Topic: Audacity question

[daedog]

Hey all... I thought I would try Audacity today.  I usually use windows progs for my audio editing and Ubuntu for pretty much everything else (but games).

Anyway.... In Audacity.  If with my R-4 I record 2 separate stereo recordings (4 chan 2 different set of mics) how do I merge them together?    Also, I may be missing it but I don't see any way to dither.

Just installed UbuntuStudio into my Ubuntu feisty install and have never done any audio on Linux.

Stay Kind,
Dana

[Roving Sign]

I think you just use the "Import Audio" command - that should load both stereo sets into the same project

Use the Time Align tool to sync them to your liking...

[Brian Skalinder]

I think you just use the "Import Audio" command - that should load both stereo sets into the same project

Yup.  Just import one, then the other.  Drag & drop works, too.  Control the relative mix level of the two files with the sliders on the left.  Audacity will mix all tracks in the project when exporting the audio.  Check the Audacity Workflow thread stickied to the top of the forum for how to dither, configure Audacity properly, etc.

[daedog]

+T thanks to all... Did not expect the auto merge.

I've been going through the pull down menus and have not seen an option for dither.  Am I missing something?  I have ozone installed on the windows partition and use that most of the time.  Do I need to install a 'plugin' in linux for the dither options?

Thanks all,
Dana

[Brian Skalinder]

Dithering isn't a standalone function in Audacity.  It dithers during export, just as it mixes during export.  Dithering options are in Preferences.  Audacity will dither automatically when exporting if the configured editing precision is a higher bit-depth than the exported WAV format.  Read the sticky thread for more details.

[daedog]

Got it... Did not see the sticky.

Thanks!

[pigiron]

ah good... someone else doing linux audio!

if you're comfortable with the command line, there's some other excellent audio tools for tapers...

• shntool (http://www.etree.org/shnutils/shntool/)- does a bunch of neat stuff on audio files... and it's not just for "shorten" files either... eats almost anything
• ssrc (http://shibatch.sourceforge.net/) - high quality resampler... and does dither too
• normalize (http://normalize.nongnu.org/) - name says it all
• AFsp (http://www-mmsp.ece.mcgill.ca/Documents/Software/Packages/AFsp/AFsp.html) - carefully written audio utilities/library
• Dave wrote some nice scripts - http://homer.homelinux.net/scripts/ and there's other's at etree.org
• simply haven't taken the time to use it much, but here's an interesting batch FLAC metatagger - http://flactagger.berlios.de/

other GUI utilities:

• baudline (http://www.baudline.com/) - neat spectral analyzer
• wavbreaker (http://wavbreaker.sourceforge.net/) - good way to bust up a show into tracks... and here's some enhancements I threw in (http://taperssection.com/index.php/topic,52007.0.html)

have fun!!!

[bobbygeeWOW]

Right on, there's also the seriously useful "flacify" perl script for converting, tagging, adding replay-gain, etc.

The latest is at http://etree-scripts.sourceforge.net/ or you can install the etree-scripts pkg if yer apt-enhanced.
Works in windows too!