So you’ve used a few plug-ins in Audacity and you’ve heard that it’s possible (and not too difficult) to write your own plug-ins. Now what? Where do you start? Here’s some pointers that will hopefully get you on your way.
First, three pages from the official Audacity web site:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/nyquist
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/nyquist2
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/nyquist3
After that, an excellent reference page that covers many of the essential elements of Nyquist plug-ins by Edgar:
http://www.audacity-forum.de/download/edgar/nyquist/nyquist-doc/devel/audacity-nyquist-en.htm
If possible, install “Nyquist WorkBench”
Unfortunately it is not available as a pre-built binary, but for Linux users it is pretty easy to build from the source code that is available from here: http://audacity.homerow.net/index.php?dir=modules%2F
If you are not able to build Nyquist WorkBench, then a limited amount of exploration is possible by using the “Nyquist Prompt” from the Effect menu. For experimenting with simple “Generator” type effects there is a plug-in called “Nyquist generate prompt” that is available from here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/nyquistplugins
After the first few experiments it will be time to start working with plug-ins.There are several ways to approach this, and the most suitable will probably depend on your previous experience and personal preference.
- The Nyquist WorkBench is an extremely convenient way to test out plug-ins.
- Nyquist is available as a standalone application (see here), though you need to be aware that there are some important differences between the standalone version and how Audacity handles Nyquist – in particular concerning the transformation environment. This can cause major headaches when trying to move code that involves warp from standalone Nyquist to Audacity-Nyquist.
- A simple way of testing Nyquist scripts is to create a basic test plug-in that contains just the Audacity header information. This test plug-in will appear in the Audacity menu Effect, Generate or Analyze – depending on which type has been set and can be edited and immediately tested in Audacity while the script is still open in the text editor.
Essential software:
- The latest version of Audacity (available from the Audacity download page).
- A text editor that has parentheses matching.
- Preferably a text editor that has syntax highlighting for Lisp (ideally for XLisp, though I don’t know of any text editors that have that).
For Windows, NotePad++ is a free, open source text editor that has parentheses matching and Lisp syntax highlighting.
For Linux there’s Scite, or various other options.
Essential reference documentation:
- The Nyquist manual
- The XLISP manual
- The XLISP Language Reference
Thank you for Channel Mixer! It saves me several steps in an operation I do sometimes a dozen times a week. The wireless mic at our church has a few low-signal spots that our pastor and other speakers walk through way too often. Since I record stereo from start to finish anyway, I mix a little overhead mic into the R ch as a backup. When editing, wherever there’s a dropout I used to:
1: Split to Mono;
2: Deselect the bottom (R) channel;
3: Invert
4: Reselect the bottom channel;
5: Amp 20 dB (or whatever was about right the previous time);
6: Make Stereo Track;
7: Leave a label to remind myself to apply noise filtering and possibly fade-by-dB after I convert the sermon to mono;
8: Avoid playing this part in headphones while it’s still stereo!
Channel mixer reduces this to 3 steps (Ch Mix; amp; do the filtering now instead of leaving a note), plus saving some wear and tear on my eardrums.
Thanks for the feedback Dick.
Steve