Skip marked section in preview

Hi, I’m new here but long time Audacity user. I was looking for a feature that so far I have only found in one particular application but which makes life for people recording voiceover much easier.

I’m looking for a way to preview the audio AROUND a marked part, e.g. you mark something you want to cut, but to be sure you’ve set your markers correctly, you hit one button and instead of hearing what you have between the markers, you hear a pre-defined time before and after the marker as if you had already cut out the part in question. Makes a lot of sense in voiceovers or explainer pieces…

  1. Select the part that you want to cut.
  2. Press “C”

That will play 2 seconds before the selection, skip over the selected region, and play 1 second after the selection.
The amount that is played before and after the selection can be configured in Audacity’s Preferences. See: “Cut Preview” here: Playback Preferences - Audacity Manual

Thanks so much!! I was desperately looking for this.

Wow, thanks Steve, really handy.
Been using Audacity for donkey’s years and did not know about that feature.

Tried and works in 2.4.2

Invaluable! To increase the chance of a seamless cut, add a quick zed in between:

  1. Select the region you want to cut
  2. Z to finesse the borders of the region to zero crossing points
  3. C to preview the cut