AV News 190 - November 2012
· If the user chooses Solo Button = None, then there will be only a Mute
button in the Track Details panel
So what is actually happening here?
The moment you solo any track you are listening to the Monitor Mix and you are
no longer guaranteed to be hearing what you will export.
What about the Mute button I hear you ask?
This is more predictable - up to a point. A muted track is never, ever presented
to the Export Mix and nine times out ten it is not presented to the Monitor Mix
either. Unfortunately, Howard's friends found 'the exception that proves the rule'
if the user has actually solo-ed one or more tracks and has also muted one of
the solo-ed tracks.
The effect of the Mute button is to take that track off the Export Mix. The effect
of the Solo button is to add that track to the Monitor Mix, ignoring the setting of
the Mute button. So we end up in the situation where we are listening to a mix
that is not going to get exported.
The problem was that we, the users, did not realise there were two mixes in
Audacity until after more than a month of discussion, debate and argument. Why
not? Because there is no obvious clue to the existence of the two mixes
anywhere in the graphical interface or more importantly no easy and obvious
way of telling Audacity which mix you would like to listen to.
At the end of the long drawn-out debate, I proposed that there should be two
new buttons in the graphical interface: 'Listen to Export Mix' and 'Listen to
Monitor Mix'. These, I felt, would make it clear to the user that there were two
mixes, and would provide the mechanism for choosing which of the two to play
on the speakers or headphones. The experts on the forum immediately set
about explaining why this solution would not address other problems in using
Mute and Solo buttons: problems of which, at that point, I was blissfully
unaware!! More than a month of banging my head against a brick wall had
produced only another, bigger and stronger, brickwall. It was at this point that I
resigned my commission, tossed my towel into the ring, threw my toys out of the
pram - and sulked!
To summarize:
· Audacity has, indeed, got two mixes: Export Mix and Monitor Mix, and
provided that you do not use Solo buttons, these are the same, so what you
hear is what you get.
· If you use the Mute button, that track will not be heard when you play back
the exported file.
· Use the Solo button solely for monitoring one (Simple mode) or more
(Standard mode) tracks.
· Never, ever press both the Solo and Mute buttons together on a track.
· Ensure,