I’m running v1.3.14. The drop-down menu for the Effects command in my install contains 39 entries. Of these I only ever use Change Tempo, Fade In, Fade Out and High Pass on a regular basis. I have also occasionally used Noise Removal and Normalization. Following recent discussions here on the forum I will probably be using Equalization for LF Roll-off in future. I am investigating the potential usefulness of two others: Noise Gate and Chris’s Dynamics Compressor. So, I have real interest in only seven of those 39 -and a possible future interest in two more. Is it possible to tell Audacity that these are the only entries to be displayed in that menu?
If not, would it be useful to have an additional item in the Edit Preferences that allowed the user, via a tick box, to nominate which Effects should appear in the list?
Topic moved to the feature Request part of the forum.
This is quite a common feature request and something that is being considered by the developers.
A couple of tips that may help in the mean time:
On Windows, if you open the effect menu and then press the first letter of the effect that you want, the selected effect will jump down the list to find an effect beginning with that letter. If there is only one effect starting with that letter, it will open. If there is more than one effect beginning with that letter then you can move to the next occurrence by pressing that letter again.
If you wish to remove any effects that are installed in the Audacity plug-ins folder, just rename them (add “.bak” to the file name), then restart Audacity. I’d only recommend doing this for effects that you are absolutely sure that you will never want to use (and don’t forget that you’ve done it). My general recommendation on this point would be to keep all of the standard effects that are included with Audacity. If you come back to us in 6 months time saying "I don’t have the “Cross-Fade In” effect, it’ll probably take a huge number of posts before we realise that you’ve removed it )
My version of the Feature Request is to be able to assign Hot Keys ad lib to the effects you wish. I, too use the same effects over and over and I got really good at swishing up and down the list with my mouse. I can tell you exactly the arm motion I need to get to Chris’s Compressor.
This can get a lot worse, by the way. People look at that huge list and say: “Those cry out to be organized in categories and subgroups.” It’s generally the non-power users that say that. One version of Audacity actually tried that arrangement. As I recall, one of my often-used effects was two layers deep. The next version was back to one list.
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