Can we export a track with blank leader?

Audacity Help Forum Windows
1

I want to economize project file size by trimming silent sections of tracks, such as a vocal harmony track that starts about 40 seconds after the song starts. So I delete the first 40 secs of the track, ending up with a blank section before a clip of the harmony. I also delete the section after the harmony clip, up to the next harmony section. So the track appears as 40 secs of blank space, a clip, another blank space then another clip.

But when exporting such a selected track, Audacity adds silence only between the two harmony clips and not for the first 40 secs. Maybe I’m hoping for too much, but is it possible to export a selected track with a blank leader and have the blank leader section save as silence, preserving the structure of the track in the song?

2

There’s an option in Preferences.
See: https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/import_export_preferences.html

When “Ignore blank space at the beginning:” is enabled, the blank space at the start is ignored (absent from the exported file).
When “Ignore blank space at the beginning:” is disabled, he blank space at the start is rendered into the exported file as silence.

3

Thank you for your kind help.