New Millenium user, several questions/problems

[Jonathan Sachs]

I just bought a copy of DC-Art Millennium to clean up LPs that I?m transferring to CDs. I know it will take me a while to learn how the filters work, but there are some other aspects of the program that aren't working the way it seems they should. I?ll welcome any advice or suggestions from more experienced users.

In no particular order:

1. I see no need to manipulate the destination file directly (yet), so I would like to reduce the amount of space it takes in the window so that I can see the source file better. As a good second-best alternative, I would like to be able to hide it completely. I can?t find a way to do either one.

2. I have had a lot of trouble dragging the ends of a selected area to desired locations. Often I drag the end of the area to a new location, and when I release the mouse button the end stays right where it was, but the beginning moves to the new location (or vice versa). How can I make it behave itself?

3. ?Highlight marked area? seems to select the region between the two markers in which the previously selected region begins, regardless of where the play cursor is. Thus, to select the region I want I must click AND drag to select a new region, then select the command to select the region I actually want. It?s hard to remember to do this because it seems so pointless. Is it a bug? If not, what is the logic behind it?

4. I can?t find a way to make the window display the Y axis origins, which makes the display hard to interpret when zoomed in to a high magnification. Also, I can?t find a way to display timing markers, which makes some operations much harder than they need to be. (Example: selecting a region to delete in order to shorten an excessively long pause between tracks.) If these things are possible, how are they done?

5. I think this one is a bug: ?Save As? does not display a wait cursor. Sometimes the ?Save As? dialog box remains open until the save is complete; sometimes it doesn't, and I can?t tell when the command has finished except by watching the activity light on my disk.

6. I know this one is a bug: selecting ?Help/Search for Help on? crashes the program.

7. ?Zoom in? seems to work only by zooming in to fit the selected region, and ?Zoom out? seems to work only by returning to the previous zoom setting or by displaying the entire sound file. (I have not figured out whether the latter behavior is a bug, and if not, what makes "Zoom out" do one thing or the other.) Is there a way to zoom in or out by a fixed percentage? Both modes of operation would be useful, but if I had to choose one I would much prefer the fixed percentage!

8. I?m having difficulty removing clicks effectively, and I could use some advice.

First, I find that the impulse filter misses many small to medium clicks unless I set the tracking slider so low that sound quality suffers. Therefore I am trying to remove the remaining clicks manually with Edit/Paste Interpolate, but I am having trouble locating the clicks. I can?t locate them by ear precisely enough, and I can?t locate many of them by eye because they seem to disappear as I zoom in.

The help file says that ?It will take some training to be able to identify transients visually, so be patient during your learning curve,? but I can?t learn how to identify them without some hint about what to look for! Advice, please!

[rickc]

Jonathan
I will try to answer your questions, some of this will probably sound like an advertisement for DC6 which was created to address some of the issues you raise. So here it goes:

1. I see no need to manipulate the destination file directly (yet), so I would like to reduce the amount of space it takes in the window so that I can see the source file better. As a good second-best alternative, I would like to be able to hide it completely. I can?t find a way to do either one.

There is no way to hide the destination window, or even make it smaller and I don't think you really want to do this anyway. There are a few operations that you probably do want to do on the destination file. All immediate editing operation such as cut, copy, paste, mute and Interpolate are best done directly on the destination file. Interpolating click is probably best done on the destination file. But even if you dont do any of those you still want to listen to it. For that you will need to see it.
DC6 has fast edit mode that works in a conventional single file view (like a word processor)

2. I have had a lot of trouble dragging the ends of a selected area to desired locations. Often I drag the end of the area to a new location, and when I release the mouse button the end stays right where it was, but the beginning moves to the new location (or vice versa). How can I make it behave itself?

I don't know what is going on here. You need to make sure that the cursor becomes an arrow before you start to drag. You should also zoom in more to separate the start and stop points. If they are too close together on the screen you may get this kind of action.

3. ?Highlight marked area? seems to select the region between the two markers in which the previously selected region begins, regardless of where the play cursor is. Thus, to select the region I want I must click AND drag to select a new region, then select the command to select the region I actually want. It?s hard to remember to do this because it seems so pointless. Is it a bug? If not, what is the logic behind it?

You may be trying too hard. The basic way to select a region is to click and drag, not using the markers. So for the most part, you click and drag to select an area. Do some operation on this area like zoom, play filter, etc, then go on to the next area. A click, drag to select an area, then a zoom (z key) is probably the most common operation.
This is different than some other programs where you need to define start and stop points to define regions. Millennium and DC6 have the concept of a selected area.

4. I can?t find a way to make the window display the Y axis origins, which makes the display hard to interpret when zoomed in to a high magnification. Also, I can?t find a way to display timing markers, which makes some operations much harder than they need to be. (Example: selecting a region to delete in order to shorten an excessively long pause between tracks.) If these things are possible, how are they done?

The y axis origin is represented by the center grid line which is visible if you are zoomed in far enough. We added a Y axis scale in DC6

In the View menu there is a Time display menu. This pops us the time display window that has start, stop, delta and cursor position info.

5. I think this one is a bug: ?Save As? does not display a wait cursor. Sometimes the ?Save As? dialog box remains open until the save is complete; sometimes it doesn't, and I can?t tell when the command has finished except by watching the activity light on my disk.

6. I know this one is a bug: selecting ?Help/Search for Help on? crashes the program.

Yup, bugs

7. ?Zoom in? seems to work only by zooming in to fit the selected region, and ?Zoom out? seems to work only by returning to the previous zoom setting or by displaying the entire sound file. (I have not figured out whether the latter behavior is a bug, and if not, what makes "Zoom out" do one thing or the other.) Is there a way to zoom in or out by a fixed percentage? Both modes of operation would be useful, but if I had to choose one I would much prefer the fixed percentage!

You are correct, zoom in zooms to the selected area. Zoom out returns to the previous zoom level. There are 5 levels of zoom, so if you had zoomed in 10 times, then zoom out, after the 5th zoom out, you would get back to see the entire file.
DC6 has this method, plus the fixed percentage zoom functionality that you are asking for.

8. I?m having difficulty removing clicks effectively, and I could use some advice.

First, I find that the impulse filter misses many small to medium clicks unless I set the tracking slider so low that sound quality suffers. Therefore I am trying to remove the remaining clicks manually with Edit/Paste Interpolate, but I am having trouble locating the clicks. I can?t locate them by ear precisely enough, and I can?t locate many of them by eye because they seem to disappear as I zoom in.

I would search this message board for other hints because this has come up before. One technique is to use multiple passes of the click filter with different settings, or to do selective filtering on different parts of the file with different settings.
Again, DC6 has the EzClick filter plus a better click detection algorithm.

Hope this helps..

Rick

[Jonathan Sachs]

New-user questions (continued)

Thanks for your prompt and helpful replies. I need to respond to a few of your suggestions, and add a couple of new questions.

I appreciate the advantages of DC6, but I can?t justify the expense at this point. I will have to see how frequently I do sound editing after I have worked through my accumulated backlog of LPs and digitized tracks.

>>3. ?Highlight marked area?... to select the region I want I must click
>>AND drag to select a new region, then select the command to select
>>the region I actually want.

>You may be trying too hard. The basic way to select a region is to
>click and drag, not using the markers.

In this case (at least), I don?t think so. I?m using the markers to mark the divisions between bands on an LP, and ?highlight marked area? is the only straightforward way I have found to do it. I can?t select a band accurately by click-and-drag unless I zoom in, which creates a catch-22 situation because after I have set one end and zoomed out again, I can?t zoom in to set the other end without losing the first end! Even if there is a way around that, the procedure would be much more laborious. I would urge the development people to address this in a future version.

>>4. ... to display timing markers...

>In the View menu there is a Time display menu. This pops us the
>time display window that has start, stop, delta and cursor position info.

I think you misunderstood. I am using the time window, but it is a poor substitute for timing markers for some of the tasks I am doing (although it is valuable in its own right and is a superior tool for others). I?ll give one example (I could give more).

When I locate a click that I want to correct by hand, the first thing I want to know is approximately how long it is. If I had timing markers, I could figure this out just by glancing at them. The Time pop-up won?t tell me unless I select a region around the click, which I generally do not want to do at this point because it will make me lose the previously selected region. Therefore I must set the cursor at one end, write down the time, set the cursor at the other end, write down the time, and subtract. It?s a much more laborious and error-prone procedure.

I gather that timing markers are not available. This is a significant shortcoming, and again, I hope it will be addressed in future versions.

>>7. ?Zoom in? seems to work only by zooming in to fit the selected region,
>>and ?Zoom out? seems to work only by returning to the previous zoom
>>setting or by displaying the entire sound file...

>You are correct... Zoom out returns to the previous zoom level. There are
>5 levels of zoom, so if you had zoomed in 10 times, then zoom out, after
>the 5th zoom out, you would get back to see the entire file.

I didn?t know about the limit on zooming in, but I?m sure that so far I have never zoomed in more than a half-dozen times. Also, I have experienced this behavior in cases where I zoomed in only two or three times. It may be another bug.

9 (first new question). The help file says that the impulse filter?s effect is most evident in ?sibilant? passages; what does that mean? To me (and my dictionary),? sibilant? means ?hissing.? I can?t think of any music in my library that sounds like hissing. I want to use some ?sibilant? material to experiment with the impulse filter parameters, but I?m not sure what to look for.

10. I have one recording in which about 100 milliseconds of the left channel are simply gone, with some noise at the start and end of the gap, while the right channel is unaffected. I?m trying to figure out how to correct this. The best approach I can think of is to copy the right channel into the left channel to fill the gap, with a rapid fade-in of one signal superimposed on a fade-out of the other. I?m trying to figure out how to do that, and the only technique I can think of seems incredibly round-about.

The problem is that there seems to be no way to apply editing (for example, mute) to a single channel. Therefore I must (1) split the recording into two mono files, (2) open the left-channel file, (3) select the dropped-out region, (4) mute it, (5) insert a fade-out before it and (6) a fade-in after it, (7) note the exact times when the fade-out and fade-in start and end, (8) save and close the file, (9) make a copy of the right-channel file, (10) open the copy, (11) mute everything before and after the position of the drop-out, (12) add a fade-in at the start of the remaining signal and (13) a fade-out at the end, (14) save and close, (15) recombine the left-channel file with the modified copy of the right-channel file, (16) blend 100% of the left channel and 100% of the right channel into the left channel, (17) split the channels again, and (18) recombine the left-channel file with the original right-channel file.

(I?m assuming it?s even possible to be combine two mono files into a stereo file. From my reading of the help file?s description of the Channel Blender, I?m not sure that?s true.)

This whole procedure is so involved, if it?s feasible at all, that I think there must be an easier way to accomplish the result. I can?t find one, though.

[rickc]

Jonathan
We do not have timing markers, but it is a good suggestion and we will consider adding it to future release. One more thing, you can double click between markers to highlighing the area between the markers.

9 (first new question). The help file says that the impulse filter?s effect is most evident in ?sibilant? passages; what does that mean? To me (and my dictionary),? sibilant? means ?hissing.? I can?t think of any music in my library that sounds like hissing. I want to use some ?sibilant? material to experiment with the impulse filter parameters, but I?m not sure what to look for.

What me mean specifically by sibilant passages are ones with lots of high frequency content above 3kHz. One example is the "s" sound of some female vocals or cymbals. Also solo or prominent brass instruments like trumpets and slide trombone are areas where the Click filter has a tougher time.

10. I have one recording in which about 100 milliseconds of the left channel are simply gone, with some noise at the start and end of the gap, while the right channel is unaffected. I?m trying to figure out how to correct this. The best approach I can think of is to copy the right channel into the left channel to fill the gap, with a rapid fade-in of one signal superimposed on a fade-out of the other. I?m trying to figure out how to do that, and the only technique I can think of seems incredibly round-about.

Sorry to say, again that DC6 makes this much easier. There is a way to select either the left or the right channel so copying and pasting between channels is easy. There is also a split to mono, and combine to stereo function available. It is much tougher on Millennium.


The problem is that there seems to be no way to apply editing (for example, mute) to a single channel. Therefore I must (1) split the recording into two mono files, (2) open the left-channel file, (3) select the dropped-out region, (4) mute it, (5) insert a fade-out before it and (6) a fade-in after it, (7) note the exact times when the fade-out and fade-in start and end, (8) save and close the file, (9) make a copy of the right-channel file, (10) open the copy, (11) mute everything before and after the position of the drop-out, (12) add a fade-in at the start of the remaining signal and (13) a fade-out at the end, (14) save and close, (15) recombine the left-channel file with the modified copy of the right-channel file, (16) blend 100% of the left channel and 100% of the right channel into the left channel, (17) split the channels again, and (18) recombine the left-channel file with the original right-channel file.

(I?m assuming it?s even possible to be combine two mono files into a stereo file. From my reading of the help file?s description of the Channel Blender, I?m not sure that?s true.)

This whole procedure is so involved, if it?s feasible at all, that I think there must be an easier way to accomplish the result. I can?t find one, though.[/QUOTE]

[rickc]

Jonathan
We do not have timing markers, but it is a good suggestion and we will consider adding it to future release. One more thing, you can double click between markers to highlighing the area between the markers.

9 (first new question). The help file says that the impulse filter?s effect is most evident in ?sibilant? passages; what does that mean? To me (and my dictionary),? sibilant? means ?hissing.? I can?t think of any music in my library that sounds like hissing. I want to use some ?sibilant? material to experiment with the impulse filter parameters, but I?m not sure what to look for.

What me mean specifically by sibilant passages are ones with lots of high frequency content above 3kHz. One example is the "s" sound of some female vocals or cymbals. Also solo or prominent brass instruments like trumpets and slide trombone are areas where the Click filter has a tougher time. So these might be areas where you would do selective filtering with lighter setting on the click filter.

10. I have one recording in which about 100 milliseconds of the left channel are simply gone, with some noise at the start and end of the gap, while the right channel is unaffected. I?m trying to figure out how to correct this. The best approach I can think of is to copy the right channel into the left channel to fill the gap, with a rapid fade-in of one signal superimposed on a fade-out of the other. I?m trying to figure out how to do that, and the only technique I can think of seems incredibly round-about.

The way to mute a single channel or a section of a single channel in Millennium is actually easy. Use the file conversion filter and select the area you want to mute in the source file. Now set the filter for a stereo-stereo conversion and set the amplitude of the channel you want to mute to -96dB and run the filter. The channel blender will allow you to then go and apply some of the left channel to the right channel to put back some signal where it is muted.

Again that DC6 makes this easier. There is a way to select either the left or the right channel so all operations can be done one just one channel. There is also a split to mono, and combine to stereo function available. It is much tougher on Millennium.

If you do want to split to two mono files, there is a procedure to do that posted somewhere on this web site.

Hope this helps.

[Jonathan Sachs]

New Millenium user, several questions/problems

Thanks for all of your advice! I think I will be all set for now as soon as I browse the rest of the forum for tips on using the impulse noise filter.

I'm really impressed by the quality of your user support. I'm going to make a point of recommending your products to anyone who might find them useful.