Better Program

[Furball]

Can anyone suggest a better program for handling music tracks? Audacity seems to be stupidly difficult and possibly created for expert computer users. It seems to only work for playing back tracks recorded by my plusdeck. Plays back great, but all the editing features etc. are constantly greyed out. Can anyone suggest a more user friendly program to edit music tracks already on my hard drive?

[steve]

Sorry, Audacity is the most user friendly audio editor that I know of.

There are plenty of alternative programs such as
soundforge http://www.sonycreativesoftware.com/pro ... family.asp
Audition http://www.adobe.com/uk/products/audition/
Krystal Audio Engine http://www.kreatives.org/kristal/
Wavosaur http://www.wavosaur.com/
Sweep http://www.metadecks.org/software/sweep/
Logic Studio http://www.apple.com/logicstudio/
.....
but I don't think that any of these are any more simple to use (I think that most of them are more difficult).

Depending on what you are wanting to do with Audacity, you may find a tutorial that could help to guide your through. There are a lot of tutorials in the Audacity wiki http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Tutorials and you will find others if you look on Google.

Greyed out editing features are usually because you do not have any audio selected. Click on the box at the left hand end of a track to select a track, or use the left button of your mouse (click and drag across one or more tracks) to make your selection, or use Ctrl+A to select everything in the project.

[hkellogg]

If by "editing features" you mean choices under the "Generate" and "Effects" menu, these have to be applied to a (highlighted) "selection" of the song. You can select part of the song by clicking and dragging the mouse over the portion desired.

If you want the effects to apply to the whole song, just press Ctrl-A to select the whole song.

In either case, you should see all those menu items un-greyed.

[puckhead]

I am actually having a similar problem as the original poster.

I can open an .mp3 file, can play it, and can select a the portion of the song I want to edit.
However, even if select a portion of a file, none of the editing items are available (they are all greyed out)

help?

[jan.kolar]

Please hold on this topic, try again (what about to exit audacity and start again?), tell us the result, tell some detail,
make a screenshot.
Most probably it is some trivial thing you forgot or It did not come to your mind somehow.

Did you stop recording? Did you stop playback?
Do you have some time interval selected AND some track, simultaneously. Do you have any sound material at all?

Exit All Audacity windows.
Start Audacity
Generate > Pluck (or Tone)
Ctrl+A (not needed)
Effects > Amplify -6dB
Does it work ?

[puckhead]

try again (what about to exit audacity and start again?)

Thank you. I can't believe it was that simple. after restarting computer, it was easy as pie.