Aligning Tracks Together

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I am using Windows 8.1 OS and my Audacity Vesrion is 2.3.0. I would like to know if anyone has any experience with the Aligning Tracks Together tool? According to the explanation of this tool, it is supposed to align the tracks at the same starting point and then synchronize them so that they play together. However, I can’t get it to do anything nor do any of the other align tools. I’ve tried placing the cursor a the beginning of the track I want the rest aligned with. I’ve tried highlighting the tracks I want to align but nothing happens. What am I supposed to do to get the tracks to align together?

My problem is that I have recorded 7 tracks and I didn’t get one of them started exactly on the beat but didn’t realize it until I had finished the recording and played them back. I thought maybe I could use the align together tool to get them started together and synchronized but no luck yet. I can use the time shift tool to align the starting but then that throws the rest of the track out of sync with the others. I was hoping there was a way in Audacity that I could correct this without having to record the track over.

Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance :smiley:

2
  1. Select the tracks you want to aligns
  2. use Tracks > Align > Align > Align Together

see this page in the Manual: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/tracks_menu_align_tracks.html

WC

3

Thanks for your reply, Waxcylinder, but I’ve tried that already. I’ve selected the tracks in multiple ways but when I click on the align the tracks together tool from the drop down menu, nothing happens. All the tracks stay in the same place. They never move.

4

Perhaps they are already aligned?

5

I am using windows 10 Premium, and have nto faced any issue till date

6

Steve; No they aren’t already aligned. This is visually obvious. And in experimenting I discovered the the several of the alignment tools will work. The start to cursor, end to end, etc. but the Align Together and Align to Zero will not work. I recorded the tracks on my Tascam DP-32 and then imported them into Audacity to clean them up and align them better and I first thought this might be the problem but it doesn’t seem that the other alignment tools would work if that be the case. Evidently, for some odd reason the align together command just doesn’t work on my particular version. I have just downloaded this version of Audacity so I may need to re-install it. Maybe something didn’t get installed correctly.

I’m leary about trying Windows 10 again. I tried it when if first came out and it totally messed up my entire computer and files. Thankfully I still had my old 8.1 version (which isn’t great either but it works for me) and reinstalled it but it took a lot of time and work to get everything back the way it was so I’ve shyed away from Windows 10 since then.

Thanks for all you help guys. I guess if the re-install doesn’t work I’ll just have to bite the bullet and re-record some of the tracks.

7

A screenshot would be useful. I have a couple of ideas what the problem might be, but without seeing your project I would only be guessing, and possibly leading you astray.

8

Here are a couple of Screenshots for you steve. I haven’t done any editing to them at all so maybe you can see them good enough. I’ve placed the cursor at the beginning of the audio. All of the tracks but the baritone uke look like they are in alignment but they aren’t. Each one is slightly off.
Screenshot (39).png
Screenshot (40).png

9

When aligning tracks together, it is the start of the track audio that is aligned. Flat-line “silence” is valid audio, just as much as wiggly line audible sound.

Example before alignment:

tracks001.png
Example after alignment:

tracks000.png
If you wish the align the “start of the audible sound”, then you can either align them manually (with the Time Shift tool), or you could trim off the leading silence first.

If the leading silence is “absolute silence” (-infinity dB), then you can trim the silence automatically with the “Truncate Silence” effect (https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/truncate_silence.html).

If the leading silence is not “absolute” silence, but just “very very quiet”, then you could either, silence it manually (https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/edit_menu_remove_special.html#silence_audio), or silence it with a Noise Gate effect (for example: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Noise_Gate).

Alternatively, if the leading silence is not “absolute” but just “very very quiet”, you could automate trimming the silence with this plug-in: https://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Effect_Plug-ins#Trim_Silence

10

This is probably the best approach for your specific job.

11

Thanks for trying to help Steve but I don’t really understand all that. I tried a little of it but evidently still don’t have it right as it didn’t work but it doesn’t matter. I’ve already started re-recording the off tracks and am almost finished. I think this was the best approach in the long run as I made a few changes that made the whole recording sound better anyway.

Thanks again for your help.

12

In short, and for the benefit of other readers that may not have understood what I was trying to say:
In this project, all of the tracks are aligned to time=0.0
It is the start of the “track” that is aligned by the “Tracks > Align Together” command, not the start of the music in the track.