The Audio Part Editor

The Audio Part Editor allows you to view and edit the events inside audio parts. Essentially, this is the same type of editing that you do in the Project window, which means that this chapter contains a lot of references to the chapter “The Project window” on page 22.

Audio parts are created in the Project window in one of the following ways:

•By selecting one or several audio events on the same track, and selecting “Events to Part” from the Audio menu.

•By gluing together two or more audio events on the same track with the Glue Tube tool.

•By drawing an empty part with the Pencil tool.

•By double-clicking between the left and right locator on an audio track.

With the last two methods, an empty part is created. You can then add events to the part by pasting, or by using drag and drop from the Pool.

Opening the Audio Part Editor

You open the Audio Part Editor by selecting one or more audio part(s) in the Project window and double-clicking on any one of them (or using the Edit-Open key command, by default [Ctrl]/[Command]-[E]). The Audio Part Editor can display several parts at once, and you can also have more than one Audio Part Editor open at the same time.

Ö Double-clicking on an audio event in the Project window will open the Sample Editor (see “Opening the Sample Editor” on page 259).

The toolbar

The tools, settings and icons on the toolbar have the same functionality as in the Project window, with the following differences:

•A Solo button (see “Auditioning” on page 293).

•Separate tools for auditioning (Speaker) and scrubbing (see “Scrubbing” on page 293).

•No Line, Glue Tube or Color tools.

•Play and Loop icons and an Audition Volume control (see “Auditioning” on page 293).

•Independent Track Loop settings (see “The independent track loop function” on page 293).

•Part List controls for handling several parts: activating parts for editing, restricting editing to active parts only and showing part borders (see “Handling several parts” on page 294).

Ö You can customize the toolbar by hiding or reordering its items.

See “The Setup dialogs” on page 506.

The ruler and info line

These have the same functionality and appearance as their counterparts in the Project window.

• Note that you can select a separate display format for the Audio Part Editor ruler by clicking on the arrow button on the right and selecting an option from the pop-up menu that appears.

For a list of the available formats, see “The ruler” on page 31.

About lanes

If you make the editor window larger, this will reveal additional space below the edited events. This is because an audio part is divided vertically in lanes.

Lanes

Lanes can make it easier to work with several audio events in a part:

In the top figure it is unnecessarily hard to discern, select and edit the separate events. In the bottom figure, some of the events have been moved to a lower lane, making selection and editing much easier.

• To move an event to another lane without accidentally moving it horizontally, press [Ctrl]/[Command] and drag it up or down.

This is the default modifier key for this – you can adjust this in the Preferences if you like.

Overlapping events

Only one event per track can be played back at the same time! This means that if you have overlapping events (on the same lane or different lanes) these will cut each other off, according to the following rules:

•For events on the same lane, the ones that are on top (visible) will be played.

To move overlapping events to the front or back, use the Move to Front and Move to Back functions on the Edit menu.

•For events on different lanes, the event on the lowest lane gets playback priority.

The overlapping sections of the upper event will not be played since the event on the lower lane has playback priority!

Imagine the following situation: You have two overlapping audio events, with the top event audible during playback. What happens when you mute the audible event?

•By default, you will not hear the overlapped event when muting an event that has playback priority over another event.

This default behavior ensures that you don’t suddenly hear audio events that previously were not part of your mix.

•In the Preferences dialog (Editing–Audio page) you will find the option “Treat Muted Audio Events like Deleted”. When you activate this option, any events overlapped by a muted event will become audible.

Operations

Zooming, selecting and editing in the Audio Part Editor are done just as in the Project window (see “Operations” on page 33).

• Note that if a part is a shared copy (i.e. you have previously copied the part by [Alt]/[Option]+[Shift]-dragging), any editing you perform will affect all shared copies of this part.

To indicate that it is a shared copy, its name is displayed in italics and a symbol is displayed in the lower right corner of the part in the Project window (see “Aligning events” on page 45).

Auditioning

There are three ways to listen to the events in the Audio Part Editor:

By using the Speaker tool

If you click somewhere in the editor’s event display with the Speaker tool and keep the mouse button pressed, the part will be played back from the position where you clicked.

Playback will continue until you release the mouse button.

By using the Audition icon

By using regular playback

You can of course use the regular playback controls while in the Audio Part Editor. Furthermore, if you activate the Solo Editor button on the toolbar, only the events in the edited part will be played back.

The independent track loop function

The independent track loop is a sort of “mini-cycle”, affecting only the edited part. When the loop is activated, the events in the parts that are within the loop will be repeated continuously and completely independent – other events (on other tracks) are played back as usual. The only “interaction” between the loop and the “regular playback” is that every time the cycle starts over again, so does the loop.

To set up the independent track loop, proceed as follows:

1. Turn on the loop by clicking the Independent Track Loop button on the toolbar.

If it isn’t visible, right-click the toolbar and add the Independent Track Loop Settings section – see “The Setup dialogs” on page 506.

The Audition and Audition Loop icons.

Clicking the Audition icon on the toolbar plays back the edited audio, according to the following rules:

•If you have selected events in the part, only the section between the first and last selected event will be played back.

•If you have made a range selection, only this section will be played back.

•If there is no selection, the whole part will be played back. If the project cursor is within the part, playback starts from the current cursor position. If the cursor is outside the part, playback starts from the beginning of the part.

•If the Audition Loop icon is activated, playback will continue until you deactivate the Audition icon. Otherwise, the section will be played back once.

•When auditioning with the Speaker tool or Audition icon, audio will be routed directly to the Control Room or to the Main Mix (the default output bus), if the Control Room is disabled.

When the loop is activated, the cycle isn’t shown in the editor’s ruler. Now you need to specify the length of the loop:

2. [Ctrl]/[Command]-click in the ruler to set the start and [Alt]/[Option]-click to set the end of the loop.

You can also edit the loop start and end positions numerically in the fields next to the Loop button.

The loop is indicated in purple in the ruler.

Ö The events will be looped as long as the Loop button is activated and the Audio Part Editor window is open.

Scrubbing

In the Audio Part Editor, the Scrub tool has a separate icon on the toolbar. Apart from that, scrubbing works exactly as in the Project window (see “Scrubbing” on page 42).