As usual, ignorant behavior on behalf of Audacity prevents me from performing simple tasks. Half of the time that I select a region and generate silence, it works. The other half I get “there is not enough room available to paste”, so then I am forced to ctrl-i the region, then generate silence, then ctrl-j. Sometimes there are stray audio remnants that need to be removed and the generate silence is the best option, when it works without having to ctrl-i the region. I get the feeling that there is invisible data within an Audacity timeline that acts like a brick wall for some pointless reason. Often, I am unable to slide a chunk of waveform to another location due to an invisible force field. I zoom all the way in, there is nothing, yet, I am unable to get past it. So I must select the entire empty region that I am trying to occupy, and delete the “nothing” in question, so I can actually use the space. Does it have to do with the annoying light grey split lines that, after a decade, I have yet to learn the point of other than to cost me more work and cause me problems? Funny how I spend half of the time generating silences within voids, yet the ctrl-r feature does not work with the generate options, how sad. Not being able to double or triple click a void to select it is ridiculous, how much faster the workflow would be if that was the case. Who’s idea was it to make the space bar terminate/cancel an effect in the process of being applied? Often, I think an effect has been applied, and hit the space bar to hear the results, only to have the effect window pop up with the green progress bar showing the cancel button being depressed. And who doesn’t love how an operation gets applied to the entire project if something is not selected, or if the wrong keyboard hotkey is pressed on accident. Then you must wait to cancel, as the program freezes while attempting to apply an effect to the entire timeline. Why do one out of every 200 or so split lines end up being the light grey variety that can only be gotten rid of completely by splitting the region around it, then deleting it, then deleting the void/nothing left behind. I am unable to turn a light grey split line into a black one, instead I must destroy it and create a black split line manually. Half of the time after a light grey split line is dealt with, another appears at the next split line down the timeline like a ripple editing effect. Why do black split lines show a one sample gap when zoomed all the way in, yet the horrible light grey split lines do not? Why does the merge feature move the waveform at the right, to the left by one or more samples, instead of filling in the gap with the average of both neighboring samples similar to like what the repair feature does. Long projects with zillions of black split lines like mine and up being off the mark down the road due to all of the single samples lost adding up to a significant amount of time. If I could have only one of these questions answered, it would be the nature and rationality behind the horrible, pathetic, disturbing, time consuming, labor intensive light grey split lines that are the work of domestic demonic terrorists. 
Probably not the best attitude when asking for help.
Assuming you are referring to the use of the word “ignorant”, the definition suited the needs. “lacking knowledge or awareness in general; uneducated or unsophisticated”, which exactly applied to the multiple situations at hand. Instead of reacting to the literal definition of the word, you decided to be sarcastic and offer nothing but childish criticism. Thanks for the quote, I do not feel bad for using proper English. But you should feel bad for the hubris you needlessly provided in an effort to appear superior to others.
The people that help on this forum are volunteers, that willingly give their time to help others. They should not have to put up with rudeness.
Perhaps it was not your intention to appear rude, in which case I will happily delete this topic and we can start over.
When asking questions, please also include the version number of Audacity that you are using. This is often helpful.
soooo, do we actually have an answer? I’m trying to paste some ‘silence’ between sentences recorded and get the ‘not enough room available to past the selection’. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesnt. Pls help?
I have been working with Audacity every day since I posted this “paste fail issue” question, and I now know the causes. Keep in mind that I have customized my keys within Audacity to get rid of the useless hotkeys, and to prioritize the needed hotkeys, so my key arrangement is unique. Under ideal conditions, when two sections of audio are next to each other, a black split line appears between the two audio sections. The black split lines are a visual indication of a split, they also serve as registry keys to line up other audio sections within the other tracks in the project. Many people simply click on the black split lines to instantly join two sections together, which I DO NOT DO until I repair the split lines first. Without repairing,… the two samples that neighbor each other at the split line may not seamlessly join, resulting in a bump in the road that causes an undesirable audio artifact such as a click or a pop. I always handle multiple split lines at once to save time. I zoom in at the first split line, then highlight anywhere from 4 to a couple dozen samples on each side of the split line, then push (Q) for REPAIR, then (J) for JOIN, then (W) for “next clip boundary” which zips me directly to the next split line. This process can’t be automated with a plugin because each split/join is unique with some having lots of clearance/space to the next split line, and other split lines being so close together that there is only one or a couple samples between them, which makes highlighting to repair a pain. When multiple split lines are really close together, I often highlight the space around both of the split lines and repair them at the same time. The amount of region that I highlight around a split depends on how drastic the difference between the end of the first section, and the start of the next section is. If the difference is slight, I highlight a few samples. If the difference is massive, I highlight a larger region so the join is more fluid and smooth. The split lines are necessary, but they have caused me serious problems in the past, until I learned what was going on. Split lines are supposed to only exist when two sections are direct neighbors, and when the sections are separated, the split lines are supposed to vanish. But that is not always the case. Often, a split line remains attached to a section, even though there is not another section directly neighboring it. Sometimes a split line does not appear between two sections, which makes seeing the separation difficult or downright impossible to see, especially when zoomed way out. Without a black split line between two touching sections, there is a somewhat faint grey line instead which can be repaired and joined with the usual steps I mentioned above. My (W) key will zip a user to the next split/end/start of a section even without a black split line present, so I use the (W) key as a split detector, that also works on empty regions to detect invisible stray samples that get in the way. Sometimes a stray split line, or a stray sample will remain within a seemingly empty portion of a track without a section of audio connected to it, which may eventually get in the way, preventing a section of audio from being moved or dragged to, or through that region. These obnoxious strays can only hardly be seen at one specific zoom level, and are not visible at the other zoom levels. When I encounter a stray, I do not need to see it to know it is there, so I simply highlight the supposed empty space and press delete, and the problem is almost always solved.
Sometimes a black split line will be attached to the start of a section of audio, instead of at the end. Sometimes when joining a black split line, a new black split line will appear at the next light grey split line or the next start/end of a following section of audio down the timeline,… a type of ripple effect. There is one main cause for all of these issues, and that cause is misaligned samples. I often capture audio from online sources such as Youtube, or from videos/audio that I play within VLC directly from my machine. For some ignorant reason, Audacity will allow two tracks to be unaligned, meaning that when zoomed way in, the dots for the track above, will not line up with the dots of the track below. This should never be allowed to happen within Audacity, but it does because the coders that produce Audacity are not even aware of this serious issue that results in several other issues down the road for Audacity users. It appears that the common denominators for the highest possible sample rates that Audacity is capable of, remains in effect, even when a project is set to a lower sample rate. The dots represent the sample rate. More dots per second for higher sample rates, and less dots for lower sample rates. The dots of multiple tracks should always align perfectly, but as a user chops and edits a project, imperfections arise. I encounter a dot unalignment mostly when recording audio from Youtube or VLC. I always record at the end of a projects timeline because I need the empty space. For some very ignorant reason, Audacity often begins recording between two dots, creating an unwanted offset of dots. The only way to fix this is to either drag the offsetted recorded sections all the way to the end of the main part of the project, which often corrects the offset, or at the very least, allows the user to slide the offsetted portion into correct alignment. Or a user can simply generate silence before the offsetted audio sections, then drag the offsetted sections to the silence sections, which has the same effect as dragging to the end of the main project,… however, there is such a thing as too close. If a user generates a section of silence too close to an offsetted section, the offset will apply to the generated silence, so a certain distance needs to be maintained. This offset bug is the reason for most of our problems with Audacity. Why does a stray toothpick size piece of a sample end up getting in our way, preventing us from generating or dragging within that region? Because, when the user deleted/edited the section that the toothpick was part of, a sample offset caused Audacity to leave the difference behind. Next time you run into an invisible stray sample that gets in the way, generate a silence over it and you will often see a split line appear within that generated silence. Split lines are supposed to not take up space, because a split line is not a sample, and they do not actually exist, but not according to Audacity. Early on, before I knew that offsets were a possibility, I encountered situations in which I had a couple tracks within a project exactly the way I wanted, then, after joining all of the black split lines, and handling the misunderstood faint light grey split lines, the tracks no longer lined up the way I had them, and the project sounded different. That was because all of the offsets added up and created a one or multiple sample offset between the different tracks within the project. This beyond foolish flaw is the main reason that Audacity has has a bad reputation with folks that use other DAW’s. Those folks gave up on Audacity out of frustration because they did not know what was going on and were not willing to take the time to discover the cause. I may be the only person that fully understands Audacity from a user perspective. I use Audacity and only Audacity for my audio productions. I never use plugins. I manually master everything to perfection, but it is very time consuming. What blows my mind is that the multiple people involved with Audacity’s code, do not acknowledge this offset issue, and frankly, every time I bring this issue up within the forum, I get ridiculed and laughed at, or regarded as a bully by folks that think they understand Audacity better than I do. I live in Audacity, they just work there. Hands down, Audacity is the best audio engineering program ever, that has the worst DAW type bugs and flaws that I have ever encountered. What a shame it is that most Audacity users only use it for small tasks, instead of literally everything as I do. Reach out to me when you run into other issues, I have overcome them all.
wow. thank you! I shall study carefully. Am very grateful for your help. And I may well be asking you how I stop my bloody random words from distorting, despite my careful speech (I am using 3.3.1) with an AKG Lyra mic that is awesome, but sometimes it’s just the way I hold my tongue and get one distorted word in 20mins of recording.
A little context: I am a narrator with a pile of six novels done, about 50-60 novels so far to get through and am a newbie Audacity user. I record one chapter at a time and manually master it then record the next. If a chapter only has one ‘take’ I don’t end up with any black split lines. I’ve not figured out how to use plug-ins or master the audio according to my range… just barreling through and it seems to be ACX-compatible. Any insights would be incredibly appreciated 
(((“”“…but sometimes it’s just the way I hold my tongue and get one distorted word in 20mins of recording.”“”))) I record vocals every day. Prior to spitting my own lyrics, I was a monotone speaker, I lacked inflection as I spoke, almost emotionless. People thought I was depressed. Now I speak with so much zeal and it did not feel real at first. It felt forced and fake. I am tone deaf. I can never hit the same exact note twice, yet my audio sounds amazing thanks to a hand full of the most basic tweaks. After a year of doing vocals, I suddenly out of nowhere became bass sensitive, and began noticing every little area of excess bass. I push (B) to pop up the Bass and Treble window. Within a week later, I could tell how much of a bass decrease I needed just by looking at the waveform. Not too long after, I began noticing lacks of bass. Another six months later I became treble sensitive. I am now able to notice any flaw down to 0.2dB, even the slightest incorrect pitch. I found that 4dB is the perfect increment to increase/decrease bass and treble by about 75% of the time, sometimes I alter by 2dB if the flaw is minor. In most situations, you know you have corrected a bass/treble imbalance when that portion of waveform is nearly even above, and below the 0dB line. My (R) key is the repeat key. Be aware that one of the few actions that can not be repeated by pressing the key assigned to (repeat) is the generate silence action, and it is frustrating. Most of the time when I am editing regions with lots of bass and treble imbalances, I make a pass focusing on bass increase, then another pass focusing on bass decrease, then a third for treble increase, then a fourth for treble decrease. For instance, when focusing on bass decrease, I highlight the region, then press (B) to bring up the Bass and Treble window, then, because upon opening the Bass and Treble window, the bass value is already highlighted, I immediately press “-” then “4”, then “TAB”, then “TAB” again to highlight the treble value,…but regarding what I put as the treble depends if I am focusing on bass for a large region, or if I am simply correcting one or two things as I work. If I am focusing on only bass as a single pass, I set the treble to 0 every time. If I am making a couple quick changes as I work, I will handle the bass and treble at the same time and place a value for both. I press (P) to pop up the “Change Pitch” window. Correcting the random bad sounding word from your narration can be handled with either, or a combination of bass/treble/or slight pitch changes. Most of the time when I alter pitch, it is due to my voice increasing or decreasing pitch at the start or the end of a word, and I normally only need to alter the pitch of the start or the end by .5 or 1 dB. Sometimes a bit more. But let me blow your mind real quick,… do what I do,… start recording about four seconds before the messed up word, and say that portion again! That is what the pros do.
I press (Z) (At Zero Crossings) to move the focus line directly to the nearest dot in the waveform that rests at zero dB. Zero dB, or the closest to zero dB you can get is the best choice for making splits. To assign keys to functions,… Edit>Preferences>Keyboard.
So, you have the original recording in a track above with that messed up word that sounds bad. And you have a rerecorded portion in the track below. The replacement word should be just about in the same exact spot, if it is not, then drag until it is. I often make temporary splits as registry keys to line sections up that each reside within their own track. Place your curser over the gap between the messed up word, and it’s neighboring word to the left, then press (Z), you may notice or not notice the focus line move to the nearest zero dB depending on your zoom factor. Then hit your split key, my split key is (I) because (S) is for (Silence), and because the letter “I” looks like a split line. Then repeat at the gap for the neighboring word to the right. Then do the same in the track below that has the replacement word, but only zero point and split the neighboring word to it’s left,… because, in order to fit the replacement word in the cropped bad word’s space above, the right gap of the replacement word must be split in the same spot as the bad word above. Then, providing you did this process correctly, both the cropped bad word, and the cropped replacement word should have the same exact duration. Now you can double click the replacement word, and (C) (copy) it then double click the bad word and press (V) (paste). Then handle the split lines, but if you do not repair the split lines first, you may get an annoying click artifact or two.
Keep in mind that when you reduce bass, the remaining treble becomes more concentrated and prominent, so heavy bass reduction should often be accompanied by about half as much treble reduction as well. Altering bass can also have an effect on pitch, though, it has rarely been an issue for me. There are a zillion little things that I intentionally leave out as to avoid confusion. I try to make my workflow as quick as possible. If you have ever seen the Star Trek TNG character “Data” type on a console fast thanks to super android speed, that is how fast I work my keyboard within Audacity. I am actually faster than Audacity so I must throttle my speed or some key presses end up ignored. I can not stress how important it is to assign functions to keys in a way that makes sense to you now, so you can develop the muscle memory as soon as possible. Most of my keys are not the way your Audacity was set up by default. For instance, to save time, I removed the need to press “CTRL” with “C” or “V” in order to copy and paste. My “Z” key alone is for “Zero Point Crossings”, but “CTRL” + “Z” is my “undo” key combination. I needed the undo feature to not be pressable on accident, just like the multiple OBNOXIOUS default keys that zips the user to the start or end of a track, or worse, zips them to the start of the track and plays it from the start. I honestly do not know what the Audacity team was thinking when it comes to the many hotkeys that serve only to take the user as far away as possible from the area they are working on, just long enough for them to forget what they were doing. Why the heck is the gain slider directly under the “Mute” and “Solo” buttons. I constantly accidently raise the gain all the way up and risk damage to my speakers and headphones. I spend most of my time in the quantum realm, also known as “”“way zoomed in with the stereo track vastly expanded so I can actually see what I am doing”“”, and it sucks having the work area bobble up and down between the left and right channel, EVERY TIME I DO EVERY LITTLE THING. Things were placed in the worst locations, and childish behaviors that anyone with decent experience with Audacity would state are annoying and counterproductive, have remain unchanged because most of the folks involved with Audacity are not using Audacity for audio production nearly every day themselves.
yes great suggestions. Thank you again! I have set up short cut keys and find it so much quicker doing stuff having removed the “Ctrl” aspect. I have tried doing the add new track and re-record right under the stuffed up words so that seems to be working. With regards equal bass/treble waves, that’s just next level. Maybe in a year I’ll get into that! haha, Cheers!