Workflow on mixing tracks

[steve]

Presumably so that the rule of those first order menu items working on selected tracks is maintained?

Taking into account the solo/mute button settings would not break the rule. Muting should really be treated no differently from having an amplitude envelope at (linear) zero.

[Gale Andrews]

I noticed that duplicating tracks does not respect "Simple" Solo button mode. Duplicate one soloed and one muted tracks and you now have two soloed tracks that breaks the "Simple" rule of only one track soloed.

An interesting point.
It's not actually breaking any rules because the "Simple" solo button behaviour does support soloing multiple tracks (shift + click). "One solo track only" is just the default (click with no modifier key) behaviour.
It looks to me that duplicating tracks does the right thing in that it "clones" the tracks (makes an exact copy), including their envelopes, pan, gain, name, view, mute and solo.

I am not sure I agree, though it's a fine judgement.

The SHIFT-click when in Simple mode effectively changes to Multi-track mode for that click (but SHIFT-click in Multi-track mode does not exactly change to Simple mode). To a user in Simple mode it may look like a rule has been broken. The other Track Control Panel controls than Mute/Solo are not subject to a preference.


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

Presumably so that the rule of those first order menu items working on selected tracks is maintained?

Taking into account the solo/mute button settings would not break the rule.

Seems to me it exactly breaks that rule. Unless you mean a track has to be mute button not down and selected to be mixed/rendered. If so, doesn't that defeat the purpose of the suggestion?

Gale

[steve]

Seems to me it exactly breaks that rule.

In that case, I don't understand what you mean by "that rule". Perhaps you could explain in more detail what "that rule" is and how it is being broken.

[steve]

The SHIFT-click when in Simple mode effectively changes to Multi-track mode

Not exactly. The "shift" modifier modifies the click behaviour in the selected mode. It does not switch the mode. In other words, it is not overriding the Preference setting, it is providing a modified behaviour within the currently selected preference mode. Each "solo button mode" (selected in Preferences) has a number of different behaviours: left click mute, left click solo, shift+click mute, shift + click solo. The behaviours are defined for each of the two modes. The "mode" is selected in Preferences.

[Gale Andrews]

The SHIFT-click when in Simple mode effectively changes to Multi-track mode

Not exactly.

That is what I meant by "effectively". I can see it is not changing the preference by using SHIFT in Multi-track mode. However to a user in Simple mode it probably "looks" like SHIFT is changing the preference.


Gale

[Gale Andrews]

Seems to me it exactly breaks that rule.

In that case, I don't understand what you mean by "that rule". Perhaps you could explain in more detail what "that rule" is and how it is being broken.

Most Tracks menu items work on the selected tracks (which is why the suggestion was made).

So if I select two tracks of four, the selected tracks being muted, I can Tracks > Remove Tracks or Tracks > Resample those tracks.

That being so I would not expect either Mix and Render item in the root of the menu to do nothing on those two selected tracks.


Gale

[steve]

That being so I would not expect either Mix and Render item in the root of the menu to do nothing on those two selected tracks.

I didn't suggest that it "does nothing" with those tracks. I suggested that it treats them as muted tracks when they are muted, just as it treats them as tracks with envelopes when they are tracks with envelopes, and like it treats muted tracks as muted tracks on Export. I find it is strange that Audacity doesn't treat muted tracks as muted tracks when "mixing" from the Tracks menu, but does when mixing on export.

[Gale Andrews]

That being so I would not expect either Mix and Render item in the root of the menu to do nothing on those two selected tracks.

I didn't suggest that it "does nothing" with those tracks. I suggested that it treats them as muted tracks when they are muted, just as it treats them as tracks with envelopes when they are tracks with envelopes, and like it treats muted tracks as muted tracks on Export.

A muted (single) track on Export is no export - nothing happens except a warning message. Are you suggesting that Mix and Render silences the muted track, or its part in the mix?

Even if so it does not address the request, unless you are silencing greyed tracks, and that is not analogous with export.

And I still think if you just changed existing Mix and Render behaviour to do something else it would be confusing. Unless of course you want a Mix and Render preference - existing or treat "mute on" tracks as silenced?

Gale

[Gale Andrews]

One thing that would be extremely helpful to me were the ability to enable/disable the pan (and gain) sliders for all tracks temporarily, a sort of bypass.

On a hardware mixer there are often separate "main" and "monitor" mixes. We don't do that in Audacity because to do it properly requires two sound cards.
On a hardware mixer where there are separate "main" and "monitor" mixes it is often possible to "solo" a track in the monitor mix without affecting the main (out front) mix, and this "soloed" monitor mix is often pre-pan, pre-fader.

A "possible" way that we could do something similar in Audacity would be to have an optional third button called "Monitor" (disabled by default). When enabled and pressed down, you would hear the raw track data for that track.

Thinking about it, this could be a more useful alternative to the "bounce tracks" idea. If the "monitor" button is down on all selected tracks, then "mix down" would be the same as the proposed "bounce tracks".

I think we have discussed something like that before, trying to address that what you hear is not always what you export.

If the monitor button is down, what do you hear when the Mute button is down? What do you hear when the Mute button is up but the track is greyed?


Gale