Audacity Forum

This error occurs in both 1.3.8 and 1.3.9alpha. If you create an empty track, with nothing selected, then try to do any Effect, you will get the message "You must first select some audio for this to use". Clicking OK or cancel closes the box but the same message box appears a second time. This happens no matter how many tracks exist in the current window.
I'm running Windows XP SP3.
Dave

<<<If you create an empty track>>>

How?

Do the generators work? Generate > Noise...etc.

Audacity 1.2 used to do that whether or not you had any show on the timeline. You always had to select something. 1.3 and up should automatically select the whole show before application.

What Effect were you trying to apply?

Koz

Why do you want to apply an effect to nothing?

I'm on a Mac and there is no cancel button for the "there is no audio" window. Clicking SIX times on OK made it disappear. Seems to be a small bug.

Thanks for the clarification george13, I was being a bit dense about what Storer meant.

I presume that you are talking about the "Disallowed" error message window?

There should just be an "OK" button (no "Cancel" button) on that window. Clicking "OK" should close the window, but you are both saying that it requires multiple clicks to make it close?

Do I understand correctly now?

What I was trying to do when I discovered this was to use the Nyquist prompt to generate a certain signal. But since the Nyquist prompt is an Effect, it needs to have something selected before it will do anything, even if I'm going to completely replace whatever is selected. The use of any Effect when nothing is selected gives the same double message.

Yes, Steve, it is the "Disallowed" prompt. And, Yes, if there is something in the track but nothing is selected, it automatically preselects the entire track. But since I was trying to use the Nyquist prompt as a Generate prompt, it wanted something selected to work with.

What I've learned to do is create an empty track, select some period of time with the mouse (neither clicking in the track control at the left nor CTL-A will work)
even if there is no audio in that time period, and then run the Nyquist prompt.

Dave

Storer wrote:What I was trying to do when I discovered this was to use the Nyquist prompt to generate a certain signal. But since the Nyquist prompt is an Effect, it needs to have something selected before it will do anything, even if I'm going to completely replace whatever is selected. The use of any Effect when nothing is selected gives the same double message.

Yes the double warning when trying to apply an effect to an empty track is a minor bug.

It is a longer term "Feature Request" to provide a Nyquist Prompt that can be used as a generator if there is no track in place, it needs to be taken out of effects and put as a standalone item. Meantime, if most of your work in Nyquist prompt is generation, you could try Nyquist Generate Prompt.

Gale