Workaround for unwanted "hidden" audio in clips

We’ve seen many complaints about projects containing large amounts of hidden audio. Here’s a workaround that may be applied to a single audio clip within a track.

WARNINGS

The workaround:

  1. Double click on the audio clip to select it
  2. “Effect menu > Filter Curve Eq”
  3. Click the “Flatten” button (if necessary)
  4. Apply the Filter Curve EQ.
    Because the filter curve is flat at 0 dB, this is in effect a “no op”, except that due to bug #2479 it removes any hidden audio in the clip.

Note that if you use this workaround frequently, you could create a macro containing the “flat” EQ effect, and create a keyboard shortcut to apply the macro.

This workaround will also erroneously rename all the clips - see this bug

EQ effects rename all clips #3796
https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/3796

Peter.

Oops, yes, thanks waxcylinder. I meant to add that one as well in the “warnings” section. Now added.

By the way, I’m not saying that this is a “good” workaround, but it may help some people that are having major problems with hidden audio.
The main benefit of this workaround, rather than “Mix and Render”, is that it doesn’t merge all of the clips, which can be important in many cases.