Audacity Forum

Hi all,

I'm building a studio setup where Audacity is used to record both mono and stereo audio. I'm trying to make the setup as easy to use as possible, and was wondering that would it be possible to create separate template projects for mono and stereo inputs? The idea would be that users could double-click either one in the desktop, and they would not have to worry about checking out preferences every time they record something.

And, second question, would it be possible to set up default paths to "Save as" and "Export" dialogs?

Thank you for the answers, and sorry if this topic is already discussed.

You forgot to mention two important things: Audacity version and Operating System.

bgravato wrote:You forgot to mention two important things: Audacity version and Operating System.

Audacity 1.3.12 Beta running on Windows XP professional.

Default export and save as path is the last used one. I'm not sure if there's a way of forcing always the same.

You can have different instances of audacity installed into different folders (but only run one at a time). I'm not a windows user, but I think it should work if you download the zip file for audacity and unpack it to two different folders. I'm not sure how audacity handles the preferences file on windows so you better wait for one of the windows elves to answer that question.

bgravato wrote:You can have different instances of audacity installed into different folders (but only run one at a time). I'm not a windows user, but I think it should work if you download the zip file for audacity and unpack it to two different folders. I'm not sure how audacity handles the preferences file on windows so you better wait for one of the windows elves to answer that question.

According to http://wiki.audacityteam.org/index.php? ... references , Audacity preferences are not stored in program folder and the above won't work. I solved the problem by creating two AutoHotKey script files to desktop which set up the preferences for mono and stereo recording.

It would be cool if the input channel setting was a project related like f.ex. sample rate, not a global setting. Is there a way anyone can make suggestions to the development team?

On Windows Audacity 1.3.x stores one set of preferences for each user account on the PC.

<snip from 1.3 manual>
Where are Preferences stored?

Starting with version 1.3 Audacity Preferences are stored in a configuration file called audacity.cfg. It is a text file and can be edited with any text editor. The file is stored inside the following folder:

* Windows 98/ME: WindowsApplication DataAudacity
* Windows 2000/XP: Documents and Settings<user name>Application DataAudacity
* Windows Vista/7: Users<user name>AppDataRoamingAudacity

WC

bgravato wrote: I'm not sure how audacity handles the preferences file on window

The default location for Audacity Preferences has been given by waxcylinder, but it is also possible to store preferences for multiple versions of Audacity by creating a folder inside the Audacity installation folder and name it "Portable Settings".

So, for example, if you get the ZIP version of Audacity and extract it to:
D:/Audacity/
(the audacity.exe file will be located at D:/Audacity/audacity.exe )
then you can create a folder:
D:/Audacity/Portable Settings
and Audacity will save its preferences and other local settings in there.

steve wrote:

bgravato wrote: I'm not sure how audacity handles the preferences file on window

The default location for Audacity Preferences has been given by waxcylinder, but it is also possible to store preferences for multiple versions of Audacity by creating a folder inside the Audacity installation folder and name it "Portable Settings".

So, for example, if you get the ZIP version of Audacity and extract it to:
D:/Audacity/
(the audacity.exe file will be located at D:/Audacity/audacity.exe )
then you can create a folder:
D:/Audacity/Portable Settings
and Audacity will save its preferences and other local settings in there.

I had the notion that this was possible on Mac, but I wasn't sure if on Windows the behaviour was the same. I wasn't sure about the name of folder either. Thank you for clarifying this Steve.

bgravato wrote:I had the notion that this was possible on Mac, but I wasn't sure if on Windows the behaviour was the same. I wasn't sure about the name of folder either.

More details: http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Portable_Audacity

Thank you for the answers!

"Portable preferences" work really well in this situation.