Topic: Silence at end of Audacity Exported WAVs

[RobertNC]

This question has been asked but I could not find a clear answer.  I've googled it no luck.

I'm new to Audacity - trying to help a friend and it is free.

I am adding gain to 24/96 files.  Then I resample to 44.1..  Then I export with dither to 16 bit WAVs.  When I open the WAVs Audacity has added about 4 seconds of silence to each one.

I need to join my final edits.  Joining the raw masters and then resampling/dithering is not really an option - I just don't have the computer power to handle files that large.

Is there a way to prevent Audacity from adding the silence to the end of each file. 

TIA.

[EDIT]  Oops. My bad.  Thought it worked but it does not always.  Problem continuing.

[willndmb]

i have never found a way for it not to do "this"
my experience is that its like 1-2 sec though
i never had to join anything so i just cut it off
i suppose you could overlay the 2nd track on the silence though

[RobertNC]

After a lot of attempts at trying different things. I got back to the same place every time - space at the end. If someone can figure it out all I can say is you are pretty damn clever!!!

I don't use this software and don't plan to. 

I have a buddy who has invested in really nice rig  - SD722 and several mics - AKGs and Gefells.  He has figured out how to put together and use in the field a pretty damn fine selection of gear to pull some good tapes.  But he is not comfortable with using computers, and is still struggling with what he needs to do to work up his raw masters. 

My objective was to walk him through the basic process of using a DAW, one we both had access - Audacity - to by creating an HTML site with lots of screen shots for him to follow.

My old laptop is just not powerful, so I use a normaly use a pretty tedious workflow to get around joining large 24/96 files - ie.  I do post on individual 24/96 files then join them only after resampling each individual remastered file.

But I wanted to make it simple as possible for him to follow until he gets comfortable with the basic concept of a typical workflow from raw masters to final tracks.

My final workaround ended up backing up a partition, then reformatting it to NTFS and setting the swap space to this partition.  This gave me enough swap space in NTFS format that I was able to handle the file size, so I was able to get the 24/96 raw masters all joined into one file and then do the post of the final joined file just to be able to get good screenshots he could follow.

So it all worked out. 

Now I have the tutorial put together, I just need to get my laptop back to it's normal config. lol.   

But thanks for the help, good to know up front it probably just can't be done.  +t

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

Seems to be an Audacity bug???

http://audacityteam.org/forum/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=783

I use Audacity and get the same results.  I never thought about it and always chopped it off in CDWave.  I might switch to R8Brain...  It seems to be easier to use...

Terry

[RobertNC]

I was putting together a detailed help tutorial for someone who is probably not really comfortable with stuff like how a Windows folder and file system is structured, how to navigate it, and create, delete subfolders etc.

So I really wanted to avoid having to add any additional unnecessary "workaround" kind of stuff like cutting out empty spaces.   

I just needed to get good screenshots and a simple as possible workflow. 

I'm still running a dinosaur laptop with Win 2000 and a FAT32 system.  It works fine for me, and I am not in a hurry to replace it as long as it works because I have a bunch of software development environments set up on it for doing work and I am not eager to have to configure a new machine with all that stuff. 

In fact I am thinking of getting a faster laptop mainly just to do shows on.

His computer is new, has a 250 gig hard drive, and runs Vista which by default necessarily means it was set up as NTFS and not FAT32.    So I don't anticipate he will have any problems joining large raw master files, I just had to get a little creative with my own hardware to reproduce what he can expect to be able to do in his environment.

I will say this for Audacity.  I think it is a fairly easy to use tool that is really good for beginners, and for the price it is by any standards a nice little program.  ;-)  But a fairly minor investment for something a little more sophisticated is well worth the money.

[willndmb]

speaking of audacity and the tracks expanding
does anyone know why a track is longer when exported from 24/48 to 16/44?
it is a bitch if you are tracking the show in 24 and 16 because the markers will not be in the same place

[twatts (pants are so over-rated...)]

So I really wanted to avoid having to add any additional unnecessary "workaround" kind of stuff like cutting out empty spaces. 

I always cut off the first 0.01sec from the beginning (nice clean start) and at the end (avoid last track SBE).  I always eyeball the end cut, somewhere during the post show crowd noise, so I don't worry about the silence at the end...  

YMMV,

Terry

[beeco]

RobertNC, any chance you could share that tutorial with the rest of us who are still getting comfortable with the DAW thing?  Heck, I just ran the last of my old blank DAT tape and just started to understand basics like CDWave, Audacity, R8Brain, etc.  I could use all the help I could get!

[RobertNC]

[EDIT]

Ooops.  Posted a "solution but found it does not always work.  Sorry.  Problem continuing.

It is rate conversion not a bit conversion error.  Converting 24/96 to 16/96 adds no gap.  Converting 96K to 44.1K adds the gap whether you save the file in 16 or 24 bit.

[libfab]

Silence at end of files is a headache not only with audacity -- battery failure while recording is another case.
There's a great tool called shntool that cleanly cuts off all 0s at end of wav files, it's a command-line tool but fairly easy to use.
Exists on all platforms. You can grab a Windows package here:
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Audio/Other-AUDIO-Tools/shntool.shtml
Usage is:

  shntool trim file

on a command line window (Run cmd.exe).