Scenario: I have a few dozen tracks, and I have muted a handful of them scattered here and there. I would like to see my project mixed to a single track. If I want to use mix and render to a new track, I have to scroll up and down deselecting all my muted tracks. If the Mix-and-render respected the MUTED setting, I would just (Ctrl-A) select all tracks, and get the desired result.
As it is, I can get the desired result in two steps
export to WAV,
import the WAV file…
It’s not really difficult, but it’s a little clumsy. And I suspect there’s some clever way to do what I want anyway.
I just tried to reproduce this case. Indeed, such a bug appeared in Audacity version 3.6.1. You can select all tracks, then unselect muted tracks and mix selected (unmuted) tracks
I don’t think this is a bug, I think it is intended behavior. It’s certainly not a regression, I just tested on various old Audacity versions back to 2.0.0 and the same behavior obtains - and even in 1.2.6 too.
What Mix and Render does is to mix all tracks that are selected.
Admittedly it doesnt say that muted tracks, if selected, are also included - but I can, and will, fix that for the alpha manual for the upcoming 3.6.2 release.
@bdbmkeeirsk11
Your workaround of exporting as WAV and reimporting to avaid muted tracks is a great workaround.
I think I may file an Enhancement Request for Mix&Render to exclude any muted tracks. - I just discussed this with my “Mystery-Shopper” and she agrees.
I understand that this behavior is built into the program, but this is ridiculous behavior. When a user has muted certain tracks, they expect this to be reflected in the resulting mix. But no, these tracks need to be “muted” again
@steve
Thanks again for tha link to “Mixing Audio Tracks”.
That page needs some updating as it does not explain the difference between explicitly Mixing with the Mix commands (which does include mutes) and implicit mixing with export (which does not include mutes).
I recall some years ago, this question being discussed at length by the developers. My position at that time was that “Mix and Render” should behave the same as mixdown on Export and ignore muted tracks. The opposing view is that Mix and Render should act on all selected tracks and ignore whether the track is muted or not, consistent with applying effects regardless of the track mute status. The latter argument won, mainly because that was how Audacity had always worked and long term users would be expecting Audacity to behave this way.
The “powers that be” at Muse (Design-focussed people) have acknowledged this Enhancement Request and it looks like we might get to see this later in 3.7.0
