Acoustica Premium 7.1.8 - automatic track splitting

[Paulo-Brazil]

Mr. Stian,

I refer to Acoustica Premium 7.1.8, running on Windows 10 Professional 64-bit.

--- 1. When I use the Automatic Track Splitting module, most of the times at the very end of each region (track) created by the module (and afterwards saved) there will be a short spike of sound, audible and visible mainly in the spectrogram window.

As an example, please take a look at the WAV file in this WeTransfer link (active for only one week):

https://we.tl/t-ur8DfkrFiI

To get that file, I took one track of a piano recording, and at two points of the track I inserted a 3 second silence, so effectively dividing the track into three parts. Then I used the Automatic Track Splitting module with the default parameters 2 / 20 / -30, so creating three regions, which were saved with the command File > Save Regions to File. The attached example is the end part of the saved region 2 - at the very end of this example there is the sound spike.

This happens nearly always when I split a file containing several pieces of music with the Automatic Track Splitting module, taking into account the silences that separate the various pieces of music. I don't know whether the sound spike at the end of each region includes audio from the beginning of the next region. But it seems to me that the sound spike is a nuisance, it possibly should not be there.

--- 2. As an observation, the Automatic Track Splitting module does not retain the values of its parameters between calls. If we choose values for the parameters other than the default, apply the module, then later call the module again, it will open always with the default values of the parameters. A module like Insert Silence will retain the value of its parameter between two successive applications. It seems to me that the modules should retain their parameters between calls, they shouldn't return to the default values at each time they are called.

--- 3. Another observation: the Automatic Track Splitting module is located within the Analysis menu. I wonder whether this is the correct place for that module, in the logical organization of Acoustica. Track Splitting is not of the same nature as Spectrogram or Statistics, which only perform some kind of analysis on the audio file but do not modify it in any way. Track Splitting is a sort of editing, an action that does modify the audio file, unlike all the other modules in the Analysis menu. In the menu system, shouldn't the Automatic Track Splitting module be placed maybe under the Edit menu?

--- 4. There seems to exist absolutely no information about the Automatic Track Splitting in the Help files, certainly nothing under the "Audio Analysis" tab, and no item in the Index. There is some information about track splitting in the "Using The Cleaning Wizard > Repair" tab, but this seems to be a different kind of business.

Regards,

Paulo

[stian]

Hi Paulo,

--- 1. When I use the Automatic Track Splitting module, most of the times at the very end of each region (track) created by the module (and afterwards saved) there will be a short spike of sound, audible and visible mainly in the spectrogram window.

As an example, please take a look at the WAV file in this WeTransfer link (active for only one week):

https://we.tl/t-ur8DfkrFiI

To get that file, I took one track of a piano recording, and at two points of the track I inserted a 3 second silence, so effectively dividing the track into three parts. Then I used the Automatic Track Splitting module with the default parameters 2 / 20 / -30, so creating three regions, which were saved with the command File > Save Regions to File. The attached example is the end part of the saved region 2 - at the very end of this example there is the sound spike.

This happens nearly always when I split a file containing several pieces of music with the Automatic Track Splitting module, taking into account the silences that separate the various pieces of music. I don't know whether the sound spike at the end of each region includes audio from the beginning of the next region. But it seems to me that the sound spike is a nuisance, it possibly should not be there.

Unfortunately, the link has expired due to my slowness. I assume that the spike you mentioned is from the following audio, right? So the problem is a small offset in the detection of the new track, I suppose. I'll look into that.

--- 2. As an observation, the Automatic Track Splitting module does not retain the values of its parameters between calls. If we choose values for the parameters other than the default, apply the module, then later call the module again, it will open always with the default values of the parameters. A module like Insert Silence will retain the value of its parameter between two successive applications. It seems to me that the modules should retain their parameters between calls, they shouldn't return to the default values at each time they are called.

Yes, that's been reported by other before and we'll fix that. It's definitely an annoyance.

--- 3. Another observation: the Automatic Track Splitting module is located within the Analysis menu. I wonder whether this is the correct place for that module, in the logical organization of Acoustica. Track Splitting is not of the same nature as Spectrogram or Statistics, which only perform some kind of analysis on the audio file but do not modify it in any way. Track Splitting is a sort of editing, an action that does modify the audio file, unlike all the other modules in the Analysis menu. In the menu system, shouldn't the Automatic Track Splitting module be placed maybe under the Edit menu?

You may be right, on the other hand we don't want to overcrowd the edit menu. It's pretty full already. The track splitting merely adds markers based on an analysis, so it's debatable...

--- 4. There seems to exist absolutely no information about the Automatic Track Splitting in the Help files, certainly nothing under the "Audio Analysis" tab, and no item in the Index. There is some information about track splitting in the "Using The Cleaning Wizard > Repair" tab, but this seems to be a different kind of business.

I've added a request for that in our tracking system and we'll get the automatic track splitting feature described in the help as well.

Best,
Stian