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Forum List => Technical Support => Topic started by: wallewek on April 01, 2026, 12:44:33 AM

Title: Interpreting the waveform display
Post by: wallewek on April 01, 2026, 12:44:33 AM
I feel like this must be a dumb question but I can't find it documented anywhere.  If you can point me to there I'd really appreciate it.

When I edit my recordings, cleaning up noise and splitting tracks, the waveform display is really important, and I love the way it works.  But there's something I can't help feeling I must be missing.

First, are the upper and lower before and after, or different channels?  If the latter, why are they so different?  Also, what do the colors mean?  I see two kinds of green, plus grey.

Am I doing something wrong?  Here's a picture example:

Thanks!
Title: Re: Interpreting the waveform display
Post by: Paul Sanders (AlpineSoft) on April 01, 2026, 01:53:06 AM
The upper trace is the left-hand channel and the lower trace the right.  You probably clicked on the 'play left / right channel only' button in the toolbar to get the display looking like that (grey, in that context, means 'disabled').

The paler green is a simplified version of the waveform display which is intended to help identify track breaks (not sure if it helps much).  You can turn it off via Menu -> Options -> Cursor Options -> Show Simplified Waveform Display if you don't like it.
Title: Re: Interpreting the waveform display
Post by: wallewek on April 01, 2026, 10:00:43 PM
Perfect!  Thanks!  Couple of thoughts:

Indeed, getting track breaks right takes a lot of time fiddling to get starts and ends right.  It might help if the vertical scale showed numbers on both the Cleanup and Split screens, to set the start/end levels better.

Also, your various popup screens are very helpful, but I always have to close them to use the contents.  I think this is what they call "modal" dialogs, right?  You probably can't do this, but is there any way to leave them open when I return to the parent screen?