Precision of the envelope tool

HI
I meant to ask this question long ago…

I often use the envelope tool for volume increase/decrease on specific portions of the track. As this is a manual tool, the precision of the change is low and it fully depends on the eye - hand coordination plus the smoothness of the mouse (if it’s jumpy, this task is more difficult).

Perhaps I’m missing something here.

For example, if I want to increase the level of a clip to 0.5/-0.5 dB I need to visually align the envelope controls with the meter on the track, hold my breath (to increase precision :smiley: ) and trust that the new level is at the point I want.

Is there a way to see/check the dB level of the envelope control? is it at 4 dB? at 4.5 dB or 5 dB?.. if not, I would recommend this as a future improvement.

thanks

The precision is also dependent on “track size” and “zoom”.

Here you can see there is an envelope point at -9.5 dB:


Useful links:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/vertical_zooming.html
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audio_tracks.html#scale
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/audio_tracks.html

thanks
yes, I was suspecting that vertical zoom needs to be used.

it is still tricky - when I cliked on “0” and zoomed out, it reduced the range to a portion of the full range, while I want to see the zoomed in full range from -1 to 1 dB. Moving the range manually did not help.

It would be much easier and quicker if the envelope controls when right clicked (for example) showed the corresponding dB value which then could be adjusted by manual manipulation of the control.

Please consider in future improvements.

thanks

Try “Shift + Right Click”.


By the way, the scale from +1 to -1 is not a dB scale, it is a linear scale.
The dB scale goes from 0dB (top of the track) to -infinity dB (silence - middle of the track) to 0 dB (bottom of the track). To view the dB scale you can right click on the vertical scale and select “dB”, though note that this makes the waveform look strange.

of course, it is linear, my mistake.

I will try that.

thanks!