Question about adjusting amplitude

[kozikowski]

<<<At the risk of exposing my newbieness, what is a celebrity song?>>>

I make up terms as I go to keep everybody on their toes.

"Celebrity Song" is not necessarily somebody singing. It's more like "of particular note" (no pun intended).

The Surprise Symphony is a Celebrity Song. You cannot broadcast that piece. Its very reason for existing would die in the first transmitter processor. The cannons in the 1812 would make that piece normalize proof. Can't be done. Most of the symphony would vanish if you tried.

& Etc.

However, if you're an Ella Fitzgerald fan, this process is right up your alley. Pop music tends to lend itself to "normalize" and gentle processing because the performance is generally managed with broadcast in mind...or it was.

<<<Then the problem tracks can be "addressed" with aplitude adjustments.>>>

Following your lead: import all the cuts like you did so they stack one atop t'other. Highlight the music in track 2, copy and paste it at the end of track 1. Delete track 2 with the little "X". Repeat with tracks 3-18.

I'm ad-libbing now. You can put a "Label" (Project > Add Label At Selection...) at the track breaks. When you're done messing with the timeline, you can File > Export Multiple... and the system will automatically break the exported files at the labels. Don't forget to label the front of track 1.

You will get good at the zooming tools because there is no way to force an "IN" and "OUT" point to stick on the timeline. Whatever you can highlight in real time and space is as good as it gets. So continuing the idea: Highlight cut 1 as best you can and apply the normalize. Highlight cut 2 and apply the normalize. Repeat until your fingers bleed.

If you highlight four cuts at once, all the cuts will become adjusted by the same amount until the one worst note in all four cuts reaches -3. Normalize is not a dynamic processor like everyone expects it to be. It's very straightforward, stupid, and usually disappointing.

It's entirely possible that there are batch tools I know nothing about. That would not shock me. It also wouldn't shock me if there was a way to get Normalize to pay attention to the Labels. However, Audacity 1.2.x is a simple editor and things like that are much more likely to show up in the yet to be released 1.4.x

I believe it's "newbiness."

Koz

[waxcylinder]

<<<Another way you can do it is via cut&paste of the tracks.>>>

Actually, I think cut and paste may be the only way you can stick two songs on the timeline one after the other.
Koz

No so Koz,

you can use the Timeshift tool to move the different tracks around to the required position - and then if you want them consolidated in a single track, this can be done with Qickmix (1.2), or Mix and Render (1.3). Althogh you don't have to mix them if you don't want to - the mix process is done automatically on export anyway.

WC

[kozikowski]

<<<you can use the Timeshift tool.. >>>

You're supposed to leap to my rescue and tell me all about the Batch Processing tools in Audacity.

Koz

[kozikowski]

All that isn't to say that there are no tools that change volume interactively. There are. However, they're not set and forget types of tools.

Load a simple tune. Select All. Effect > Compressor...

That's the Dynamic Range Compressor. Books have been written about how to adjust those for pleasant results. Basically, it allows you to change the relationship between the sound coming in and the sound leaving and have the actions change depending on the volume of the show. This is a simple tool. There are much more complicated versions that allow increasing or decreasing the volume of the show and under much more complicated circumstances.

People have been trying to eliminate the Sound Console operator for years.

Dynamic Range Compressor is as sophisticated as Audacity gets without third party plugins.

Koz

[fishwrangler]

Can anyone explain to me what the difference is between Importing Audio and Importing Raw Data? Can both be used interchangable with respect to .wav files? Is there a preference? Many thanks.

[steve]

With "Import Audio", Audacity will detect the format and interpret the audio according to the detected format. This is the method that should normally be used for importing audio.

"Import Raw" does not detect the format of the data that is being imported and must be specified manually.