Audacity Forum

Greetings,

I'm a nube, trying to create a CD with background music, and timed intervals with vocal instructions and cue tones.
Starting by creating my cue tones- I have two stero tracks, one with a start tone, one with a stop tone, each two seconds long.
Plan was to copy the start tone and stop tone to the proper places in a third track, let's say at 1 minute, 3 minutes and 5 minutes.
Created a third track (stereo), and tried to copy the start tone at 1 minute mark. No joy- I can only copy the tone to the beginnign of th etrack, regardless of where the selection cursor is. Must be missign something obvious- does a track have to be "filled" with something first?

This is a lot easier in v.1.3.x but you can still do it in v.1.2

The difference is that v. 1.2 does not support multiple clips in the same track, so you will need one track for your "start" tone, and another track for your "stop" tone. When you have pasted the tone into the track, it will go to the beginning of the track, but you can then use the "Time Shift Tool" (the double ended arrow) to drag it to wherever you want it.

Tip: You can use the "Zoom In" and "Zoom Out" magnifiers to change the time scale so that you can see what you are doing.

OK, been playin- created a third track, generated a 3600 second 1 hz tone, then silenced the entire track. Now it'll let me paste anywhere in the track, as many tims as I want. Strange, but it works.

My plan is to create a track with all the tones and audio cues, and a separate track withthe background music. Save the project like that, so I can change the music at will (it doesn't have to be synced to the verbal cues), when folks with different music tastes want a copy. Burn the entire one hour session to a single file, with timed cues (label track for the songs, and lable track for the cues). See any problems with doing the plan?

Thanks again for the help...

<<<See any problems with doing the plan?>>>

Oh, yes. Certainly, but maybe not the way you think.

Most people who write about audio systems concentrate on the upper frequencies since that's where most of the problems and magic are. Most but not all. No audio specification I know of goes below 20 Hz. That isn't to say you can't produce stuff down lower than that, but it's clear that you will produce an unstable/nonstandard audio track if you do.

This can lead to magic things. If you run into a software package with a "DC Normalizer," you may find that the cue tones are gone, distorted, or affecting the show sound in strange and unexpected ways. Some audio systems simply won't pass stuff down below 15 Hz or so on the theory that nothing good can possibly be down there.

Certainly, no "SoundBlaster" card will pass that. One Hz is right on the edge of signals produced by earthquakes. Your show may no longer be measured in dBSPL (sound pressure level) but Richter. This is the frequency that strain guages use to measure when an interstate highway bridge is going to collapse.

By the way, they're not "tones" any more. They're electrical signals or waveforms.

There is a joke that the perfect audio system would go down to DC. This gives you mind exercises like the audio level value of a flashlight battery (I think we figured out it was +5 dBm) and a speaker system that will blow a constant breeze across the room.

You can create some interesting damage with that, too. If you do manage to get that "audio" signal out of a computer and into a speaker system (the Crown DC-300 amplifier would push signals down to DC and would, in fact, amplify a flashlight battery), and you happen to have a theatre speaker system connected, the bass speaker cones will "unload" and fling themselves into the audience.

Maybe that's not the special effects you had in mind?

Wearing my production hat for a minute, Fourier analysis predicts that you have to have some two or three cycles of a cue tone for reliable triggering. This gives you a three second window from the time you think something is going to happen, to the time that it actually does...maybe.

Good luck.

Koz

Nice idea, and it gave kozikowski the opportunity for some colourful thoughts but rather than using sub-sonic waves, why not just generate 3600 seconds of silence?

My first attempt was to generate 3600 seconds of 0 Hz tone- got interesting results. Not an "empty" track as I expected, but a low freq signal, that took about 3 minutes for Audacity to complete. It was inaudible, but any transition from audible tones to no tones produced a click. I then silenced the entire track, and that worked. I just tried to generate 3600 seconds of silence- that works also. Just tried a 0 Hz 0 amplitude- that works as well.

Koz, a little clarificatiion- the audio cues are not to trigger equipment- they are signals to participants to begin and end certain sequences during training routines- these are interval routines for cycling- sweatfests as some like to call them.

I suspect my Christmas break will be consumed by sitting in front of the computer- this program is amazing. First up- get out the oscilloscope and figure out how it can change the tempo, but not the pitch... (or maybe use it's built in spec analyzer?) This too will come in handy- being able to adjust the music to a given pedaling cadence, and change it as the routines demand.

And the kids just found a tutorial on using it create ringtones... now I gotta go find a USB-Bluetooth adapter...

Thanks again folks, and I'm sure I'll be back