Hello. I’m a newbie to the forum but I have an issue that I don’t understand. I use a Focusrite interface to record to my iMac using Audacity. I download drum tracks and play all other instruments. I like to record tunes of my favourite musical heroes and my works are pretty close to the originals. For some reason, as I progress with recording tracks, they become scrambled, and unrepairable. What gives? Am I breaching some form of copyright regs? This is a hobby for me and no financial gain or rebroadcast of my works occurs. Any insights would be appreciated.
Bentley, 5string
In what way are the tracks getting scrambled?
Have a look at this manual page to understand how having “sync-lock” on or off can affect the editing of a multi-track project.
Thanks Bill. A lot of info to digest but I’ll get into it. As per a tune I was working on, is there a way of magically “syncing” all tracks and correcting the problem, or does each track have to be corrected /edited individually? I find earlier editions of Audacity easier and simpler to work with.
“Sync-lock tracks” keeps tracks in sync as you edit them. For example if you have all the tracks lined up but decide you want to cut 2 bars from the into of the song, all the tracks will have those 2 bars cut out.
Were you cutting and pasting? The was a change in version 3.6 that could cause tracks to get out of sync. That change was reverted in 3.7.0. So I’d recommend that you upgrade to 3.7.0 here. Scroll down and download the DMG for your processor (Intel or ARM ( Apple M1, M2 etc.)).
Don’t forget that you can Undo back to the point where you opened the project. When you close it you lose the Undo history. So if you still find that tracks are getting scrambled, Undo multiple times until you get back to a good state. Then take your time and try to figure out what operations are causing the scrambling.
Hey Billw58: Sorry for the tardy response, but my wife is in hospital and I’ve little time for anything else. I managed to get all my “ducks in a row”. Do you edit individual tracks with sync-lock engaged or disengaged. I am already using Audacity 3.7.0. Does “Command +S” effectively save your work? When adding new tracks, engage or dis-engage sync-lock? Still experimenting and reading up on the subject. Many thanks. Brentley
With sync-lock on, any edits that change the timing of one track will cause adjustments to other tracks so that the tracks remain in sync. So the choice to edit a track with sync-lock on or off depends on whether or not you need the other tracks to remain in sync.
The best way to understand this is to create a simple project to experiment on, then try doing the kinds of edits you usually do, with sync-lock on and off.