Re: question about sound

[David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk>]

On Wed 17 Aug 2022 at 20:00:17 (+0000), ghe2001 wrote:
> Anybody have anything to say about editing sound files?
> 
> I started to answer the poster's question and found that, in their infinite wisdom, the Debian designers seem to have removed Audacity from the upcoming release, Bookworm.
> 
> Bad idea, IMHO.  Suggestions for replacements?  They are one or more Debian users that have relied on Audacity for years.

For Mick's .wav files, I would use mpv to play them, which gives an
elapsed time indication, and sox to extract the desired section.
(Sound-wise, I'm ALSA-only.)

If you don't require too much precision, mpv is a quick wav of
finding, say, the gaps between tracks when you dub a vinyl record,
using Left/RightArrows, SpaceBar, and l to loop a section.

$ sox infile.wav outfile.wav trim <start> <duration>
will extract a section. If I need precision, or want to impose
a fade or other effect, I use soxy to "rehearse" the sound, eg
$ soxy infile.wav trim 6:18.8 10 fade h 0 -0 4
would play just the last ten seconds of a recording of length
6:28.8, with a four second face-out.

$ type soxy
soxy is a function
soxy () 
{ 
    [ -z "$1" ] && printf '%s\n' "Usage:	${FUNCNAME[0]} path-to/sound-file-of-any-type [trim 20 2]
	runs sox to play the file with any arguments given.
	The example above reminds you to put the full argument." 1>&2 && return 1;
    local From="$1";
    shift;
    sox -q "$From" -t alsa default "$@"
}
$ 

For generating multiple tracks for burning to a CD, I've always used
my own Python programs for over twenty years. They take account of
the divisibility of Nsamples by 2352/4 when the WAV format is CD-type,
and chunk the data to prevent overloading CPU/memory. (I was using a
Pentium II (Klamath) @266MHz with 384MB at the time, IIRC, for
recording, ripping, processing and burning.)

Cheers,
David.