Sound editing, N-Track Audacity

N-Track user stuff

Hey folks. You have been really helpful in the past! Thanks.

Have a collection of wav files now… 1 hitch.

Things like coughs, guitar string snaps, etc. If I want to edit out a sound in a wav all I can think of is open it in N-Track, find the sound, cut it out, and even put background noise on a second track before mixing down into one wav again. Is there a better way? Is this the best way?

Though you can use n-Track, or any wave editor for that matter, to silence noises you don’t want in a track, there is a specialty program called Wave Repair that takes this to a higher level. You can remove pops and clicks within an existing sound, you can redraw the waveform to eliminate one sound but keep another, you can replace a part of a waveform with the surrounding spectrum, etc.

A free demo can be downloaded from http://www.waverepair.com. After the 30 day evaluation period the program costs $30. The only limitation is Wave Repair currently only supports 16bit at 44.1 or 48, so users of higher rates won’t be able to use it.

I used Wave Repair on my last album project and found it very useful. You may want to read the features page on their website to see if it is what you want.

Use n-Track to draw volume evolutions to turn down (or mute) the parts you want to get rid of.

A friend of mine has a bad habit of mumbling and singing when he’s not supposed to while recording vocal tracks, so I have to do this quite a bit. Nothing to it!

-John
:cool:

Whoa… how does one make volume evolutions? You said ‘easy’.

Just give me a couple of steps. Thanks!

Also, about http://www.waverepair.com, is there any way to edit bumps and noises in N-Track… quality is not an issue… it is just an interview.

Just things like cough, cough, cough, burp, etc… extra noise.

Thanks.

Quote (jjdoll42 @ Feb. 08 2005,09:05)
Whoa... how does one make volume evolutions? You said 'easy'.

Just give me a couple of steps. Thanks!

Try pressing Alt in the track view, the volume envelopes appear. It's easy to add points to it by clicking and dragging. But removing them is another thing, does anybody know how it can be done? It's annoying if you try to grab a point in the low-limit, mostly it just makes a new point. After a while, you got 10 points to move where there should be 1 :/

I find the easiest way is to just select the bad section by dragging and “cut”. This leaves a gap. For vocal parts or anything with natural phrases and “silence” between the phrases, this works great. If the background noise in the track is high, I’d use a noise gate anyway, so it’s not necessary to add noise to make the gap unnoticeable. If you don’t like the sound of a noise gate, then chances are your tracks are too noisy to begin with. That or you’re AWFULLY picky.

To delete a handle, use normal (selection) tool to drag and select around the handle and only that handle. (Press and release the alt button a few times to make sure you got it.) Then, with the envelope tool (alt won’t work), right click in the track and pick “remove selected nodes”.

Quote (learjeff @ Feb. 08 2005,09:59)
I find the easiest way is to just select the bad section by dragging and "cut". This leaves a gap. For vocal parts or anything with natural phrases and "silence" between the phrases, this works great. If the background noise in the track is high, I'd use a noise gate anyway, so it's not necessary to add noise to make the gap unnoticeable. If you don't like the sound of a noise gate, then chances are your tracks are too noisy to begin with. That or you're AWFULLY picky.

Don't you sometimes get a digital pop when cutting like this? volume evolution does the same thing, although not quite a quickly...
Quote (Scythe @ Feb. 08 2005,09:49)
Quote (jjdoll42 @ Feb. 08 2005,09:05)
Whoa... how does one make volume evolutions? You said 'easy'.

Just give me a couple of steps. Thanks!

Try pressing Alt in the track view, the volume envelopes appear. It's easy to add points to it by clicking and dragging. But removing them is another thing, does anybody know how it can be done? It's annoying if you try to grab a point in the low-limit, mostly it just makes a new point. After a while, you got 10 points to move where there should be 1 :/

right click delete node.

Thanks - resolved. Volume envelopes are pretty cool!!

you can have NTrack do the hard part of drawing the envelopes for you.

Just select the part you want to silence then go to edit/silence selection/put volume to 0 (DON’T select silence destructively!!! or there’s no turning back)

the result will be that you’ve just used the envelope on that spot. If youwant to make small changes at that spot, click on the envelope icon and you’ll where the nodes were created. Making changes from that point is pretty straightforward.

HTH

Thanks…

Quote (TomS @ Feb. 08 2005,12:23)
Quote (learjeff @ Feb. 08 2005,09:59)
I find the easiest way is to just select the bad section by dragging and "cut". This leaves a gap. For vocal parts or anything with natural phrases and "silence" between the phrases, this works great. If the background noise in the track is high, I'd use a noise gate anyway, so it's not necessary to add noise to make the gap unnoticeable. If you don't like the sound of a noise gate, then chances are your tracks are too noisy to begin with. That or you're AWFULLY picky.

Don't you sometimes get a digital pop when cutting like this?

No, never. Like I said, I only do this when there's silence between phrases. You don't get pops & clicks when cutting at silence.

The other advantage to this method is the cut-out is always there to see. Definitely my preferred method when comping phrases from multiple tracks into a single performance.

When there isn't silence to cut at, volume evolutions is the tool for the job.