How do I apply an effect, but retain my envelope settings?

Audacity Help Forum macOS
1

I love audacity’s simplicity and ease of use.

But I am often frustrated when I apply an equaliser effect, in order to match sound quality of two tracks and, in so doing, lose the volume envelopes I used to fade between the two.

Is there any way I can protect my envelope settings when I apply an effect?

For example, is there some way I could save an exact copy of the volume envelope settings - so that I can simply reapply them once the effect has negated them?

2

I regard this as a bug and it is logged as such http://bugzilla.audacityteam.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208 .
I agree it needs thinking about, but I note that EQ in 1.3.5 and 1.3.6 don’t remove envelope points - what was the sea-change in EQ (or some other change) that forced the removal of points?

Can you manage with Effect > Bass and Treble, which does not remove control points?

The only way I can think of to restore control points is to open the autosave temporary project file (assuming you add the points after opening the project), copy the envelope points that look like this:

<envelope numpoints="4">
				<controlpoint t="0.301859410431" val="1.346938848495"/>
				<controlpoint t="0.684988662132" val="0.775510191917"/>
				<controlpoint t="0.754648526077" val="1.397959232330"/>
				<controlpoint t="1.311927437642" val="1.479591846466"/>
</envelope>

apply EQ, save and quit the project.

Now open the saved AUP, then remove

<envelope numpoints="0"/>

and paste in your copied points to replace (in other words, paste above the ).

If your saved project already contains the envelope points you need, copy the points from that AUP while Audacity is quit.


Gale

3

Thank you Gale,

that is exactly what I wanted to do!

Interesting to learn this is something Audacity might yet build into a future release.
If it is so simple to adjust the autosave file, then I guess it should be fairly straightforward to code similar readjustments automatically - perhaps via a control/button.

Here’s to the next upgrade.

And thanks once again for such a speedy and helpful response,



Eric

4

Do you want to add a vote for a feature to cut and paste envelope points using the Audacity clipboard?


Gale