Been using Audacity for years but for some reason I cannot achieve a relatively simple selection
of multiple tracks and mixing to a single track.
Someone please tell me that I’m just having a dumb moment and the answer is simple…
OK, thanks Steve, so the only way to get them mixed is to export selected audio,
do a mix down of what tracks go to the final stereo track, then re-import the audio,
then finally align it (relative to the original tracks) on the new (imported) track?
(As the imported audio will always be placed at the start - time =0).
I note that the Manual is a little unclear about how this works - where it just says:
Mix and Render mixes down all selected tracks to a single mono or stereo track
Whereas it actually mixes&renders all tracks that have a selection in them - or even all tracks that have a cursor position in them.
Perhaps greater clarity would be better there/
Or maybe a GUI/UX improvement would be to make Mix&Render work only on fully selected tracks - and generate a helpful error message otherwise/ If we (@Steve and @Paul2) agree that this might be a good improvement I can write up and enhancement request on GitHub.
…to make Mix&Render work only on fully selected tracks - and generate a helpful error message…
How about a compromise, Peter?
Certainly an error message would be useful but, why not include a check box (or similar) where it allows the user
to over-ride this and continue anyway?
This would then allow Steve’s method to still work (in use cases like mine) and still make the user aware that the whole track
will not be mixed and rendered.
Or, similar to what spectrum does at the moment, it alerts the user that only the first 234 odd seconds will be displayed and continues anyway.
That would be contrary to how “mixing down” is usually expected to work. Also, if there were “mix” commands that act only on the selection, then they shouldn’t really be in the “Tracks” menu (as the Tracks menu is for commands that act on “tracks”).
The more usual way to mix down a selection would be:
“Duplicate” the selected audio
Mix down the duplicate
However, that’s a bit awkward in this case because:
There are a lot of selected tracks
For anyone working with the current version of Audacity, they make run into bug 2436.
But as I wrote earlier in this thread the manual says
Mix and Render mixes down all selected tracks to a single mono or stereo track
So selection has a part to play in which tracks are to be incorporated in the M&R - what is confusing to me is that it only requires partial selection - or even just a cursor placement - in tracks for the tracks to be party to the M&R.
I think my compromise will be that I’ll try to make the Manual a little clearer (not that many folk bother to RTFM) - given that you and Steve seem happy with the current behavior
Both methods are far simpler than the way I was doing it.
I quite like having more than one way to achieve something depending on
number of tracks, position of selections, etc.
I think my compromise will be that I’ll try to make the Manual a little clearer (not that many folk bother to RTFM) - given that you and Steve seem happy with the current behavior >
Sounds good to me.
Now you just have to convince Steve
Steve wrote:
Small improvement to the “Mix Selection” macro:
Thanks, good thing I haven’t tried yet, will do so with the latest version.