Audacity Forum

Hi. I'm new to the board. I apologize if these two questions have already been answered. i searched the forum but did not locate the answers.

(1) I want to align two stereo clips so they both start at exactly the same time. If one has more silence in the beginning of the clip then the other, is there a way for Audacity to locate the beginning of the first note on each track, ignore the beginning silences, and align both tracks so that the first notes on both tracks precisely align?

(2) Is there a tool I can activate and/or install that will allow me to click on the screen and create a vertical line that will pass through ALL audio tracks together, so that I can manually snap or align each track separately to the line?

Thanks in advance

Frank

1) No, but if you delete the silence from the start of each clip then you can align the starts of the clips.

2) Sort of. Click in one track to set the location of the editing cursor. The do shift-down-arrow to extend the selection to lower tracks - the editing cursor will appear in the selected tracks. You can't snap to this line but you can use it as a reference.

-- Bill

If one has more silence in the beginning of the clip then the other, is there a way for Audacity to locate the beginning of the first note on each track

While it would seem to be relatively easy to determine where silence is and where music is, in fact it's no such thing. What happens if the music fades in from natural background sound? According to straight, arithmetic software, there is no silence.

There is Effect > Truncate Silence tool, but when you launch that, you will find four different adjustments to pick and they can change with the musical selection. Similar to Noise Reduction. That changes enormously with each clip.

What's the actual job? We wish people would give us an overview of the job before they dive right into the details.

But, no. Given what the task is, you'd be doing each clip manually with drag-delete and Time Shift Tool (two sideways black arrows) to push everything back into alignment.

Koz

If you create a label then the start and end of audio clips will have a slight "stickiness" to the label position and a vertical yellow line will appear when you drag an audio clip boundary so that it lines up exactly with a label position.

Audio clips can be aligned in various ways using "Tracks > Align Tracks" http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Tracks_Menu#align

I don't really know what you are trying to do, but the "Sound Finder" and "Silence Finder" effects in the Analyze menu may also be useful.
Also possibly Truncate Silence

Thanks for the tip about extending the line. When I tried it, it did extend down to the next track. However, when I clicked in the lower track to try to move it/align it with the line, the line disappeared. Most frustrating.

I can manually delete the silences OK, so that is not much a problem, but I guess I do not understand what alignment tools actually come with Audacity. I have read some of the online manual, but perhaps you could help me understand my options. What tools/buttons, etc. are present in Audacity to align two separate tracks? For example, I have two tracks I want to combine. One track has instruments and a loud chorus. The other track has just the instruments (no voices). The two tracks have different silence periods at the beginning of the song. I want to perfectly align the two tracks, then reduce the volume on the first one so the chorus is present but at lower volume. I'll then mix both tracks down into one final MP3 file. It is getting the perfect alignment of the two tracks that has taken me the time ... thus ... the question about dropping a joint vertical line and/or aligning the first note.

Any way to keep that joint vertical line displayed so I can move/cut/trim/drag one of the tracks up to it?

Here's a tip that may be useful:

Start with the "Selection Tool" (that's the "normal" cursor - F1 key to select it)
Click once on one track to place the playback position (a vertical line will appear on the track).
Use the Up/Down cursor keys and you will see that the vertical line gets duplicated into the track that now has focus.
Switch to the Time Shift Tool (F5 key)
With the time shift tool you can drag tracks.

If you have a "wheel mouse" you can hold down the Ctrl key and use the mouse wheel to zoom in and out.

fsgregs wrote:For example, I have two tracks I want to combine. One track has instruments and a loud chorus. The other track has just the instruments (no voices). The two tracks have different silence periods at the beginning of the song. I want to perfectly align the two tracks, then reduce the volume on the first one so the chorus is present but at lower volume. I'll then mix both tracks down into one final MP3 file. It is getting the perfect alignment of the two tracks that has taken me the time ... thus ... the question about dropping a joint vertical line and/or aligning the first note.

Are these recordings of two different performances? If so, you will never get them perfectly aligned.

Another way of approaching this is to use the Envelope tool http://manual.audacityteam.org/man/Envelope_Tool to reduce the volume of chorus. The level of the instruments will be reduced as well, which may or may not be a problem.

Or ... align the tracks as best you can for the portion(s) where the chorus exists. Use the envelope tool to reduce the volume to zero of the instruments+chorus track wherever the chorus does not exist. Since the chorus overwhelms the instruments, you will probably not even notice when the chorus is mixed with the instruments-only track.

Steve's process will work. You were clicking in a track with the selection tool, which made the selection cursor appear in that track only. If you click with the time shift tool the "long vertical" cursor remains.

-- Bill

Thank you all guys. I now know how to drop a vertical line and align my tracks to it.

I now also know more about the envelope key. It turns out in this case that both songs are identical, with one having instruments + chorus and the other one without chorus. Thus, once I got the two tracks aligned, I just needed to lower the volume on the chorus track and mix the songs so that I had both the instrumental theme, and a lower volume, less prominent chorus. That is what I wanted.

Thanks again.

Frank