Default Values

[PGA]

Do we need to move this slightly OT part of the thread to the Manual/Quality email lists?

I'd say NO. I have commented before on this forum that I think that you "gurus" are sometimes "too close to the action". By this I mean that, inevitably, you cannot always step back from your experience level to that of a lesser mortal. The examples that you have just cited are excellent illustrations of that point. Behaviour which is fully understood by the gurus has been left unstated in the manual - a document which is supposed to be of benefit to all the lesser mortals.

If you take this kind of discussion out of the mainstream forum, you remove it from the gaze of those lesser mortals that might spot flaws in your thinking.

Please don't take the above as criticism of past or present workers. It is merely a statement of human behaviour. I am sometimes guilty of it myself when preparing demonstration sessions for camera clubs and audio-visual groups.

[steve]

Re. Normalize defaults:
The fact that at different times the default has been 0, -1 and -3 dB is I think an indication that there is no universally accepted "right" value for the default normalize level.
I'm quite happy with the default being -1, but I tend to change it to suit whatever I'm doing.

I think it's even harder to suggest a "right" default for the other options in Normalize (other than perhaps the "Normalize stereo channels independently: OFF" option).

There would be nothing wrong with providing a "reset to factory defaults" for Normalize, but I don't see that to be a burning necessity.


Many of the effects (notably Nyquist effects) "save" their current state within the Audacity session information (which I'd guess is stored in RAM), thus the same settings are available each time the effect is opened within the current Audacity session. Unless those values are written to disk (as is the case with Noise Removal), closing Audacity and starting a new session automatically reverts the effect settings to their hard coded defaults. Sometimes this is useful, sometimes a pain

As well as the ability to reset to "OOTB factory defaults", should we also consider letting users set their "personal defaults" which could also be reset too? Such "personal defaults" would presumably need to be stored in Preferences.

We could easily go overboard with this

If (advanced) users really want to keep "personal defaults", they can make a backup copy of their auacity.cfg file.

"Personal defaults" are what are saved in "Preferences". These do not change unless the user changes them (or if they become corrupted, but that problem seems to have been fixed a long time ago). If a user wants to back them up, then all they need to do is to make a copy of audacity.cfg (I used to do that back in the days when the audacity.cfg file was less reliable but I don't bother any more).


The audacity.cfg file is split into sections, with related settings in each section. Several of these already have ways to be reset:

• Recent file list: has a "clear" option in the File menu
• [GUI/ToolBars]: have a reset option in the View menu.
• [Warnings]: The default is "all enabled" which can be set in Preferences >Warnings.
• [Tags]: (Metadata Editor default tags) has "Clear" and "Set Default" in interface.

The effects that save settings in preferences are:

• [Effects/ToneGen]
• [Effects/Normalize]
• [Effects/AutoDuck]
• [Effects/ClickRemoval]
• [Effects/TruncateSilence]
• [Effects/Compressor]
• [Effects/Leveller]
• [Effects/NoiseRemoval]

It would perhaps be useful to have a reset option somewhere to reset all 8 of these to their defaults. It could be an option in "Edit > Preferences > Effects".

preferences_effects_basic7.png (23.58 KiB) Viewed 1980 times

[steve]

And Wahwah seems to remember last used settings

Not after restarting Audacity.
Again, the defaults are quite arbitrary. The default could just as easily be with all controls at the mid position.

And I note that the Manual doesn't warn you of this slightly odd (and, to me certainly, unexpected) behaviour.

Should we be updating the Manual to explain this?

Do we know if there are other effects that behave like this?

Peter

Most of them do this. This is the norm.

All Nyquist effects do this.

The ones that don't are either:

• Those that automatically set their defaults each time they run (Amplify)
• Those that revert to hard coded defaults each time they run (Nyquist Prompt)
• Those that save their settings in audacity.cfg (see previous list).

I don't know what VST effects do as I don't use them, but I'd assume that they remember settings for the duration of the session, then revert to their defaults when a new session is started.