Sound/Silence Finder enhancements

[Gale_Andrews]

@steve

As far as I’m aware the main intended use of SilenceFinder was/is for splitting long recordings into shorter tracks.

Yes.

@steve

This task allows Export Multiple to export each marked “song” as a separate file, so logically the user is wanting to label the start of the songs (sounds) rather than the end of the silences.

I think they are wanting a simple tool that places a point label somewhere sensible that gives them a bit of “silence” between the tracks.

@steve

One of the problems with marking silences is that if the first song starts immediately with no leading silence, the first song will be missed.
If the “simple effect” marked the start of sounds rather than the end of silences, this problem does not occur.

It does also mark the start of sounds (by marking the end of the preceding silence, if there is one).

@steve

Ironically, the way that SilenceFinder works (under the covers) is that it detects sounds, but if there is no leading silence then the first detected sound to be labelled is discarded - exactly the opposite of what most users would want.

Yes but is having no leading silence a common case for album recording situations novices would find themselves in?

Even if the user does not change the effect settings, they only need a fraction over 1 second of “silence” to get the first song labelled. And even if that doesn’t happen, Export Multiple has “Include audio before first label” for that very purpose. This is well documented, even in USB device manuals. So I don’t think this is an issue for most users.

I’m all for improvements to Silence Finder if it does not turn into something very different (as the user sees it) to what we have now. I would like some solution to the issue with the last label. I believe the least capable users will struggle with region labels especially if we present a mix of finding sound or silence in the same effect.


Gale