Spectral Selection

Bill 19Oct2014: Here's a start.

Spectral selection is used to make selections that include a frequency range as well as a time range.

Tracks must be in one of the spectrogram views in order to use spectral selection.

Spectral selection is used with special "Spectral edit" effects to make changes to the frequency content of the selected audio.

All of the time-based selection techniques are available when doing spectral selection.

Making a Spectral Selection

Here is a track with a few seconds of speech, shown in waveform view.

When you change the track to spectrogram view you can draw a "box" that defines both a frequency range and a time range as shown below.

The combined frequency/time range is indicated by the darker-shaded box.

A spectral selection may begin or end either at 0 Hz or at the maximum allowable frequency for the track (the Nyquist frequency), in which case no center frequency will be shown. In the illustration below the frequency selection goes from 0 Hz to about 4000 Hz.

• Bill 19Oct2014: Do we need an illustration of a selection up to the Nyquist frequency? That would entail also describing zooming in spectrogram view which might be useful (but that properly belongs in Zooming I suppose.

Adjusting a Spectral Selection

When you hover the cursor over the center frequency line it changes to indicate that the centre frequency can be dragged. Click and drag to move the centre frequency to a new position as shown below.

Hover the cursor over the upper frequency boundary or the lower frequency boundary then click and drag to adjust those boundaries.

Hold down the ALT key then click and drag to adjust the upper and lower frequency boundaries simultaneously keeping them equally spaced around the center frequency (and thus not changing the centre frequency).

Hold down the ALT key then tap the CTRL key to move the center frequency and have it snap to frequency peaks. Note that you do not have to click and drag. Once the center frequency has snapped to where you want it you can then click and drag (while still holding down the ALT key) to adjust the upper and lower frequency boundaries.

Using Spectral Selection - Spectral Editing

To make use of the frequency range defined in a spectral selection you must use one of the effects that begins with "Spectral edit". All other effects, as well as all the time-based editing commands (such as Cut, Copy, Delete, Trim, etc.) are available when there is a spectral selection but these effects and commands will not take into account the frequency range of the spectral selection.

Spectral edit multi-tool

• When the spectral selection has a center frequency, upper frequency and lower frequency this effect performs a notch filter with the center frequency defined by the center frequency of the spectral selection and the width defined by the upper and lower frequencies of the spectral selection.
• When the spectral selection begins at 0 Hz this effect performs a high pass filter with a roll-off of 6 dB/octave and with the cut-off frequency defined by the upper frequency of the spectral selection.
• When the spectral selection ends at the Nyquist frequency of the track this effect performs a low pass filter with a roll-off of 6 dB/octave and with the cut-off frequency defined by the lower frequency of the spectral selection.

Spectral edit parametric EQ

• When the spectral selection has a center frequency, upper frequency and lower frequency this effect performs a band cut or boost according to the value entered in the "Gain (dB)" control. The center frequency is defined by the center frequency of the spectral selection and the width is defined by the upper and lower frequencies of the spectral selection.
• When the spectral selection has an upper frequency frequency only or a lower frequency only (and no center frequency) this effect returns an error message.

Spectral edit shelves

• When the spectral selection begins at 0 Hz this effect performs a low frequency shelf filter with a roll-off of 6 dB/octave and with the roll-off frequency defined by the upper frequency of the spectral selection. This is similar to adjusting the bass control on a stereo.
• When the spectral selection ends at the Nyquist frequency of the track this effect performs a high frequency shelf filter with a roll-off of 6 dB/octave and with the roll-off frequency defined by the lower frequency of the spectral selection. This is similar to adjusting the treble control on a stereo.
• When the spectral selection has a center frequency, upper frequency and lower frequency this effect performs both a low shelf and high shelf filter. In this case the roll-off frequency of the low shelf filter is defined by the lower frequency boundary of the spectral selection and the roll-off frequency of the high shelf filter is defined by the upper boundary of the spectral selection.

Example

Here is the same audio, this time contaminated by an annoying high-frequency whistle. You can see the whistle just above 5 kHz.

We start by making a rough selection around the whistle.

Then we zoom in on the frequency axis to get a closer look.

The center frequency line is close (but not exactly on) the whistle, and the range of frequencies is too wide.

We can now snap the center frequency line to the whistle by pressing and holding the ALT key, tapping the CTRL key, then moving the mouse until the center line snaps over the whistle. We can then (while still holding the ALT key) click and drag to adjust the upper and lower frequency boundaries until they just cover the red and magenta areas.

Finally we select Edit > Spectral edit multi-tool which performs a notch filter effect on the selected frequencies.

The whistle is gone.