Hi James,
I started writing the JAWS script because I was frustrated with things
like having to switch to the selection bar to read the start and end
times of the selection range. With the script I can quickly get this
information with a keystroke without popping up a new window. Now, one
disadvantage of solving a problem that way is that if you work with it a
while longer you may find that what seems totally frustrating at first
becomes okay after all, and for example in the case of selection
start/end I didn't realize that the commands to set them bring up a
dialog when you are stopped, and I initially thought that would be
awfully cumbersome, but lots of people seem to be quite happy with
that. There is a list of features of the script at
https://github.com/campg2j003/JAWS-Script-for-Audacity/. Hit h a couple
of times and it will bring you to the start of the README. It basically
provides more feedback so that as you change cursor position or the
selection you get some idea of what is happening. You can also find out
the audio position while playing. It provides feedback when you press
many Audacity keys so you know you are doing what you thought you were.
It also allows you to go to a track by number so that you don't have to
arrow up 30 tracks, then back down again, same for moving tracks. It
can tell you whether Audacity is stopped, playing, or recording, which
isn't needed any more since it is now displayed on the status bar, but
before that if I ended up recording silence I found myself wondering if
it was playing silence or if it was stopped. I've been concerned that
it may give too much feedback for non-beginners. (Cuong added a lot of
that for new users he was working with.) I recently added the ability
to say which tracks are selected and to move to the next/prior selected
track. You can easily get to a list of Audacity keystrokes and David's
guide for JAWS users as well.
So it pretty much tries to make Audacity easier and faster to use. Try
it out and let us know if you have suggestions.
Gary
On 8/17/2017 3:53 PM, James Kelm wrote:
Hello My Audacity Friends...
OK, two basic questions. They are born out of the fact that I am a new user of Audacity, as well as digital recording in general. So while I’m sure that my questions are old hat for most of you, I am an old guitar picker, so I figure that I can wear an old hat! LOLL
First of all, recently there has been a lot of talk on this list concerning utilizing Nyquist with Audacity. So my earth shaking question is... What the heck is Nyquist, and why might I consider using it with Audacity?
My second question is similar, but I want to preference it with a very strong and sincere statement! My question deals with reasons for why I might consider the JAWS scripts for Audacity as an advantage. But please know that my question is in no way meant to offend anyone, or to in any way put down the author of the JAWS scripts!!! I simply am looking for information and guidance, but I am not at all suggesting that the author of the scripts has created something that is poor, or unhelpful. In fact, my general thoughts are just the reverse! There are so few companies and/or individuals who are considering ways to help us blind folk in our pursuit of musical expression, that I warmly celebrate anyone who is courageous, and thoughtfully oriented enough to create any type of computer accessory that is strictly intended to aid the blind, visually impaired, or visually challenged, whichever is the current PC accepted way to identify those of us who are unable to read our local white pages of the telephone book. That is to say, if the white pages of a physical telephone book still existed! LOLL
So my question is, why might I find the JAWS scripts to be an advantage when using Audacity? I downloaded and installed them when I first installed Audacity. You might recall that this was on an older computer with XP Professional. But I was having enough trouble with the old computer, that I took off everything but was absolutely necessary in order to try and make the computer work better with Audacity. I have subsequently installed Audacity on a much newer computer with Windows 7, which is what has now become my primary DAWS machine. I simply have not reinstalled the JAWS scripts, because it seems relatively easy to find what I need in Audacity without them. I understand that since I am so new to Audacity, that there might be a lot of stuff that I simply don’t yet know that I’ll need to use, and there fore I do not understand just how much of an advantage in the future, that will be gained by using the JAWS scripts. I am a JAWS user by the way.
Thank you for helping me once more, to gain an education in the wacky world of digital recording. By the way... Does anyone know of a program that will make everything that I play into Audacity audamaticly sound just like George Benson? LOLL
Respectfully,
James
*From:* Gary Campbell <mailto:campg2003@xxxxxxxxx>
*Sent:* Thursday, August 17, 2017 11:44 AM
*To:* audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
*Subject:* [audacity4blind] Re: Manuals and tutorials (Re: nyquist little manual)
Hi Damien,
It's been a while since I've used Nyquist, but I learned what I know about Audacity and Nyquist from the Nyquist manual. On the wiki there is a Nyquist Plug-ins Reference which has links to the Nyquist manual.
An audio sample in a 16-bit signed WAV file is a number between -32768 and 32767. In a 24-bit file it would be different. Nyquist abstracts this out as a number between -1 and 1 so your program is not dependent on the way each sound is stored. If you display a sound as a graph of voltage versus time, each sample is the value of the voltage at that point in time. So in Nyquist a sample is a number between -1 and 1 that is the amplitude of the sound at that point in time. If you were to examine samples of a sine wave you would find that they would start at 0, increase for a while until they reach a maximum, then decrease through 0 to minus the maximum, and then increase to the maximum again. The samples between the two maximum points would represent one cycle, the amount of time that represents is the "period" (sec/cycle) of the wave, and the frequency of that sound is 1 over the period. If you sum two sounds in Nyquist, you make a new sound by adding the values of sample 1 of both sounds, then sample 2, etc. So if sample 47 of wave 1 is .3 and that of sound 2 is .4, sample 47 of the new sound is .7. If you multiply 2 sounds you take the product of each sample, so you again change the amplitude in a different way, so the speed doesn't change. There are some concepts used to work with sounds that are unique to Nyquist, and you need to read the first sections of the Nyquist manual to understand them. If I were going to do much with Nyquist I would have to go back and read the Nyquist manual, time which my wife would consider /not/ well spent!
BTW: Another post talked about how you can only represent a sound with a frequency of half the sample rate. That is called the Nyquist rate, after which Nyquist was named.
Gary
On 8/14/2017 2:16 AM, Damien Sykes-Lindley wrote:
Hi,
I don't know why, but Nyquist kind of reminds me of the GoldWave expression evaluator. Not sure if it's because the common upshot was I couldn't understand either one of them, despite having a programming background. Lol.
Seriously though, I may be mistaken but they both may have this weird caveat that you need a working knowledge of both programming, and digital audio structure. The latter I have no experience with whatsoever, so when people talk about adding signals to increase volume or multiplying signals to mix or multiplying/dividing individual samples to manipulate speed...I haven't a clue how that works in practice. I was always taught that 2*2=4, not chipmunk. *Grin*.
At least making an attempt to be serious again, I think it's more a theory behind digital audio processing is more what's needed. Everything I have seen so far has either been very technical, or doesn't make sense. For instance, I read somewhere, or at least understood it as, that an audio sample is a number between -1 and 1. If that were the case, that could easily be stored in 2 bits, yet audio is generally saved as 16, mixed at 32 bit, which I calculate as providing ranges of -32768 to 32767 and -2147483648 to 2147483647 respectively.
Additionally, I can't seem to find anything regarding a logical explanation as to what the numbers mean. The simplest explanation used most often, which I understand to a degree, is that each number represents either an amplitude, or a speaker position. I've seen both explanations, not sure how they link together but I guess they do. But nothing explains why doing something to one number and something else to another can change the output in a way that makes me think that adding would logically change the volume, multiplying would logically change the speed, using a square root of the inverse sign might apply a filter, or raising to the power of 16, dividing by Pi and adding the number of miles between NASA's latest rocket and the sun would cause a flange. In case those weird formulas start a form of interesting debate, let me clarify for those that didn't pick up on it that those last ones are completely made up garbage...I've no idea what would cause those effects and I've no idea what using those formulas might do - knowing my luck probably cause a lot of distortion and unwanted hiss.
But as you can see. I personally think that's the kind of tutorial that is needed.
I've always wanted to make a convolution plugin since neither GoldWave or Audacity seems to have one - Wondering if Nyquist is up to such a task once I can get all this theory learned first.
Cheers.
Damien.
-----Original Message----- From: Steve the Fiddle
Sent: Monday, August 14, 2017 8:48 AM
To: audacity4blind@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: [audacity4blind] Re: nyquist little manual
There is this page in the Audacity wiki that covers much of the
Audacity specific Nyquist information:
http://wiki.audacityteam.org/wiki/Nyquist_Plug-ins_Reference
The complete reference for Nyquist functions is in the full Nyquist
manual: http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rbd/doc/nyquist/indx.html
and detailed information about LISP in Nyquist (with examples) can be
found here: http://www.audacity-forum.de/download/edgar/nyquist/nyquist-doc/xlisp/xlisp-index.htm
Steve
On 14 August 2017 at 08:39, Paolo Giacomoni mailto:paolgiac@xxxxxxxxxx wrote:Hi listers.
I.m looking for a little nyquist manual, specially for audacity applications.
Thanks you
Paolo
The audacity4blind web site is at
//www.freelists.org/webpage/audacity4blind
Subscribe and unsubscribe information, message archives,
Audacity keyboard commands, and more...
To unsubscribe from audacity4blind, send an email to
audacity4blind-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
with subject line
unsubscribe
The audacity4blind web site is at
//www.freelists.org/webpage/audacity4blind
Subscribe and unsubscribe information, message archives,
Audacity keyboard commands, and more...
To unsubscribe from audacity4blind, send an email to
audacity4blind-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
with subject line
unsubscribe
The audacity4blind web site is at
//www.freelists.org/webpage/audacity4blind
Subscribe and unsubscribe information, message archives,
Audacity keyboard commands, and more...
To unsubscribe from audacity4blind, send an email to
audacity4blind-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
with subject line
unsubscribe
