Silence Calculator

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

Not sure if this is in the newer Audacity (I use 1.2.6), but as a suggestion, you
definitely need a smarter silence adder.

For instance, you might have a 128 bpm track with each measure being 1.874807
seconds. What I do currently is use that amount to add silence to each track where
that track’s loops (or audio) aren’t supposed to play (this keeps the loops aligned
time-wise).

This works well, but sometimes I end up with, say 8 measures of silence needed
and I either have to figure out the math, or repeat add silence until I get the
track up to the point of adding the loop.

It’d be nice if there were some sort of calculator on the silence adder, say an
entry box for a multiple [1.874807] [1] then [1.874807] [8]

That would be wicked smart.

2

I don’t remember if this is in 1.2.6 but it may be…
Effect menu > Repeat

Generate 1 measure of silence, then use the Repeat effect to increase that to as many measures as you like.

Alternatively it would be very simple to create a Nyquist plug-in with the feature that you suggest (I’m sure that you can do this yourself :wink:
This is probably the best option if you’re doing that type of task a lot as you could easily get the plug-in to calculate the duration from an input in the form of “Beats per Minute” and “Number of Beats”.
Wrap this up as a generate type plug-in with a couple of controls and you’re done:

(setq bpm 128) ; beats per minute
(setq beats 4) ; number of beats

(setq dur (* beats (/ 60.0 bpm)))
(s-rest dur)