Getting Started with Nyquist

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.

  1. The Nyquist WorkBench is an extremely convenient way to test out plug-ins.
  2. 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.
  3. 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:

2 thoughts on “Getting Started with Nyquist”

  1. 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.

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