TIP: Auto-Silence Length

Special Interest Groups Audio Processing
1

Not sure if this is different in 1.3 Audacity, but in Audi126, I figured a way to get the
program to calculate the exact amount of silence needed without having to highlight
the area manually.

I found this usefull as I often have several tracks in a window and, when creating
a new track to add something to the mix, I need silence all the way up to a
certain measure. This silence needs to be exact so I can keep pasting loops without
any extra silence between loops.

Anyway, what you do is to:

  1. Create a label where the silence should end.
  2. Click the label and select “Start to Cursor” in the Edit menu.
    NOTE: If you have more than one track, you can’t select Edit|Silence
    as the silence will be added to all tracks, but what you can do is:
  3. With “area” selected, run: Generate|Silence
    NOTE: The Generate Silence dialog box will appear with the EXACT
    amount of silence needed.
  4. You can now either copy this number to a notepad or just click
    in the empty track that needs silence and run Generate|Silence again,
    and the exact amount of silence will be added.

Well, I thought it was pretty neat. Saves some time anyway…

2

In Audacity 1.3.x you can type the exact length required directly into the “Genhttp://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Selectionerate Silence” interface.
If the Generate Silence interface shows “seconds” but you need millisecond, or sample accuracy, click on the little downward arrow at the right end of the numbers and select the time format that you require.

After generating the silence, the silence may be copied to the Audacity clip board (Ctrl+C) and pasted as many times as required (Ctrl+V). Copy/Paste are also available in the Edit menu.

For selecting an exact time period, you can type the exact duration into the “Selection Toolbar” while the “Length” option is selected. More details here: http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Audacity_Selection