I am Mac OSX Sierra 10.12.6, running Audacity 2.4.2. I’m trying to simply mute selected audio in playback. With everything I can find on this subject in the Audacity manual, the word, “mute” is being misconstrued with the word, “silence.” Muting means simply muting a selection for playback, WITHOUT transforming the signal to FLATLINE. You know, like a mute button on a typical soundboard? Sometimes you just want to play back a track with certain passages muted and not destroy the track or run the risk of losing precious signals. Is this perhaps considered to be an “automation” function which Audacity is incapable of?
For now:
- Duplicate the track
- Mute the original track
- Silence the part of the duplicate track that you don’t want to hear.
When the next version of Audacity comes out, I will publish a plug-in that can temporarily mute part(s) of a track (the plug-in requires functionality that the current version of Audacity does not have).