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How to completely REMOVE part of a track in Audacity

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organsRgreat

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How to completely REMOVE part of a track in Audacity

PostThu Oct 07, 2021 8:05 am

I’m preparing a presentation of my Hauptwerk sample sets for a meeting of the Electronic Organ Constructors Society on 16th October. I’m using Audacity to edit the audio files, and there’s one very simple thing I can’t find out how to do. I want to REMOVE certain sections. Not just silence them – that’s easy. Not just Trim the audio – that’s easy. But if I have two minutes of silence left at the end, I can’t find out how to completely get rid of that part of the tracks, so that the result is two minutes shorter. Can it be done? Thanks!
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mdyde

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Re: How to completely REMOVE part of a track in Audacity

PostThu Oct 07, 2021 8:20 am

Hello organsRgreat,

You can just select/highlight the desired section (e.g. by dragging the mouse over it), then press the Delete key.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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organsRgreat

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Re: How to completely REMOVE part of a track in Audacity

PostThu Oct 07, 2021 8:53 am

Ah – I think I was misunderstanding the display! After deleting a section at the end, it continues to show the remaining minutes, so it looks as if they remain there as silence. But when the file is exported, those silent minutes aren’t saved. I had to check by saving the file then opening it VLC; VLC showed the number of minutes I was expecting, and stopped playback when I expected. Thanks Martin – sometimes these simple problems can be infuriating - you came to my rescue in half an hour!

The amount of activity on this forum amazes me – members were reading this post about every five minutes :-)
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mdyde

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Re: How to completely REMOVE part of a track in Audacity

PostThu Oct 07, 2021 9:10 am

Excellent! Thanks. You're very welcome.
Best regards, Martin.
Hauptwerk software designer/developer, Milan Digital Audio.
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Andrew Grahame

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Re: How to completely REMOVE part of a track in Audacity

PostThu Oct 07, 2021 4:24 pm

A few years back, when I was working at the Sydney radio station 2MSB-FM, I wrote a short tutorial to assist station staff to transition from Cool Edit to Audacity. We had to drop Cool Edit when the licensing costs suddenly escalated dramatically, so we switched to the free program instead. This tutorial might be of use to you - and to other Forum readers. Here's the Google Drive link. After clicking on the link you'll need to supply your email address then wait for me to add you to the permission list in the sharing settings.

Andrew

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1uulwhq ... sp=sharing
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organsRgreat

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Re: How to completely REMOVE part of a track in Audacity

PostSat Oct 09, 2021 6:20 am

Thanks Andrew – I’m about to click on the link to follow this up. There’s no doubt that Audacity is an excellent free program, but some aspects of it are maddeningly unintuitive. It took me ages to discover that in order to select something, I had to click INSIDE the waveform boxes. A friend who was an IT lecturer at university level, has a science degree, an arts degree and a doctorate, had exactly the same problem. It was a relief to know that I wasn’t being unusually stupid! This never gets explained in tutorials because people assume it’s obvious – it isn’t!

When I was trying to remove silence from the end of a recording, I expected the “timeline” to shorten accordingly, but it stays the same. As explained above, I had to save the file then open it in VLC to discover that the silent section had indeed been completely removed from the end.

Another problem is that updates can alter something fundamental, so older instructions on the internet no longer work. To change from the default linear display to one in dB one now has to click in the box with those numbers; apparently that’s a change from earlier versions.

On a related topic: I recently bought a Google phone, and was surprised that the plug on the supplied charger would not fit standard UK mains sockets. It took a lot of searching on the internet to discover that the earth lug has first to be pulled UP – then it fits perfectly. A simple diagram in the box would have saved a lot of frustration.

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