Is there a silence feature like in Audacity?

I’m new to Ardour and I LOVE it so far. I’ve been editing a podcast in Audacity for a while and now have moved to Ardour. The workflow I have developed is specific to Audacity and I am open to changing it if that is required in order to use Ardour properly.

I import 4-7 tracks depending on how many guests we have on the show at one time. We have a countdown that leads to everyone saying ZERO at the same time.

Then I align all the tracks to this ZERO.

After I add some effects to the tracks I begin editing. I don’t do any cutting or ripple type deletes because that would move the tracks out of sync.

When there is a section to remove, I used Silence in Audacity to preserve the sync.

At the end I’d mix and render to a new track. On this new track I’d apply a Truncate Silence effect to reduce any silence to .5 seconds to deal with the silence added when I silenced errors.

Is there a way to do this in Ardour? I like the silence method but I’m open to change if another workflow works better in Ardour.

Perhaps I should just be cutting before and after the section and removing it without making the section after it slide backwards, Putting everything out of sync. In video editing I know you can remove a section without rippling backwards.

Try “Insert Time” and “Remove Time” in the track menu. If you group your tracks together and do a range select either with the smart tool or range tool [R], it works like a charm.

This seems unnecessary if you start recording all tracks at the same time? Also if you do it this way, grouping tracks then ripple editing works like a multi-track ripple mode and everything stays in sync (as long as you maintain grouping and don’t change starts of individual regions). You could always use automation to bring down the level of guests’ microphones when they are not speaking.

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I’ll play around with the Insert and Remove Time feature. I’m not really inserting or removing time though. For example, in a 5 minute segment, 4 guests might be active in the conversation. Sometimes I silence a part of one person’s track so they don’t talk over someone else too much or cut off their point.

For the same reason, I don’t think ripple will work for me across tracks. Generally the podcast is a lively discussion. If I ripple delete across tracks, it’ll delete parts where others are speaking.

We gather from all over the world so it’s not likely we all start recording at the same time, we do 3 2 1 record, then 30 seconds of silence for the background noise, then 3 2 1 ZERO for the starting point. Each person records themselves and submits their file.

I can’t see how using ripple would keep things in sync, unless it was to remove silence across all regions equally, which isn’t usually what my edits are like.

Maybe I’m missing something.

Select a track, point at the point you want to silence from and press “s” to split the track. Then you can either

A) do the same at the end of the bit you want to silence, then select the region you’ve just created and press (I think) ctrl-1 to silence it (this toggles mute) or

B) drag the start of the bit you want to silence to choose how much of the region you want to hide.

All non-destructive and quick and easy to undo and adjust later.

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Ah, I’ve misunderstood. I think you want to select all the tracks, split them and then drag their beginnings and ends to hide the bits you want to remove, then ultimately move the regions manually (by selecting regions across all tracks) to avoid long silences.

Interested to hear whether anyone else has a better way.

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You could also just lower the volume for this part. The region gain curve might be most appropriate for this.

Te following Mixbus tutorial should come in handy to explain this (except for Tape-Satuation this also applies to Ardour). Around 2:20 … 2:50 in the video:

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I now understand more about your need for a recording sync solution! Thanks for clarifying and, yes, ripple editing across multiple tracks wouldn’t work in this case given you are syncing a transient before doing any further editing. As per @x42’s suggestion, the range selection and dragging down the region gain curve is ideal.

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That was very helpful, just what I was looking for. It’s a little different workflow since on Audacity my left pinky is almost always on the CTRL key, so I can zoom in and out of a range, with the scroll wheel, and then CTRL + s is silence so I can select the region after zooming in, and then silence it without moving my hands significantly from the keyboard. I’ll have to think about the best ergonomic way to achieve this in Ardour.

You could also just use the range tool to select what you want to silence and then press <delete> or <backspace>. That might be more efficient.

PS. There was a workshop on using Ardour for podcasts recently at the Linuxaudio Conference. However the video recording is not yet up.

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I’ve been following Unfa’s videos on Youtube, especially this one for setting up Ardour for podcasting, https://youtu.be/ikPR1b9pbqQ . It gets a little too big a radio sound for me, but it was a good starting point. I’ll look forward to the Linuxaudio conference video that sounds right up my alley.

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