No display in Audio Track ?

[bobreed]

Q1: During playback I can no longer see the waveform in the Audio Track. This worked earlier and I am sure I must have changed something. I have confirmed through the track control panel that waveform is selected and also preferences > interface > update spectrogram while playing.

Q2: When editing earlier tracks I was able to delete or silence portions of the recording successfully. Now when I choose a section to delete or silence the keystrokes record (without error or popup) but nothing happens. The originally selected portion remains as if nothing happened.

I am a Audacity virgin so any help would be appreciated

[kozikowski]

<<<This worked earlier and I am sure I must have changed something. >>>

This could be a little exotic. Did you try to move or change your AUP Project file? Did you mess with or move anything associated with the _DATA folder? The first two AU files inside the _DATA folder draw the waveforms on the screen.

Koz

[bobreed]

Thanks Koz,

After several tries I reloaded the program and it seems to work now. I did delete the initial song and folder and I am guessing that messed things up. Occasionally the program still fails to show the waveform but closing the window and restarting does the trick.

[kozikowski]

Next time you edit or create a song you like, don't bother Saving it. That just creates a complicated Audacity Project and lots of confusion. Instead Export As Wav... or Export As MP3.... Either of those will give you one single sound file that you can listen to anywhere or email to your mum. WAV is perfect, but big, MP3 is much smaller but can be slightly damaged.

Koz

[aam]

Koz
I am having a similar problem, but on recording. At least twice I have seen the waveform as I'm recording, however, when I try to record from another cassette (same day)the monitor bars seem to indicate sound is reaching Audacity, but no visible waveform. Just learning the program, so must inadvertently be changing something.

[kozikowski]

<<<but no visible waveform>>>

Are you looking in the wrong place? If you stop a recording and start up again, Audacity creates tracks 3 and 4 underneath 1 and 2. It doesn't create an extended 1 and 2. To get an extended track, you have to Record Pause.

Koz

[aam]

I don't think so. When I begin a recording and don't see a waveform, I stop and then delete the record before starting again.

[kozikowski]

You see the red bouncing lights in the record meter, but you see a straight line on the timeline instead of a wiggly audio waveform?

Where are they bouncing? You can pull the Audacity window out wider and get better meters. If your show lights bounce in the -36 range, then you won't get a waveform because the waveform display only goes down to about -30.
When it's normal, do you get something that looks like this? The red record meters and the green playback meters should match if you play back a good recording.

http://kozco.com/tech/audacity/Audacity ... andard.jpg

Or do you not get a timeline window at all?

Koz

[bobreed]

Thanks Koz for the great info.

Now that I understand the program a little better things are making sense. I just have to remember to set Monitor Input each time. I believe when recording and the waveform is not visible as expected it is due to a stop/start and the new tracks are hidden below and displaying the recording info as expected. I just have to expand the window so I can see if add'l tracks have started.

There have been a couple of crashes but closing and restarting the progrem work just fine. Thanks for the great advice and helping me get up to speed with Audacity !!