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
- This workaround uses a “bug” as “feature”. When the bug is fixed, this workaround will no longer work.
(This is the bug: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/2479) - This workaround cannot be used on clips that have envelope points.
(due to this bug: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/1500) - This workaround must be used on one audio clip at a time.
- This workaround may not be suitable if the track sample format is not 32-bit float (due to “dither”).
- This workaround will change clip names.
(due to this bug: https://github.com/audacity/audacity/issues/3796)
The workaround:
- Double click on the audio clip to select it
- “Effect menu > Filter Curve Eq”
- Click the “Flatten” button (if necessary)
- 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.