cant seem to make cut and loop work

[suttlemyre]

windows 7 home premium, beta 1.3 , lets say i record a track and would like to trim a little off the front and a little off the back and loop it one time. i have read the help file but cannot seem to make it work. thanks james

[Edgar]

I am not 100% sure exactly what you are trying to accomplish so I will paraphrase your request as I understand it then explain how to accomplish my understanding…

You have some audio imported or recorded into Audacity; you want to get rid of some stuff at the very beginning and the very end; you wish to play the resulting audio twice.

First off, Audacity does not have the ability to play a loop a set number of times (that might be a very useful Feature Request). Second, you do not say if you would like to save the resulting doubled audio but for completion's sake I will assume you do and described two methods. Before doing anything, save a backup copy of your raw audio – a WAV file Oran Audacity Project will work.

The first thing you want to do is listen to the beginning of the audio and identify that point at which you wish the new audio to start. Click within the wave track somewhere and press <HOME> which should move the play cursor to the beginning of the audio; press <Spacebar> to start playing your audio (you may also use the Transcription Toolbar's Play at Speed feature if you need the audio to play slower). As soon as you hear the point at which you wish the new audio to begin click within the wave track as close as possible to the moving cursor then press <Spacebar> to stop playing audio. The play cursor will be positioned at the point at which you clicked – play the audio again, it will start from the play cursor, move the play cursor around by clicking in the wave track, press <Spacebar> repeatedly (you might want to zoom in) until the play cursor is right exactly where you want the audio to start. Now press <Shift + Home> – this will select all the audio from the play cursor to the beginning of the audio (the stuff you want to get rid of); press <Delete> to remove this unwanted audio.

Now scroll to the end of the audio and repeat the same procedure until you have the play cursor exactly at the end of the audio which you which keep. Press <Shift + END> which will select all the audio from the play cursor to the end of the audio (the rest of the stuff you want to get rid of); press <Delete>.

Now might be a good time to make an incremental backup – from the File menu choose Save Project As… and save your Audacity Project using a unique name something like song001.

Let's take a listen to what we have – select all the audio, press <Shift + Spacebar> (the shortcut for loop play) it will loop endlessly until you press <Spacebar> again. if you like what you have, stop playing the audio, make sure that all the audio is selected (it should be but if not select it again– there are a few methods – the easiest to describe is to use the Edit menu Select > All (keyboard shortcut <Alt + A>). Now, make a copy of all the audio (again there are a few methods keyboard shortcut is <Ctrl + C>). Move the cursor to the end of the audio the easiest way is the keyboard shortcut <Shift + END>); now paste the copied audio (keyboard shortcut <Ctrl + V>). You now have two copies so that if you play the entire audio it will seem like looping twice.

Now's a good time to make another incremental backup – song002.

Now you need to export the audio as a WAV file, MP3 file or some other audio format which may be played. Look at the File menu, Export…– this will bring up a dialog allowing you to save the audio. You will need to choose a format and after you have made that choice set the Options for that format.

Sorry about what might be a lot of excess detail, without knowing your skill level it is easier to put into much detail!

[suttlemyre]

Thanks Egar