Audacity Forum

I'm new to Audacity ... one question I have (among many) is: I recently tried to record a 19 min long article and altho I got it done, it was tedious. WHEN do I highlight the track and apply the effects (like noise, EQ, etc)??? I tried to do it at the very end but scrolling back across the bottom while highlighting took forever. Is there a quicker way to do this ... or a different approach? Thanx for your help

"Ctrl + F" will zoom out so that you can see the entire length of the track. It is then much quicker to drag across the track. However, there are even quicker ways, such as "Ctrl + A" to "Select All".

There are many convenient "tips" for selecting audio.
See:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/aud ... ction.html
and:
https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/nav ... _tips.html

I use three Zooms for everything.

As above Control-F to zoom out Full.

Drag-select a portion of the track and zoom into it with Control-E. SElection, get it? Keep dragging and zooming that way until you get zoomed in enough.

If you miss it and zoom in too much, Zoom out a little bit with Control-3.

That's it. Those three are taken from much larger menus of zoom and selection tools that I can never remember.

Koz

Oh, right. One relatively new one. While you're zoomed in, you can shift your view left and right with Shift + Drag.

So that's four.

Koz

I've gotta be doing something WRONG. I just recorded a 26min podcast and, when finished, did the following workflow along the entire sound tracK:
. Noise Reduction
. Normalize
. Graphic EQ
. Compressor
. Normalize

... and it didn't work. I went back along the track and isolated shorter segments and it DID work ... is this a clue???

Could somebody help me with this since I'm new to Audacity ...............

When I began my podcast, I did about 2-3 minutes, highlighted, and applied various effects (noise reduction, normalization, graphic EQ, compressor, and normalization) and it worked fine.

Then I went ahead and recorded another 23 minutes of podcast assuming that the parameters I set after the first 2-3 mins would apply across the entire sound track ...... but alas and alack, it did not.

So then, I highlighted the entire track and re-applied those same effects in hopes that would solve the problem, but again it did not.

So ... my question is "how and when do I apply certain effects and have them apply across the entire track???

TJB wrote: ↑

Sun Mar 29, 2020 1:59 pm

So then, I highlighted the entire track and re-applied those same effects in hopes that would solve the problem, but again it did not.

If you highlight the entire track and apply an effect, the effect "is" applied to the entire track. Are you certain that the audio in the track is selected before you apply the effect? When selected, the track audio is highlighted.

The image below shows two mono tracks, the upper track is selected, the lower track is not selected. If I apply an effect, the effect will be applied to the upper track (because it is selected) and not the lower track (because it is not selected).

Thanx, Steve ... on a related issue, is the appropriate time to apply the effects at the end of the session?

Audacity doesn't apply effects during recording or during playback. Effects are applied "off-line" - That is, you record or import the audio, and then apply the edits / effects that you require, and then export the finished masterpiece.