Re: [Audacity-quality] Mute and Solo priority.
A free multi-track audio editor and recorder
Brought to you by:
aosiniao
From: Gale A. <ga...@au...> - 2012-07-28 22:51:45
|
| From Steve the Fiddle <ste...@gm...> | Sat, 28 Jul 2012 15:57:43 +0100 | Subject: [Audacity-quality] Mute and Solo priority. > When the "Solo Button" button behaviour is set to "Standard" in > Preferences > Tracks. > Solo has priority over Mute for playback, but Mute has priority over > Solo for export. > > This means that if one or more tracks have both mute and solo buttons > depressed, the exported audio will be different to what is heard when > playing back in Audacity. > > As a user wrote recently on the forum: > > "Consider this situation from the perspective of a blind user. They > have just created a mix within Audacity. They have confirmed it is > what they want by listening to it on playback in Audacity. They now > instruct Audacity to export the project to, let's say, a WAV file. > They play that WAV file back - and it isn't what they just listened > to!" > http://forum.audacityteam.org/viewtopic.php?p=187345#p187345 > > It can be useful to be able to solo more than one track at a time, but > as the above example shows there is a serious downside if the priority > of solo and mute buttons are different for playback and export. > > It would probably be better if either: > > 1) Solo has priority for both playback and recording. If the solo > button on one or more tracks is depressed, the soloed tracks will play > and the other tracks will not. The soloed tracks will export and the > other tracks will not. > > 2) Mute has priority for both playback and recording. If the Mute > button on one or more tracks is depressed, the muted tracks will not > play regardless of whether the Solo button is pressed or not. Muted > tracks will not be exported. This is the default behaviour in Ardour > and is the usual behaviour on hardware mixers. > > My preference would be for option 2 (which is how Export currently > works). When a track is muted, it is muted. Thanks, Steve. I'm surprised this is the usual behaviour on hardware mixers as I recall mixer behaviour was cited as the reason for having solo priority as default behaviour (rather than a default of the soloed track being the only one that is heard). The Manual claims that the current default behaviour "will suit those used to mixing desks and other professional audio software". I agree that 2) would possibly be more intuitive to those who are not familiar with hardware mixers and who can't find the "Simple" preference for Solo Button behaviour. Is it more intuitive for those who are familiar? Is it too late to change? > An additional possibility for option 2 could be that pressing the Solo > button on a muted track automatically releases the mute button on that > track and/or pressing the mute button on a soloed track automatically > releases the Solo button. In other words, a track may be either muted, > soloed or not muted or soloed, but not muted and soloed. I am guessing that will be unpopular with power users. Before the Solo Button preference was brought in, they used to complain about "losing" the Mute button state. > I think that the important issue is that the behaviour should be the > same for both playback and export. I feel that muting tracks not intended for export is a good deal more intuitive than soloing them (even if behaviour between playback and export differs). The blind user should hear when they select the tracks "Solo on" and/or "Mute on", so have a positive indication if mute is on. Gale |