Hi Damien
The use of brackets in Audacity to highlight material has been available
for many years. I only started using Audacity when betas of v2 became
available, as it was essentially inaccessible to screen readers before
then. Someone with a better memory than mine might enlighten us as to
when that was, but I am guestimating at least seven or eight years ago.
Brackets were used then and probably in earlier versions as well.
Regarding the lag you get when using the brackets, my summary comment is
that it should not happen. What is causing it, though, deserves further
investigation. Do you get a lag when you press x to stop playback?
Regardless, remember that you can adjust each end of the highlight so
that it is exactly to your liking. This is not the latency discussed in
the Audacity manual. That is to do with tracks being out of sync when
doing multi-track recordings. I will try to do something on that
shortly, but work commitments over the next couple of weeks may mess up
my free time.
"When you were making selections you had a 3-hour window. How on earth
does that work when you had absolutely no material to start with?"
Audacity does not care whether you have material or not. Ponder this
example. Say you have recorded material on one track, starting at zero
seconds. You want the second track to start at - say - 10.52seconds.
You could set that start time with the Selection Toolbar and, when you
start recording, your next track would start at that point.
An introduction to Audacity without discussing the project concept
indicates significant slackness (slaps wrist). Audacity, like many
DAWs, uses its own proprietary system for storing material. Whether you
are recording ten seconds of audio on one track of an hour of audio on
50 tracks, when you save your work it will be as an Audacity project.
If you save a recording with the name of mealtime, for example (I have
just finished dinner) a file called mealtime.aup would be created. At
the same time, a folder called mealtime_data would be created. It is
most important that the file and folder do not get separated. That is,
if you copy or rename mealtime.aup you must also copy or rename
mealtime_data. To put your recording into one of the common audio
formats, you have to use Export from the File Menu.
Andrew
On 22/07/2017 6:39 PM, Damien Sykes-Lindley wrote:
Hi Andrew,
Fantastic. Very well explained. Again, I find it amazing that a toolbar is in fact accessible. Shows me how much I know about user interfaces and their relationships with screen readers.
Very interesting detail about the brackets. I didn’t find that anywhere in the Audacity manual. I remember when I first opened Audacity, that was my automatic method of attempting to make a selection, given how it is the same in GW. But it didn’t work for me. Is this a new feature?
On my system, Audacity seems to have a latency when selecting using the brackets method – only by a few milliseconds, but that could be the difference between a perfect or catastrophic loop. Is this deliberate and/or customisable based on audio device and playback latency etc, or is it a performance issue that needs addressing? Or could it even be just my weird seemingly unconventional machine?
And the thing that puzzles me most. When you were making selections you had a 3-hour window. How on earth does that work when you had absolutely no material to start with?
Again, very good introduction. Even if some of its concepts are different, it seems to be more like GW than I thought, at least in the ways of playing, selecting, seeking etc.
I would be very interested in other podcasts if you get around to it. For instance I still don’t quite grasp the function of, or reasons for, the existence of projects. I’m guessing that’s to do with multitrack editing?
Cheers.
Damien.
*From:* Andrew Downie <mailto:access_tech@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Saturday, July 22, 2017 7:09 AM
*To:* audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [audacity4blind] Re: Audacity v GoldWave
Damien, Christina, Sameer and anyone else who is interested in a 15 minute intro to Audacity. I have cobbled together this recording <https://www.sendspace.com/pro/dl/v56cn4>. It is about a 22mb download. I have inadvertently left out a couple of things that could have been included, such as x (version 2.1.3) and shift-a (previous versions) to stop playing and put the cursor at that position. Undoubtedly the other resources already mentioned will be far more comprehensive (and more polished). My hope is, though, that my effort may help people who are having trouble getting started.
I have not included anything on multi-track recording. If people are positive about this attempt, I would be happy to do that, along with useful facilities such as labels.
Andrew
On 21/07/2017 8:02 AM, Andrew Downie wrote:
Hi Damien
I can’t do it right now, but perhaps later today (Sydney time) I will try putting together a quick audio demo of navigating and editing in Audacity. It is certainly a different beast to Goldwave. Once you get your head around how to beat it into submission though, it is a very obedient beast.
Andrew
*From:*audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:audacity4blind-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Damien Sykes-Lindley
*Sent:* Friday, 21 July 2017 12:47 AM
*To:* audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
*Subject:* [audacity4blind] Audacity v GoldWave
Hi there,
As you all know, I’ve been following and, where possible, contributing to some of the threads of this list for a good while now. Practically, I’ve read the majority of the Audacity manual and tried some basic effects processing. However I’m still struggling with Audacity’s concept of editing (I.E. making selections). I see references in the manual to the playback cursor and editing cursor but I haven’t yet found out how to work these. I may be missing something but the manual, to me, seems a little erroneous and contradictory – the editing section states that the way to select regions with the keyboard is through the toolbar, but under the accessibility section it states that toolbars aren’t accessible with screen readers. Yet seems to me that it is possible – otherwise this list probably wouldn’t even exist. Having said that, as far as I am aware I have never used a toolbar before, so I was of the impression that they would never be accessible. Or maybe I’ve used one and just not known it for what it is. That’s the problem with screen readers.
Also, I feel I would benefit from either some audio demonstrations or transition guides – Previously my knowledge has been confined to toys like Sound Recorder and tape decks like GoldWave (whose effects processing is, in my opinion, at best suspect, and rather limited), so I’m trying to learn as many as possible so that I have the best possible variety of effects and editing techniques at my disposal.
Having looked at the documentation it seems that Audacity is a multitrack rather than a single track editor. Though the concept is quite straight forward (you can edit multiple tracks in one session or in one project), the way this is done is entirely alien to me. I feel like I’m transition from tape machine to a mixer. I might go further and say studio, but no. I think I’ll leave that honour to Reaper. That one went way over my head!
In any case. If any of you have used GoldWave and can give me some kind of sense of how Audacity is different, both in terms of usage and concepts, that’d be very helpful.
Also, does anyone know what the status of the NVDA addon is? Even if Audacity is accessible out of the box (just as GoldWave is), NVDA has an addon for GoldWave that provides keys for announcing information (selected channels, markers, lengths, peaks etc). A similar addon for Audacity would be very useful, in my opinion.
Cheers.
