I’m trying to upgrade from Audacity to Ardour by just experimenting with basic things, but I’m running into trouble. For example, in Audacity, I can highlight a section of an audio track, go to Effect>Reverse, and reverse the audio.
I can’t figure out how to do this in Ardour. I think it has something to do with my lack of understanding the concept of a Region. I can go under Edit>Select>Select all objects, and then go to Region>Edit>Reverse, but that reverses the whole track. How do I reverse (or, I guess, add other effects) to just a highlighted portion of a track?
In this instance I personally would split the area you want to reverse into its own region and then do the Region>Edit>Reverse. I don’t believe that you can add other plugin effects to regions. You’d have to do it on a per-track basis I think.
We should be clear about something. Ardour is not an “upgrade” from Audacity.
Audacity is a destructive audio file editor.
Ardour is a non-destructive, non-linear audio workstation.
These are not the same kinds of programs, and the right one to use depends on what you’re doing. Even though it is true that you can do almost anything possible with Audacity in Ardour, the concepts are totally different.
Audacity is all about changing the contents of an audio file in various ways. Ardour never changes the contents of audio files, and is all about non-destructive editing, signal flow and mixing.
there’s a plugin I was fiddling a while ago and just by luck I accidentally stumbled upon an effect of this sort. However I forget which one exactly but it was definitely one of the auburn plugins. There’s probably other ways of accomplishing this with some delay effect. I will try to see if I can refabricate this with the same plugin I performed this with… though I’m not sure if that is the intent of the plugin, but it was definitely was a reverse-effect which I recall – an interesting effect though I don’t know how valuable that may be for production
Just realizing that @sleepyhead is coming from Audacity (I mean, adding Ardour to his arsenal of tools) so trying to give him the most obvious way forward (there may be an even simpler one I don’t know about). That said, Ardour, like Linux, is beautiful because there are so many different ways to crack the same nut. It seems we agree wholeheartedly on this
I’m not a pro and learning here too though I think I’m learning this stuff pretty fast :)) still catching up watchout!!
funny thing is I can’t replicate the effect, I’ve been checking quite a few dozen the past couple weeks… still overwhelmed with the choices and even though I am here on Linux, there is still a lot of interesting plugins available… Just discovered discoDSP Bliss can do internal samplings of other VST-loadings for key zones and that is a whole other ballpark…
yeah simplicity for the approach for solutions is something we users should be striving towards, – I’ve been uncovering more aspects of MIDI, and even that in itself could be confusing due to its versatility… Someone coming from audacity must know a couple of things regarding noise-removal, and that can be an advantage for better crisp productions… Here I’d like to get into such noise-level controls within the daw itself, but I wouldn’t be working with these tasks soon — hobby for now for little audio things I am doing tehehe
it’s right about the region-select reverse – that’s easier that way… I got caught up with alternative ways of doing things…
Join the club. I only know what I know about Ardour through forcing myself (in the nicest possible sense) to complete various live concert recordings using only open source stuff (with Mixbus in there for some sneaky analog goodness). I can’t really “mix” to save my life (my limit is blending in spot microphones or balancing two stereo arrays) and my mastering consists only of stuff relating to my very narrow classical workflow i.e. limited to the bare minimum. Beyond your basic EQ, reverb, compression and limiting, I have no real clue about other fancy effects. I mean, I could learn if I have to but I also have passions for other things like cooking, chess, and Linux (as well as interacting with my family). Welcome @sleepyhead. Somewhere in this conversation is the answer to your original question
Ardour’s effects all run in realtime. Signal flows through them, like on a live mixing desk.
So, unless you have a time-machine a plugin cannot do reverse playback.
You need data from the future. A plugin could only do this for a short period of time, and introduce latency.
For example, buffer audio from “now” to “now + 1second”, and then in the second after that, that buffered data can be played back in reverse. In this example, reversed “now” will be audible 2 seconds after “now”.
Time reversal is best done by edit operations: Select the range you want reversed with the range-tool (‘R’), then press ‘S’ to split it. Use the grab-tool (‘G’) to select the region, and Alt+4 (reverse).
that’s correct, it is a real soaker – it was some delay effect – the dry signal was set down to low, and the wet effect was set to a couple seconds(it’s a rare plugin), the end effect is the sound iirc was reversed… when i reverse the same original source in audacity and reversed it, it sounded the same… it’s possible i did something more…
it is definitely soaking resources but you’re right it’s better to go with the built-in reverse option as that yields to better management of resources…
for @sleepyhead, don’t forget to split the “region” and then perform the reverse on that selection – though it sounds like you might use a bit of direction for the way ardour references things, here’s a link to the online info about regions – http://manual.ardour.org/editing-and-arranging/common-region-edit-operations/ (relates to regions as they are called – for both audio and midi tracks)
hope the info is not too overly confusing tehehe
cheers
I know this is old, but the conversation tickled a memory…maybe the thread starter used one of Tom Szilagi’s plugins “TAP Reflector”. The effect is very nice; it reverses up to a maximum of 1600 milliseconds. Check it out: Tap github
