How to Understand Audio Channels Drag & Drop Menus in Audacity

Name… (Name…). Displays the “ Track Name ” dialog box where you can give a new name to a channel. Useful in multi-channel projects to provide a visual indicator of the content of each channel. The default name is “ Audio Track ” as seen in the image above.

Shift channels. Any individual channel can be/are shifted up or down using menu items.

• Move Track Up : Move the channel up.
• Move Track Down : Move the channel down.
• Move Track To Top : Move the channel to the top, inside the project window.
• Move Track To Bottom : Move the channel to the bottom, inside the project window.
• Note : Usually for added convenience, just click the Track Contrp Panel to the left of a channel and drag it up or down.

Waveform.

• The first half of this waveform is the voice “ Chirp ” ^[1] with identical amplitude (volume), indicated by the horizontal line both at the top and bottom. The linearity on the left goes from +1 at the top (the maximum possible volume without distortion when the signal is positive) to -1 at the bottom (the maximum possible volume when the signal is negative). The horizontal line in the middle of 0.0 is the mute. What you can’t see without zooming in is that the distortion is slowly increasing. Magnification can show separate periods in a waveform (positive and negative peaks) that occur very close together at the end of the sound. The second half of the waveform is the word “Audacity” spoken in a male voice.
  

  

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• This image is a waveform view of the chirp which is extremely short, 1/10th of a second, with only a few cycles where the tone increases very rapidly. Since it is so short, we can zoom in to get a closer look at the interval of the periods as the frequency (and hence the tone) increases from left to right.
  

  

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Waveform (dB) – Waveform in dB.

• This is the same chirp and word as shown in the picture with the first waveform, but from this view the vertical scale is in dB . This is a logarithmic method of displaying amplitude.
  

  

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• The dB range of the vertical scale is set using the Edit > Preferences > Interface command.
• Visit the Audacity Waveform ^[2] page for details and examples of waveform views.

Spectrogram (Spectral View). This identical chirp and word view shows how the amount of energy in different frequency bands changes over time. Higher frequencies will be at the top of the scale, lower frequencies will be at the bottom. Blue is the least energy and red and white is the most. The dramatic increase in chirp tone is vividly represented by the upward slanting diagonal. The Spectogram view also confirms that the word “ Audacity ” has the most energy in the middle of the word.

• Go to Spectrograms Preferences ^[3] to see options for fine-tuning exactly how the spectrum is represented and the different types of spectrum display.
• You can press Vertical Scale ^[4] (vertical scale) at any time to enlarge certain frequency ranges, or right-click to zoom out. Frequencies higher than half the channel’s sample frequency will not be displayed because the frequency given cannot contain frequencies higher than that.
• See Spectogram View ^[5] for details on Spectogram views .

Spectrogram Settings – Spectrogram settings.

• There are the same settings you see in Spectrograms Preferences but the changes you make in Spectrogram Settings only affect the certain channel on which you open the settings, and stick only when that channel is open in the project. For more details, see Per track Spectrogram Settings ^[6]
• Use Spectrograms Preferences to make permanent changes to spectrogram ‘s default settings.

Splitting and Joining Channels – Split and merge channels. The channel panel menu differs slightly between stereo and mono channels. For stereo channels, you can only see commands that are applicable to stereo channels and likewise for mono channels. The image at the top of this page is of a stereo channel. See Splitting and Joining Stereo Tracks ^[7] for more details on using the Split Stereo Track , Split Stereo to Mono , and Make Stereo Tracks commands.

• Mono channels. Use the Make Stereo Track command for 2 adjacent single channels that you want to merge into a stereo channel. The top channel always becomes the left channel of the new stereo pair, and the bottom channel the right channel, regardless of whether each was mono, left, or right before merging into stereo.
• Stereo channels.
  • Swap Stereo Channels – Swap stereo channels . Use this command on the stereo channel to swap the left and right channels without having to separate the stereo channel (see below). The left channel and the right channel will interchange, so that the left channel’s audio content shifts to the right and the right channel’s audio content shifts to the left.
  • Split Stereo Tracks . This command splits the 2 channels of the stereo pair into separate editable channels for the left and right channels, with the left channel above the right channel. If you are mixing multiple single channel files, you may want to use the ” Split Stereo to Mono ” command given below and then use the stereo channel equalizer slider ( Pan Slider ) in the Track Control Panel . This will give you more control over the balance of the stereo channels than leaving the channels as left and right.
  • Split Stereo to Mono . This command splits the 2 channels of the stereo pair into 2 separate and editable mono channels.

Wave Cpor – Wave Color . Choose from 1 of 4 color patterns to be used for waveforms in a channel.

Format – Format. Converts the current channel health sample format to 16-bit integer PCM , 24-bit integer PCM or 32-bit floating point . The number of computer bits representing each sample as a waveform will be recalculated in terms of changed/modified accuracy. Subsequent editing will be performed with the new bit depth, but the audio data of any channel states prior to conversion will remain at its previous bit depth. This means that there is no loss in deferring formatting changes.