MuTools

oldguy · Post by **oldguy** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 5:31 am

Hi Jo,

One area where I end up spending a lot of time outside of Luna is with editing audio tracks. I have a fair amount of samples that I bring in, as well as clean-up of timing on on audio tracks.

Feature set that would be nice to have:
1. More audio waveform editing options than the current three (gain, normal, and mute) ala Audacity. Thought - any way you can add an interface to piggyback of the Audacity sound editing routines?

This also could be related to the rendering of audio tracks.

2. Time stretch and pitch fix. I'm not talking major vocal repair here with formant control, etc. I just want to be able to square up timing a couple of percent, or tune up to a couple of steps up or down. The time stretch interface would allow you to grab an audio bit and use a special tool to make it longer or shorter.

Thoughts?

Cheers, -Oldguy.

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Sun Mar 11, 2007 10:02 am

Thoughts:

1) Yes Audacity is surely an interesting project. I had some good time with it already. And it's crossplatform! So there's is enough reason to indeed go further that path...

2) Stretchable loops = 100% sure that this will be added at some point. And it has a high priority.

Note that the whole experiment with the luna modular initially had less priority than stretchable looops. But the modular experiment was launched so to know what you users thought of it. And it was a very interesting experiment! And as that ball was rolling...

All this just to say that stretchable audio is in the top 3 of the whishlist.

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:35 am

Oldguy,

How would you let LUNA and Audacity cooperate?

I mean: How would you describe the workflow?

mahtazz · Post by **mahtazz** » Mon Mar 12, 2007 9:57 am

Configure in Luna the Audio Editor of your choice.
If Audio Editor changes the file, Luna could load it.

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:44 am

Yes, i understand. That's the standard way of doing things. I thought that oldguy might mean something else irt Audacity.

Well, the good news now is that LUNA PR 8.2 will have support for editing audio in an external audio editor

It works great with e.g. Audition.

But, the bad news is that there seems to be "an issue" in Audacity that makes that it doesn't really work with Audacity.

Audacity does not allow to "export to wave" to a wave file that is used by the project. Which is just the situation we have here

Also the fact that you can't simply "Save" an opened wave file in Audacity (you have to "export as"), is not great for an efficient workflow.

These issues should appear in every situation where you want to use Audacity as an external audio editor. (could anyone use Audacity as an external editor in a host without having these issues?)

Anyway, LUNA's new "Edit in External Audio Editor" functionality still is a great addition, imho, and maybe one day we find a workaround for the Audacity issues, maybe from LUNA's side, maybe from Audacitys' side.

kara · Post by **kara** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 10:48 am

@muzycian
Reaper has a solution for this; it places the track of-line.
This makes it possibible to export it as wav in Audacity and when you close audacity and Reaper gets the focus back, it autoloads the new wav file.

So it is possible...

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:49 pm

kara wrote:@muzycian
Reaper has a solution for this; it places the track of-line.
This makes it possibible to export it as wav in Audacity and when you close audacity and Reaper gets the focus back, it autoloads the new wav file.

So it is possible...

LUNA puts the audio file offline too, that's not the problem.

The problem is that Audacity cannot overwrite a wave file that is used in the project!

It's in the Audacity code.

The same problem occurs in Reaper.

kara · Post by **kara** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 1:55 pm

Sorry no that's wrong
I can perfectly export in Audacity the wav file to the SAME name and reaper picks it up automaticaly

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:12 pm

I tried and retried and in such case Audacity everytime says

1) file already exists -> replace? i choose Yes.
2) then Audacity alerts "is directory write-protected, or disk full?"

and so the file is note saved

This has nothing to do with LUNA or Reaper or any other app.

This is pure an Audacity issue.

I checked the Audacity code and see the reason in there:

Code: Select all

   /*
    * Ensure that exporting a file by this name doesn't overwrite
    * one of the existing files in the project.  (If it would
    * overwrite an existing file, DirManager tries to rename the
    * existing file.)
    */

I'm using Audacity 1.2.6.

What version are you using?

kara · Post by **kara** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:14 pm

o perhaps it is your version, i'm using 1.3.2 beta and it definitifly works there

mahtazz · Post by **mahtazz** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:17 pm

Try wavosaur.

www.wavosaur.com

As they are developing the Audio Editor you could suggest them to include this feature.

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:29 pm

kara wrote:o perhaps it is your version, i'm using 1.3.2 beta and it definitifly works there

Yep, it indeed works in Audacity 1.3.2

Note sure how i should interprete the Audacity 1.3.2 "unstable beta version" though...

Did you use it already intensively? Is it stable?

kara · Post by **kara** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:31 pm

I use it everyday and haven't had a problem with it.
In the previous version there where a couple of bugs but these are now solved.
There is still an issue with unicode caracters but if you use it in english you won't see this.

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Thu Mar 15, 2007 2:38 pm

mahtazz wrote:Try wavosaur.

www.wavosaur.com

As they are developing the Audio Editor you could suggest them to include this feature.

It works well with Wavosaur too!

So up to now, these audio editors work fine as an external audio editor for LUNA PR 8.2:

-> Audacity 1.3.2
-> Audition 1.5
-> Wavosaur

But i'm sure all/most other ones will work fine too

muzycian · Post by **muzycian** » Sat Mar 17, 2007 1:04 am

Here is a LUNA PR 8.2 preview featuring support for an external audio editor. This feature is Windows only for now.

Besides this new feature, also this has changed:

* New: LUNA now shows a neat progress bar when building audio overview files (aka peak files)

* Tuned: Better crash protection in case LUNA is launched with an out-of-date graphics folder
* Tuned: Improved Audio Engine
* Tuned: MPA: Sends are embedded by default now

* Fixed: Sometimes the "Bypass" option was missing for plugins
* Fixed: When changing the start point of an audio file, the composition loop wasn't properly updated

Note to OSX Users

As noted already, the external audio editing feature is windows only for now. Further research will be done to see if it's possible with LUNA for OSX too.

Download

If you have LUNA Unlimited, then you can download your patch from

OSX: http://www.mutools.com/luna/luna-unlimi ... -patch.zip
WIN: http://www.mutools.com/luna/luna-unlimi ... -patch.zip

If you have LUNA FREE, then you can download your patch from

OSX: http://www.mutools.com/luna/luna-free-p ... -patch.zip
WIN: http://www.mutools.com/luna/luna-free-p ... -patch.zip

A patch is a newer version of the application file.

Just copy this new LUNA application file over the existing LUNA application file, and you're ready to go

About the external audio editing

* To choose your audio editor: Edit menu -> Preferences -> Choose Audio Editor
* To use your audio editor: open the audio file in the audio lab, then right-click, choose "Edit In ..." (the name of your editor will be there).

External audio editing has been succesfully tested with

-> Audacity 1.3.2
-> Audition 1.5
-> Wavosaur 1.0.0.7000

If you have another audio editor, please let us know how it works with that one.

Cheers!

MuTools

KVR Audio

FR Request - More Audio Editing