Track comparison: keyboard shortcuts or macro recording?

Audacity 3 Help Forum Windows
1

I am trying to compare two songs to see if they are really the same recording.

I would like to listen to track a, then switch to track b, then back to a, back to b, etc.; all while

a) both tracks are continually playing the song, or
b) both tracks play the same selection from the beginning

Neither the mute or the solo buttons seem to make this easy. It seems the easiest is this four keystroke sequence:

While all tracks are unmuted, select the top track, and mute that one with shift-u.

Then, when tracks are playing, this toggles the tracks:

shift-u
down
shift-u
up

Ideally, I would like to do this with one key, and certainly, I don’t want to use the mouse as I want to be listening to the audio, not trying to target mouse buttons.

Is there a simple way to accomplish this? And related, is there a keystroke macro recording utility for Audacity?

2

An alternative key combination is:
Shift + S
down
Shift + S
up

with the Solo button behaviour set to “Simple”: Audacity Manual

That does not really make it easier unless you are comparing 3 or more tracks at the same time, or are using a mouse.

The simplest way is to set the Solo button behaviour to “Simple” and click on the solo button with a mouse, but you don’t want to use a mouse.

Not specifically for Audacity, though there are third party utilities available for each supported OS.
Windows: AutoHotkey
Linux: AutoKey
Mac OS X: AppleScript
There may be others.

3

Thanks. That led me to finally understand what [solo] is trying to do and to determine that as you suggest I want simple solo mode. But also it led me to the preference that makes down and up cycle continuously, which is also what I want, which now simplifies this keystroke to:

Down
Shift + S

Which is a range of keystrokes finally within my talent set!!

So thank you!

4

To make it clear:
The simplest way is to mute one track.
Switch between A and B by pressing Shift-Solo on this muted track.

By the way, you can reassign those shortcuts in preferences. I use S and U without shift since they are so frequently used.