Measure numbers

[EddyKilowatt]

Hi Everyone -- New user here... having a blast using 1.2.6 to record and edit a four-part Vivaldi violin concerto. (Wanted to play with multitrack recording since I was a teenager, never had access to the hardware -- analog tape -- back then.)

My score for the piece has measure numbers, and it would be a great help locating things when mixing to have Audacity display these ... maybe by counting bars in the click track. Does this feature exist (I can't see it in any menus) or is there a way to enable it?

Also having an issue exporting the project to WAV but reading here has given me a few ideas to try first...

thanks,
Eddy

[alatham]

Annoyingly, there is no way to make a "measure bar" that will display which measure you're currently looking at.

There's something really similar, if you click project -> new time track. But this just displays seconds. Even more maddeningly you can click on the name of this time track and change the range, but there's no intuitive way of setting this so it counts along with each beat. It seems like it should be so easy to add a secondary display like this, I wonder if anyone's added it to the "wishlist" for the next development cycle.

Also, I'm not sure what kind of wav output problems you're having, but this is all you need to do:
1) Record your project and make sure it isn't clipping anywhere (watch the output meters and make sure they never peak).
2) Highlight everything except your "click track" or any other track that you were using to keep time with that you don't want to appear in the final wav file.
3) Make sure the sample rate in the lower left hand corner is correct (usually 44.1KHz). Click file -> export to wav.

That should give you a wav file with all the audio that you want in it.

[EddyKilowatt]

Thanks for the quick reply. Anyone using Audacity for classical music would probably appreciate a "measure number" feature. I guess it would need the ability to designate which bar of the click track is Measure 1, to allow for a variable number of bars of lead-in... but it does seem like it oughta be not too difficult a feature to add (compared to the wizardry of many of the items in the Effects menu, for example).

My export issue is a hard crash (stops responding, Task Manager cannot abort it, have to hard-reset the computer to recover), some times but not always, partway through exporting either Project or Selection to a WAV file. This is an XP SP2 laptop with a 20GB drive and about 30% free unfragmented space available; Windows Update is on hold (not working in the background) and Symmantec Anti-Virus is running but not scanning.

My sample rate is 44.1... however I may have one or two brief peaks that are clipping in the final mix. I am exporting to the local drive in the laptop, for sure... BUT the folder I'm exporting to is the local "make available offline" version of a networked folder that I'm not presently connected to. Tonight I'll try exporting to an absolutely local folder with no network encumbrances of any kind... after I run Normalize to clean up those peaks. Hopefully one of those will take care of it...

thanks again,
Eddy

[alatham]

Ahhh, network folder, Ahhh!

Network folders and Audacity don't get along. Use a local folder and you should be set.

The clipping certainly won't kill Audacity, it's just a good idea for keeping audio quality as high as possible. You can export clipped files without issue if you like.

I agree about the ability to count measures, it would be a nice feature for all music producers.

[EddyKilowatt]

Network folders and Audacity don't get along. Use a local folder and you should be set.

Check! I saved about five versions of my mix to .WAV files without a hitch last night... after moving all the project files off the networked folder and onto a solely-local folder. Thanks again for the help.

Eddy