Macro Confusion

rsbrux · October 29, 2025, 9:49am

I sing bass in a chorus and am trying to create a macro to emphasize the bass voice in choral recordings and attenuate the other voices to facilitate learning the bass line. I can achieve this interactively with the “Filter Curve EQ”.

However, the functions that I find in the Macro Manager look nothing like those that I see in the interactive UI, e.g under Effect - EQ and Filters. How should I go about this?
Also, the relevant functions in the Macro Manager offer only

Use Preset=”<Current Settings>”

Where can I set the “Current Settings”? Are other “Presets” possible? If so, how?

I would also like the output files to be stored in the source directory or a subdirectory thereof, but find no way to do this in the documentation. Is there a way to base the output directory on the input directory? if so, how?

rsbrux · October 30, 2025, 5:33am

Please excuse the post before reading all the documentation. After reading the Scripting Reference and Macros Palette articles, I reexamined the functions in the Macro Manager and found “Filter Curve EQ”. The “Current Preset” contained the curve I had used interactively, so that satisfies my immediate needs.

Even after reading “Manage Presets” I was unable to figure out how to use presets for filters like “3 Band EQ* that I didn’t find in the interactive UI, but this isn’t an immediate priority for me.

I would still like to use a subdirectory of the source directory for exports; I will post a feature request.

P.S. After further research, I see that this was a feature in previous versions of Audacity that was eliminated a few years ago. Instead of a feature request, I have added a comment in github:

github.com/audacity/audacity

Improvements to macro-output folder

opened 04:46PM - 19 Nov 21 UTC

SteveDaulton

Enhancement Request Design / UX macros / scripting feature tweak

**Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.** If you run a… macro on files, the output files go into the "macro-output" folder, which, by default, is in the user's Documents folder. There are two problems with this: 1. Reports on the forum indicate that some users are unable to find the output files. 2. If you run another macro on the same files (or on files that have the same name), the first macro output files are automatically and permanently overwritten. **Describe the solution you'd like** To improve the first issue: Rather than having a fixed folder as the default location for the macro-output folder, use the folder that the selected files came from by default. For example, if a macro is applied to files on the Desktop, then the "macro-output" file is created on the Desktop. (Old versions of Audacity used to do this, and it was generally quite popular, though there was also user demand for custom locations). For the second issue, I'd like there to be options available in Preferences for how to handle output files that already exist: 1. Auto-rename [default] (if the file already exists, append a number: filename-01, filename-02, ....) 2. Overwrite (overwrites without prompting) 3. Prompt (interrupt the batch process until the user has confirmed overwriting or supplied a new name) **Describe alternatives you've considered** The "old" behaviour of putting the macro-output folder into the same directory as the files being processed may be emulated with a Nyquist Macro plug-in (see: https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=119157) Similarly, Nyquist Macro plug-ins *could* be created to emulate the other behaviours, but better if built into Audacity. **Additional context** When users are unable to find the macro-output, they frequently report the problem as a bug, which is bad for Audacity's reputation, a frustration for the user, and time consuming for support.