Feedback for 3.1.3

I’ve been using Audacity since 2013 and I recently upgraded to version 3.1.3. I’ve made two piano recordings with the new version and there are three features that do not work as well as it previously did or do not work at all:

  1. Sliding Stretch:
    Normally, what I do is:
  1. Identify the start and end points for the audio that needs stretching
  2. Press “Z” to move the cursor to zero crossings and double check to make sure both channels are at zero
  3. Split the audio at the start and end points
  4. Highlight the audio and apply the Sliding Stretch effect
  5. Highlight a small portion of audio before and after the split points and use the Repair effect.

Before I upgraded, that procedure worked flawlessly. Now, I hear distinct clicking, popping and occasional thumping noises at the start and end points, even when I only use the “Final Tempo Change %” box. When I zoom in at the start and end points, they are no longer at or near zero.

  1. Trim Audio:
    When I highlight a section of audio in a track that I want to keep, I navigate to Edit → Remove Special → Trim Audio. Before the upgrade, that would delete everything except the highlighted audio. After the upgrade, the deleted section of audio reappears when dragging the clip handles. Apparently, there is no way to permanently delete an unwanted section of hidden audio.

3). Selection Edges:
There is a feature to enable dragging selection edges in Edit → Preferences → Tracks Behaviors. However, when I unmark the checkbox, I am still able to use my mouse to drag selection edges.

I reported these issues on the Windows board. However, I don’t know if they’ve been cataloged as bugs or not. Are there any plans to address these features with the next release? The issues with these features make the post-recording editing process extremely time consuming and painful.

Any information or feedback would be extremely appreciated. Thanks in advance.

Perhaps related to this bug? Selection incorrect after Sliding Stretch effect · Issue #2632 · audacity/audacity · GitHub


This is not officially a bug. It is one of the improvements that the new development team has made.
There are a lot of bug reports related to the new “Smart Clips”, so this may change in the future.


I’m not able to reproduce this, but perhaps there’s a misunderstanding.

Try this:

  1. Enable the option: “Enable dragging selection edges:”
  2. Generate 30 second “Chirp”
  3. Select from around 10 seconds to 20 seconds
  4. Hover your mouse pointer over one or other end of the selected region.
  5. Observe that a white arrow appears, indicating that you can click and drag the edge of the selection.

Try this:

  1. Disable the option: “Enable dragging selection edges:”
  2. Generate 30 second “Chirp”
  3. Select from around 10 seconds to 20 seconds
  4. Hover your mouse pointer over one or other end of the selected region.
  5. Observe that the arrow does not appear and that you cannot drag the edge of the selection unless you hold down the Shift key.

Steve,

For #3, yes you’re right. I thought that feature was for clip edges. Is there a way to disable dragging (expanding and collapsing) clip edges?

Steve,

For #1, that is a different issue. If I want to report a bug, do I need to use github?

It can’t be disabled, but when the mouse pointer is in a position where it can expand / collapse clip edges, you will notice that the pointer becomes a double headed arrow “<->”. The “solution” is: don’t click and drag when the mouse pointer is a double headed arrow. If you want to move the clip, hover the mouse pointer over the drag bar at the top of the clip (the “clip handle”) so that the mouse pointer becomes a hand - then click and drag.

GitHub is the best place for bug reports, but if it is a real “bug” then others will be able to observe the bug.

As far as I’m aware there have been no changes to Sliding Stretch for a very long time. Which version of Audacity were you using before you upgraded? If there is a real bug here, we should be able to do the same steps on the old and new versions and see different results.

Steve,

I was using version 2.3.3 before I upgraded. I’ll go to Github and see if I log a bug with examples.