Audacity Forum

When I use the mute or solo buttons on individual tracks, then export to .WAV, the mute and solo settings are ignored. All the tracks are included in the mix export, regardless of whether they are muted or other tracks are solo'ed. On playback, it works fine, it is just export where mute/solo are ignored. Can someone else confirm this behavior?

This is an important issue for me, so if anyone knows a work-around or of a fix in the beta version, I'd love to hear about it.
Thanks!
-Jon

Workaround - select the tracks that you want to be included in the Export (SHIFT + Click on the track)
then use "Export Selected"

Mute and Solo are playback options, not editing options. Neither one changes the track at all.

You can select one track and Control-L silence the whole track. If you save the project before you do this, you can always UNDO and back up to the Project before you silenced the track.

It's a really, really, really, good thing if you have stand-alone exported sound files of all your original capture music. It sucks big time if your Project goes into the toilet and you have to hire the orchestra to play again.

But that is a good question. Is there a way to temporarily get rid of a single track without destroying it.....?

Koz

stevethefiddle wrote:Workaround - select the tracks that you want to be included in the Export (SHIFT + Click on the track)
then use "Export Selected"

Is there any way to do this with non-contiguous tracks? In other words, I have 10 tracks and need to export tracks 1, 5, and 8.

kozikowski wrote:Mute and Solo are playback options, not editing options. Neither one changes the track at all.

I know they aren't editing options, but the track volume and pan are similarly playback options, and they are taken into account when exporting. So it sure seems that mute and solo should as well.

kozikowski wrote:You can select one track and Control-L silence the whole track. If you save the project before you do this, you can always UNDO and back up to the Project before you silenced the track.

It's a really, really, really, good thing if you have stand-alone exported sound files of all your original capture music. It sucks big time if your Project goes into the toilet and you have to hire the orchestra to play again.

But that is a good question. Is there a way to temporarily get rid of a single track without destroying it.....?

Koz

I'm not too keen on destructively deleting a track. It seems a bit risky to me and something you shouldn't have to do just to mute it from an exported file.

jon_harris7 wrote:

stevethefiddle wrote:Workaround - select the tracks that you want to be included in the Export (SHIFT + Click on the track)
then use "Export Selected"

Is there any way to do this with non-contiguous tracks? In other words, I have 10 tracks and need to export tracks 1, 5, and 8.

Yes, as I said, but my description was not very clear:
SHIFT + Click on the track information box (below the track name, but be careful not to nudge the level or pan sliders).

Alternatively, use the up/down cursor to move focus from one track to another and use the ENTER key - either of these methods will toggle the selection on/off for that track

stevethefiddle wrote:

jon_harris7 wrote:

stevethefiddle wrote:Workaround - select the tracks that you want to be included in the Export (SHIFT + Click on the track)
then use "Export Selected"

Is there any way to do this with non-contiguous tracks? In other words, I have 10 tracks and need to export tracks 1, 5, and 8.

Yes, as I said, but my description was not very clear:
SHIFT + Click on the track information box (below the track name, but be careful not to nudge the level or pan sliders).

Alternatively, use the up/down cursor to move focus from one track to another and use the ENTER key - either of these methods will toggle the selection on/off for that track

Thanks, Steve! Shift+click works. I couldn't get the up/down arrow/ENTER to work, but no big deal. I have a work-around for now. It's a bit easy to accidentally click a track and lose the selection, but I can manage.

jon_harris7 wrote:I couldn't get the up/down arrow/ENTER to work, but no big deal.

That feature may only be available in Audacity 1.3 and I've not used 1.2 for ages.
All the regulars here on the forum now use Audacity 1.3 - it is just so much better than the old 1.2 version. (yes I would recommend upgrading )

stevethefiddle wrote:

jon_harris7 wrote:I couldn't get the up/down arrow/ENTER to work, but no big deal.

That feature may only be available in Audacity 1.3 and I've not used 1.2 for ages.
All the regulars here on the forum now use Audacity 1.3 - it is just so much better than the old 1.2 version. (yes I would recommend upgrading )

Good tip on upgrading. I was just going on the note on the web site that said the stable 1.2 verion was for all users. So I was hesitant to try the beta version. But I'll give it a shot.