Performing a paste mix

[rmcellig]

I am using Audacity 1.3.13-beta. Having used Sound Studio on the Mac for years it was always easy for me to do a quick paste mix from one piece of audio over another piece of audio invoking Command-Shift-V. Is there a similar way to quickly do a paste mix in Audacity?

[kozikowski]

Just to define the terms. You want to paste new music into an existing timeline so that they 50% mix when played? No. You can Tracks > Add New > Audio Track (it has a shortcut key) and then paste the new audio into that. You can use the Time Shift Tool to slide the music into position and all the other effects tools to make sure your mix is perfect.

Koz

[rmcellig]

Thanks Koz but that sounds pretty involved. Maybe someday audacity will have a paste mix feature where you just copy the sound you want to mix paste, select where you want to mix paste and then invoke a key command. For now I will have to continue using the sound editor that I currently use on the Mac side.

[steve]

Thanks Koz but that sounds pretty involved.

It's not really.
There's only one extra step, and that is that you create a new (empty track) to paste the audio into, rather than pasting it into the original track.
There's even a keyboard shortcut for creating a new track (but I don't use Macs so I don't know off-hand what the shortcut is - it'll be in the manual, or perhaps Koz can tell you.

There are major advantages in doing it the way that Audacity does it, which is that if you don't paste it into exactly the right place, then you can adjust the position even after you have pasted it. All you need to do is to switch to the "Time shift" tool (there's a shortcut) and slide the pasted section into the exact right place. (You can't do that if it's mixed into the original track).

Also, if you don't want a 50/50 mix, but actually want a 40/60 mix, or a 60/40 mix, then that is also adjustable, simply by adjusting the track levels (there's a volume slider on the left end of the track).

Of course, you may get the paste exactly right without any adjustment, in which case all you will have done is (1) create a new track, (2) paste the new audio into it (which I agree is one small step more than pasting directly into the original track).

[rmcellig]

Thanks Steve!

I will try that out. It's just q matter of me trying something different and like you mention more flexible than doing a straight copy/ Paste mix over the original sound. I'll see if I can find a video showing me exactly how to do this. I will also play around with it as well. Thanks again!!

[gusss]

Thanks Koz but that sounds pretty involved.

It's not really.
There's only one extra step, and that is that you create a new (empty track) to paste the audio into, rather than pasting it into the original track.
There's even a keyboard shortcut for creating a new track (but I don't use Macs so I don't know off-hand what the shortcut is - it'll be in the manual, or perhaps Koz can tell you.

There are major advantages in doing it the way that Audacity does it, which is that if you don't paste it into exactly the right place, then you can adjust the position even after you have pasted it. All you need to do is to switch to the "Time shift" tool (there's a shortcut) and slide the pasted section into the exact right place. (You can't do that if it's mixed into the original track).

Also, if you don't want a 50/50 mix, but actually want a 40/60 mix, or a 60/40 mix, then that is also adjustable, simply by adjusting the track levels (there's a volume slider on the left end of the track).

Of course, you may get the paste exactly right without any adjustment, in which case all you will have done is (1) create a new track, (2) paste the new audio into it (which I agree is one small step more than pasting directly into the original track).

Hi I am also looking for this feature. I have used just about every audio editor and DAW under the sun. Any of them will allow you to create a new track and past the other audio in position below it , whatever - however the past mix (or paste special) does have its uses . For example at the moment I am working with an 8track multichannel file (Logic and Protools were messing the panning in surround up by mixing the channels Audacity doesnt do that) anyway having to create 8 new channels is a bit of a pain - paste mix would be quicker in this instance.

[steve]

the past mix (or paste special) does have its uses . For example at the moment I am working with an 8track multichannel file (Logic and Protools were messing the panning in surround up by mixing the channels Audacity doesnt do that) anyway having to create 8 new channels is a bit of a pain - paste mix would be quicker in this instance.

That's a good point gusss. As my work all tends to be in stereo I'd not considered that. However, I think that "Mix Paste" could become extremely complex if dealing with multi-channel sound.

I'm trying to think of examples of how this might work. I'm sure you can put forward many real examples, but here I'll put forward some imagined scenarios.

1) You have an 5.1 multi-channel recording. The first part is a scene with people talking, the second part is in an empty room with music playing.
You want to mix-paste the music over the people talking so that it sounds like there is music playing in the room where they are talking (say, 20% music):
(in both cases you would probably want all of the tracks "collapsed" vertically (shift+Ctrl+C) so that you can see what you're doing)

• Select the music
• Ctrl+C (copy)
• Select the talking scene
• Ctrl+shift+V (or whatever, to "Paste Special"
• A dialogue screen pops up and you select the % mix
• Select 20%
• Click "OK"

The music is "mix pasted". Job done. Nice

Achieving the same result without "paste special":

• Select the music
• Ctrl+D (duplicate)
• Select the copies of the music scene
• F5 (Time shift tool)
• Drag below the talking scene the talking scene
• Amplify effect
• Select 20%
• Click "OK"

We now have 12 channels, so not so nice. If we want to "mix down" to 6 channels then we need to individually mix down tracks in pairs: 1+7, 2+8, 3+9 ...., though if this is the end of the job we can do that easily with the channel mixer when we export.

2) Same job, but the music has been imported from a CD, so it is a stereo track.
How do we do this?
Do we need to frequency split the stereo track so that low frequencies are mixed to the "sub" channel, then mix paste the stereo channels to the front channels, then mix paste to the rear channels then mix paste the sub channel?
If we want to do this "in one go" the "paste special" will require a channel mapping dialogue. This is becoming very complicated for the original user case of "making it simple".
If we leave out the channel mapping, the we will need to paste special to the front channels, then paste special to the rear channels, then paste special to the sub.
Alternatively, without paste special, we just leave it as 3 extra tracks (after we have made the "sub" channel from the stereo music) and handle the channel mapping on mix down.

3) Same job, but we want to fade down the music when Joe announces his intention to marry.
Hmm - how do we do that with Mix Paste?
If the music channels are separate we can simply adjust the music track at the appropriate point and we have the voice tracks directly above so that we can see precisely where to apply the changes.

4) We want to mix a 5.1 recording with a 7.1 recording.
Aargh!

5) Same job as (1) but when we have finished all of the editing we decide that the music is too loud.
If we used mix paste, then we're stuffed. If we still have separate tracks then we can easily adjust it.

I think that what we can take form this is that Audacity does not handle multi-channel sounds in a very convenient way, but it can at least do it if required.
Case number (5) is the killer as I see it. I'd rather not mix down 'till the end.