Audio Tracks

Each audio track containing digital audio presents from left to right:

• a Track Control Panel
• a vertical scale with units (except in the Pitch view)
• a visual representation of the audio (by default this is the Waveform view as in the images below).

New tracks are created whenever you import an audio file, record (except for Append Record) or generate audio when there is no selection. Tracks > Add New lets you explicitly add a new, empty mono or stereo audio track.

• Gale 29Nov11: Thanks, Bill. The problem is I think avoiding duplication as much as possible and deciding where to put the images for splitting/joining. I propose something more like the Talk page which lets a brief overview of the drop-down menu illustrate the difference between stereo and single tracks; then put the illustrations (even if we duplicate a couple of images) and text details on Track Drop-Down Menu#split. Much of the text is already there (or should be).
• Peter 29Nov11:I think that the section on splitting and joining tracks over-complicates this page which formerly was mainly a description of the basic elements of and Audio Track. The stuff on splitting and joinig is very valuable too though, but I think it should be a new topic in its own right as an additional item in "Help with Advanced Topics" on the Front Page - and linked to from this page with a brief mention of the split/join functionality. We have seen recently in this thread on the forum that spittting&joining is fairly complex and not always intuitive (hence an "Advanced Topic").
• Ed 29Nov11: I am with Peter in that it over-complicates the original design but might be tempted to extend the design to include it if.... It's also disruptive--if here it should be after the controls are all listed. I do like corralling related info one one page.
  • Peter 29Nov11:I can see Ed's point about corralling the info. on split/cut here and am minded to agree with him - but I definitely agree with him that if it does remain here then it should be moved to the end after all the controls are listed and explained.
  • Bill 29Nov11: I'd support moving the entire splitting/joining section either to Track Drop-Down Menu or to its own page (linked to from Track Drop-Down Menu and on the Front Page under Advanced Topics) with even more details, and use-case examples. Two use-case examples I can thinh of are: 1) quickly reversing the left and right channels; 2) applying EQ to one channel of a stereo track.
    • Peter 30Nov11: Having spent some time today staring at this page and the Audacity Tracks and Clips page (and the long thread on the forum on "split and join") I really do believe that "split and join" definitely should have its own page under "Advanced Topics" on the front page and thus be removed from this page. I also commented in Audacity Tracks and Clips that I agreed with Bill's suggestion to move the "Channels, Tracks and Clips" section to this page - I suggest as a footnote embedded in a note clas div.
    • Bill 01Dec11: New Splitting and Joining Tracks page created in my user space - when we are satisfied with the content and the name of the new manual page we can copy and paste the content to that page.
      Regarding "Channels, Tracks and Clips" I feel that information is too important to be relegated to a footnote. It should probably be at the top of this page so that everyone knows the terminology we will be using.
      • Peter 2Dec11: Good to see your start on the new page on "Splitting and Joining Tracks" Bill. Does that mean that we can now delete that section from this page?
        Regarding "Channels, Tracks and Clips" I am very far from convinced that it has any place on this page. I'm not even sure that it belongs on Audacity Tracks and Clips either - I'm thinking that "Channel", "Track" and "Clip(s)" may be better as Glossary entries.
      • Bill 02Dec11: Yes, my intention was that the "splitting and joining" stuff would be removed from this page. Given the Team's stated intention to get 1.3.14-beta out by "mid-December" I'd like to move quickly on "approving" the new content of all the pages affected by this discussion.
        Regarding channels, tracks and clips, please see User:Billw58/Channels_Tracks_and_Clips.
      • Peter 2Dec11: "Given the Team's stated intention to get 1.3.14-beta out by "mid-December" I'd like to move quickly on "approving" the new content of all the pages affected by this discussion." - yes a good aim Bill, I'll do what I can to help.
      • Gale 03Dec11: Thanks for the thought/work, guys. I only just caught up with it. I'll need to sleep on it to give my view, which means at least another 18 hours.
        • I agree we don't want full detail on splitting/joining stereo tracks here, hence what I put on the Talk page. I still tend to think some explanation of split/join, ideally with a comparison image of "stereo before", "left and right after" is wanted here. Why? Because this is the main reference section
        • Not sure if User:Billw58/Splitting and Joining Tracks‎ is needed as a separate page, or it should be in Audacity Tracks and Clips (ATM I support the latter). But is the information in Track Drop-Down Menu now too verbose?
        • I don't think we want a link to this page in the Understanding Audacity TOC which is already close to a "sea of links". I think what we are saying is that Audio Tracks seems to demand a certain level of prior explanation which is already duplicated in Audacity Tracks and Clips. The balance between these two pages seems the main problem to me.
        • Not clear what the purpose of User:Billw58/Working_with_Audio_Tracks is.
      • Bill03Dec11:
        • I think splitting and joining deserves its own page, complete with caveats and examples.
        • I agree with Ed on the Talk:Audacity Tracks and Clips page that that page should be about clips, and its title could be changed.
        • User:Billw58/Working_with_Audio_Tracks is to be an entry in the "Understanding Audacity" section of the main page, to deal with the "sea of links".
      • Gale 03Dec11: Removing most of the Tracks content from Audacity Tracks and Clips solves one problem but still leaves the confusion with pages about tracks, putting more weight on to Audio Tracks as an "Understanding Audacity" type of page. "Channels Tracks and Clips" seems weird, the "clips" content should be in the page we are thinking of calling Clips and it looks like the Tracks information (without labels) should be in Audio Tracks or in an "Understanding Audacity" page about "Tracks".

        "Working with Audio Tracks" doesn't solve the sea of links unless it replaces links, or possibly breaks it up by appearing as a main article and the pages you link to on it become second order bullets. Not sure Mixing belongs there. Hard to decide without seeing the proposed content for Audio Tracks under these schemes. Anyway, it seems like I'm being a bit negative here so will consider more tomorrow.

        • Peter 3Dec11: The idea behind "Working with Audio Tracks" was indeed that it should replace existing links (and provide a home for new related links) in the Understanding Audacity section. Now I've slept on too looking at Bill's "Working with Audio Tracks" there seem to be two classes of information there. The first two entries "The Waveform Display" and "Audio Tracks" do seem rightly to belong to "Understanding Audacity". But the remaining five entries are about using Audacity rather than just understanding the basics and thus possibly would reside more correctly under "Tutorials". If we did move them to tutorials then I would still support using Bill's uber-page "Working with Audio Tracks" but with the first two entries "The Waveform Display" and "Audio Tracks" removed (leaving these in "Understanding Audacity" - I agree with an earlier comment by Bill that Audio Tracks deserves a duplicate entry under "Understanding Audacity" in addition to its current entry in the "Reference" section under "Project Window".

        • Bill 03Dec11: I think we need to be careful about shoving stuff off into the tutorials category. Tutorials to my mind should be about accomplishing a specific task and/or demonstrating a way of using Audacity. The stuff under "Understanding Audacity" is more reference-like: it does not describe interface elements per se but describes the "deeper" functions and details of the interface.
          Beginning with the assumption that this is an interface reference page it thus describes the interface - stereo and mono tracks, the track control panel and how to resize the tracks. Details of how and why and when to use the controls and features are described on other pages. To that end, note that this page ends with
          "See Audacity Tracks and Clips for more details on using the waveform display."
          That should probably be "See User:Billw58/Working with Audio Tracks for more details on using and manipulating audio tracks". In that case the first two entries on that page would go away (as well as the Mixing section if thought appropriate).
          ATM I still think that what is currently on this page minus the splitting and joining material is appropriate for this page. Breaking out splitting and joining simplifies this page and allows this page to concentrate on describing the interface. If we find that more details or examples of splitting and joining (or selection, or clips, or sync-lock) are needed those can be added to the appropriate page without creating TL;DR for this page.
        • Peter 3Dec11: OK you've convinced me Bill, I agree now that it is better not to shunt this stuff over into tutorials (see also my comments on your draft page User:Billw58/Working with Audio Tracks ).
          And yes I still agree that this page works well minus the split/join material.
      • Bill 03Dec11: Added "About Tracks" section, thus further deconstructing the "Channels, Tracks and Clips" section that currently appears on the Audacity Tracks and Clips page.

About Tracks

A track is like one instrument in your symphony, or one voice in your podcast. You can add more tracks, and all of them will be mixed together to create your final output, but during editing you can manipulate each track independently. If you have an interview recorded with two microphones, each one can go in a separate track. If you have background music, that could go in a third track. You can move the whole track along the Timeline so that it plays at a different point in time in the mix, but until it is split into clips you cannot move individual parts of it around.

Stereo Audio Track

The image below shows the separate components of an Audacity stereo track: the Track Control Panel, the Vertical Scale and the Waveform Display itself, typical of a finally edited recording. As per convention, the upper waveform and vertical scale represent the left channel and the lower waveform and vertical scale represent the right channel.

See Audacity Waveform for further details of the waveform display.

In a stereo track, all editing actions on the track are applied identically to both channels.

Single Audio Track (Mono, Left or Right)

A single audio track has the same components as a stereo track with a single waveform and vertical scale rather than two. This can be easily seen if using "Split Stereo Track" in the Track Drop-Down Menu to split the stereo track into two single tracks. The same menu can make single tracks mono, left or right. Each single track can be separately selected and thus edited independently from other tracks.

Track Control Panel

The Track Control Panel at the left of the audio track has controls and status indicators for this track. Clicking and dragging other than on a control moves the track up or down in a project containing multiple tracks (to do this with the keyboard, use one of the "Move Track" commands in Track Drop-Down Menu).

Controls

• Close Button:
  

Clicking this button will close the track, removing it from the project.

• Track Drop-Down Menu:
  

Clicking on the track name shows the Track Drop-Down Menu giving various options that affect this track only. Newly created tracks are named "Audio Track". Options in the drop-down menu include changing the name or sample rate, how the track is displayed and splitting a stereo track to single left, right or mono tracks.

• Mute Button:
  

Click to silence this track when playing. Click again to unsilence. Muted tracks are not exported.

• Solo Button:
  

Click to play just this track. Click again to cancel. Solo takes precedence over mute - the mute buttons usually have no effect whilst any solo button is down. There are three options for exactly how the solo button operates, described in Tracks Preferences. One of the options is not having the solo button at all.

• Gain Slider:
  

Set the gain for this track. Hold down the shift key while dragging to adjust the slider in finer increments. Double-click the slider to bring up a window where you can make precise adjustments or enter a gain value.

• Pan Slider:
  

To make signal stronger on left or right earphone. Hold down the shift key while dragging to adjust the slider in finer increments. Double-click the slider to bring up a window where you can make precise adjustments or enter a pan value.

• Track Collapse Button:
  

Click on this to make the track 'fold up' into a smaller size. Click again, or drag the lower edge of the track to restore the size.

Status Indicators

• Track Information Area:
  

Gives in order, Stereo or Mono, the sampling rate in Hz and the manner in which samples are represented.

• Sync-Lock Indicator:
  

When present, indicates that this track is part of a Sync-Locked group.

Vertical Scale

The vertical scale displays amplitude when showing the waveform, frequency when showing the spectrum or is empty when displaying pitch. The amplitude scale shown is the default linear scale, with 1.0 being the maximum value of positive signals and -1.0 the maximum of negative signals. If the display is changed to Waveform dB in the Track Drop-Down Menu, the scale shows dB values for positive signals only, ranging from maximum 0 dB to the minimum dB level set in Interface Preferences. When the mouse pointer is over the scale it changes to a magnify icon. Left-click in the Vertical Scale for any Waveform or Spectrogram view to zoom in. The range displayed on the scale will be centered at the value you clicked at. Left-click and drag a region up or down then release to zoom into that region. SHIFT-click (or right-click) to zoom out. This is a zoom in the vertical direction, as opposed to a horizontal zoom on the Timeline. See Zooming for more details of vertical and horizontal zooming.

Splitting and Joining Tracks

Peter 5Dec11: ToDo-2 We are still planning to remove this section from this page, aren't we?

• Gale 06Dec11: Yes, as a section - it's got to be moved out. Bill and I are slightly at odds about the extent it's "alluded" to here. I think this page, as a reference, very likely needs an image of a split stereo track that shows left and right.

Using the Track Drop-Down Menu you can:

• split a stereo track into separate tracks for left and right channels
• split a stereo track into two separate mono tracks
• join two mono, left or right tracks into one stereo track.

For example, here is a project with two mono tracks:

After selecting "Make Stereo Track" from the Track Drop-Down Menu on the upper track we get one stereo track:

For more information please see Splitting and Joining Stereo Tracks.

Display

Click and drag between the two waveforms to change their relative height.

Changing the height of the channels in a stereo track: Click and drag between the channels.

Changing the height of a track: Click and drag between the tracks.

Working with Audio Tracks

For more information on working with audio tracks, see:

• Audacity Selection: the special characteristics of audio selection and the tools Audacity provides to help you make exactly the selection you need
• Audacity Tracks and Clips: all about clips - separate, movable regions of audio within a track
• Sync-Locked Tracks: keeping a group of tracks in sync
• Zooming: seeing what you need to see