Detecting occurences of a sound

[steve]

For example instead of the Preferences pane, there could be View > Adjust Spectrograms, which opened a dialogue box with the same dialogue that is in Preferences now. If that menu item was greyed unless there was an audio track in Spectrogram or Pitch view, then it might make more sense for changing the settings to update the window before closing the dialogue.

Or perhaps it could be an option in the Track drop down menu?

Rather than (as now):

Track drop down menu:

.......
Spectrogram
Spectrogram (log f)
.......


It could perhaps be:

.......
Spectrogram >

• Spectrogram (lin f)
• Spectrogram (log f)
• Spectrogram Settings...

.......


Spectrogram Settings... could then bring up the spectrogram "preferences" window.
Because it can take a little while for the spectrogram view to be drawn, there should probably also be a progress bar in the window.

[Gale Andrews]

For example instead of the Preferences pane, there could be View > Adjust Spectrograms, which opened a dialogue box with the same dialogue that is in Preferences now. If that menu item was greyed unless there was an audio track in Spectrogram or Pitch view, then it might make more sense for changing the settings to update the window before closing the dialogue.

Or perhaps it could be an option in the Track drop down menu?

It's more discoverable perhaps, but has the confusion that all the drop-down items are track-specific. My guess as a user could be that I was changing the Spectrogram Preferences just for that track, but I don't think that's what you intend?


Gale

[steve]

but has the confusion that all the drop-down items are track-specific. My guess as a user could be that I was changing the Spectrogram Preferences just for that track,

Good point.

I'm still not sure about it being in the "View" menu though as all other View menu items concern "looking at things now".
Perhaps as this concerns some "track settings" it could go in the "Tracks" menu?

[Gale Andrews]

I'm still not sure about it being in the "View" menu though as all other View menu items concern "looking at things now".
Perhaps as this concerns some "track settings" it could go in the "Tracks" menu?

Not quite all in "View" menu are "now" (History/Mixer Board/Karaoke) and "View" is more about "showing" things than "Tracks". It's hard to judge.

I wouldn't look in the "Tracks" menu for Spectrograms settings, but maybe new users would.


Gale

[steve]

Well the settings do affect all Spectrogram tracks, so it's logical and certainly a lot more convenient than in Preferences.

[pshute]

Or perhaps it could be an option in the Track drop down menu?

It's more discoverable perhaps, but has the confusion that all the drop-down items are track-specific. My guess as a user could be that I was changing the Spectrogram Preferences just for that track, but I don't think that's what you intend?

I was confused for a minute because I could have sworn it was me who had suggested putting a spectrogram preferences item in the track dropdown (as opposed to the Tracks menu). Maybe I intended to but didn't get around to it.

I was going to suggest putting it there because I'd like to be able to have different parameters for each track. The settings in the Preferences menu could be the defaults for new tracks, but then one could adjust them for each track as necessary. This would allow me to duplicate a track, then examine, for example, the high frequencies on the original, but look for low frequency events in the duplicate. Both tasks require different settings to allow one to see those features well.

I wonder how many people use spectrograms at all. And of those, how many ever change the parameters, let alone want more than one setting per session?

For a long time I was convinced that Audacity didn't do spectrograms. I thought everyone called them sonograms, so it was only after a lot of searching that I stumbled onto them, and I imagine many users might never discover the track menu at all. The default parameters didn't work well for me, and I knew nothing about spectrograms, so for a while after that I assumed Audacity wasn't very good at spectrograms.

[Gale Andrews]

I was confused for a minute because I could have sworn it was me who had suggested putting a spectrogram preferences item in the track dropdown (as opposed to the Tracks menu). Maybe I intended to but didn't get around to it.

I was going to suggest putting it there because I'd like to be able to have different parameters for each track. The settings in the Preferences menu could be the defaults for new tracks, but then one could adjust them for each track as necessary. This would allow me to duplicate a track, then examine, for example, the high frequencies on the original, but look for low frequency events in the duplicate. Both tasks require different settings to allow one to see those features well.

Yes, that's a good use case.

However I don't like the idea of opening the Preferences itself from the Track Drop-Down Menu. It would be fine if it opened a window that just contained the content of the Spectrograms Preferences so that it was clear you were only changing the settings for that track (which you lose when you close that track).


Gale

[steve]

I don't like the idea of opening the Preferences itself from the Track Drop-Down Menu.

I agree that would be confusing. It would be a very quirky behaviour to have more than one place to open preferences.
A separate configuration window for spectrogram settings sounds like a better idea.

I can see benefits to both "per track" settings and "global" settings.
pshute has described the advantages for "per track" settings.

The advantage of global settings is that you might usually prefer to have a small "window size" (for faster screen redraw), but in a particular project or series of projects you may want a much larger "window size" (for finer frequency precision). If the setting is global then each track will open with the settings that you want.

There may even a case for saving the spectrogram settings as part of the project.

[pshute]

I don't like the idea of opening the Preferences itself from the Track Drop-Down Menu.

I agree that would be confusing. It would be a very quirky behaviour to have more than one place to open preferences.
A separate configuration window for spectrogram settings sounds like a better idea.

I agree, and only envisaged having access to the spectrogram parameters from the Track Drop-down Menu, and that the menu item would be called "Spectrogram parameters".

There may even a case for saving the spectrogram settings as part of the project.

I hadn't thought about that, but it could be very confusing to carefully set up different overriding parameters for each track, only to find they have reverted back to the defaults next session.

How about this idea?
- The main spectrogram parameters section in Preferences includes new facilities for saving and restoring named sets of parameters. These are global, and are the defaults for new tracks.
- The Track Drop-down Menu has a new item called "Spectrogram parameters", which is a dropdown that allows you to select any of your saved sets of spectrogram parameters, including one called "Default". "Default" will be the only one initially available in new installs.
- The named set of parameters chosen for each track is saved with the project and is the selected set when you open the project next, even though the view will have reverted to "Waveform" (which I've noticed happens now, and is a good thing, given how slowly spectrograms can regenerate at times).
- The Track Drop-down Menu could also have an item called "Spectrogram parameters", which lets you fiddle around with your named sets of parameters. The main purpose of that would be to make the parameters easier to find for new users, and wouldn't really be necessary. I agree it could be confusing to have it available for each track, but performing global actions. It could be really confusing.

[Gale Andrews]

The named set of parameters chosen for each track is saved with the project and is the selected set when you open the project next, even though the view will have reverted to "Waveform" (which I've noticed happens now, and is a good thing, given how slowly spectrograms can regenerate at times).

Yes I think it's OK to store a particular tracks' spectrogram settings in the project.

If you want a newly opened track (even if it's in a saved project) to open with a Spectrogram view, you can do that now (change "Default View Mode" in the Tracks Preferences). Even so I think I would prefer that preference only to control new tracks created for the first time, and for the view mode to be saved in the project.


Gale