Audio clips and background / selection shades

[LouHela]

My old eyes are having trouble viewing selected areas of audio clips. Here are 3 screenshots taken consecutively:

S1: In this screenshot nothing is selected.

 

S2: Here, the whole clip has been selected by clicking on it, and the lighter background is displayed. Nice and bright!

 

S3: However, here I have selected a region of the clip by click-dragging, and the light background disappears completely and the selected region has a BLACK background. I can barely see what I've selected.

 

Is there any way to make a selected region as light as in Screenshot 2? Or, indeed, change the whole backround color of a clip?

Changing the color of the waveform is not what I'm looking for.

Thanks and BR.

 

[57Gregy]

13 hours ago, LouHela said:

My old eyes are having trouble viewing selected areas of audio clips. Here are 3 screenshots taken consecutively:

S1: In this screenshot nothing is selected.

 

S2: Here, the whole clip has been selected by clicking on it, and the lighter background is displayed. Nice and bright!

 

S3: However, here I have selected a region of the clip by click-dragging, and the light background disappears completely and the selected region has a BLACK background. I can barely see what I've selected.

 

Is there any way to make a selected region as light as in Screenshot 2? Or, indeed, change the whole backround color of a clip?

Changing the color of the waveform is not what I'm looking for.

Thanks and BR.

 

The only way I can see so far is to Split that clip from the rest of the track, do what you want to do to it, then (if desired) bounce to clips to make it contiguous.

[LouHela]

Thanks Gregy. That would work, but somewhat frustrating if all I want to do is bump a small selection down by 2dB.

Was it always thus, even in CbB, that selected regions within a clip turned even darker than the clip itself? I don't remember.

But, just my opinion, the clue is surely in the name "highlight" a selection.

 

[Tim Elmore]

Another way to bump a small section down by 2dB is to edit the clip gain envelope like this:

Would this be visually easier for you to work with?

[LouHela]

Hi Tim

Good one, thanks! Never thought of that!

My issue is not particularly making small volume changes. 

I like to record my drums or guitars live with no metronome for a rough first take. When listening back,  I hear where a groove has got going. I'll then select that and try and loop it. With that looped clip I can then start building my song a stage further at the exact tempo I like.

After more investigation today I discovered that alt-click-drag cuts out a selected region of a clip, which I'll find very useful. It also retains a lighter background on the clip. Is that a new feature in new Sonar? Pretty sure it wasn't in CWPA 6 😬

[Tim Elmore]

The <alt>-click-drag also works in the last version of CbB, so it has apparently been around a while. I often do a click-drag (without the <alt> key) to select a segment, and then drag the selection to another location. If I make the selection and then press and hold down <ctrl>, I can drag-copy the selected part to somewhere else, and the original clip has no cut marks.

There's a lot of flexibility. I hope they soon make the contrast consistent between selecting a whole clip and a partial clip.

[LouHela]

Hi Tim.

I think back in the day alt-click-drag was the only way to select a segment within a clip. Anyway, I didn't know it was in CbB to cut a selection. Damn..

Well, that's two of us now hoping for better contrasts within selected items. I'm sure they'll change it immediately now.

 

 

[David Baay]

9 hours ago, LouHela said:

It also retains a lighter background on the clip. Is that a new feature in new Sonar?

A partial seleciton has always been dark to differentiate it from a fully-selected clip and has always been a little difficult to see. I just checked back to SONAR platinum, and it was pretty much the same in the Mercury theme. If anything the contrast of a partial selection might have improved slightly.

When you split out the section, the clip becomes fully selected so it's light again.

Edited yesterday at 12:13 AM by David Baay

[LouHela]

Thanks David.

It was interesting to read that older versions of Sonar were the same, thanks for checking.  I never had any issues with it before, so it seems everything has come full circle to the first words I wrote:  My old eyes. It seriously might be time for a check up.

BR.