it worked as described. I then loaded some tracks and I can see where I was going wrong. When I adjusted the silence level I went the wrong way on the long fadeout. I have put an illustration where I was going wrong. You can see that the track cut off before it went silent.

Thanks for spending time with me and everyone else who helped.

Robert…

2 = 0.1, 2A = 1.1, 2B = 2.1
test-2.png

Thanks for testing Robert.
You may still find it quicker/easier doing it manually, or perhaps a combination of Sound Finder and manual tweaking, but at least we know that it’s not something broken. :wink: