9 · Editing Clips

The Edit view timeline is where you arrange and refine your audio. This chapter covers selecting, moving, trimming, fading, splitting, and the tools and modes that make editing fast — including ripple edit and the cursor tools.

By design: AnalogDAW's editing tools shape and arrange what you actually played — they trim, fade, gain, slip, split, and comp. There is no pitch correction and no timing quantization or time-stretching. If the tuning or the timing isn't right, the fix is another take, not a slider. This keeps the human feel of your recordings intact — see What AnalogDAW is — and what it isn't.

The timeline toolbar

At the top-right of the timeline ruler are the editing controls:

The cursor tools

The edit tool changes what clicking and dragging on a clip does. Pick one from the Edit Tool menu:

On iPad & iPhone, a one-finger drag on a track lane pans the timeline (the natural touch gesture), so the rubber-band selection lives on its own Marquee tool — switch to it when you want to drag a selection box. On macOS, a Pointer drag on empty lane space marquee-selects directly.

Tip: The Pointer handles the vast majority of editing on its own — reach for the specialized tools when you want that behavior to be the default for every click.

Selecting clips

• Click a clip to select it (with the Pointer).
• ⌘-click (macOS) to add/remove clips from a multi-selection.
• Drag on empty lane space to marquee-select across tracks.
• Select All — ⌘A.
• Clear selection — from a clip's context menu.

Selected clips move, copy, delete, and process together.

Moving and arranging

• Drag a clip along its lane to reposition it in time, or to another track's lane.
• With Snap on, edges snap to the bar/beat grid for tight, musical edits. Turn snap off for free placement.
• Nudge the playhead with the arrow keys (← / → move by a bar); jump to the start (Return or ⌘←) or the end (⌘→).

Trimming, fades, and gain

With the Pointer tool, hover a clip's edges and corners:

• Trim — drag the left or right edge to shorten or reveal more of the clip. Trimming is non-destructive; the underlying audio is untouched.
• Fades — drag a clip's top corner inward to create a fade-in or fade-out. Fades smooth the start/end and prevent clicks; crossfade two clips by overlapping their fades.
• Gain — use the Gain tool, or the clip's gain handle, to set the clip's level.

Other handy clip commands (from the clip's context menu):

• Rename Clip
• Reset Position & Trim — clears all trim and fades (revealing the full source file) and moves the clip to the very start of the timeline (position 0).
• Bounce in Place — select two or more clips on the same track and merge them into a single new audio file, with each clip's trim, fades, and gain printed in. This consolidates a chopped-up region into one tidy clip. (It renders the clips' own audio — it does not print the channel strip's EQ, compression, or inserts.)

Splitting and joining

• Split at Playhead — ⌘T cuts the selected clip(s) at the playhead into two. (Or use the Slice tool to click-split anywhere.)
• Join Selected Clips — ⌘J reunites clips back into one. Join works on adjacent clips on the same track that came from the same source file (with no gap between them) — so it's the inverse of Split, rejoining pieces you cut apart. It won't merge unrelated clips or close a gap.

Copy, paste, duplicate, delete

Paste drops clips at the current playhead position.

Ripple Edit

Ripple Edit keeps everything in sync when you remove or move material — later clips slide to follow, instead of leaving a gap.

• Ripple off (default): deleting a clip leaves an empty gap; moving a clip leaves the others where they are. Good for free-form arranging.
• Ripple on: deleting a clip closes the gap by pulling later clips on the track earlier; edits ripple down the timeline so timing stays continuous.

Turn it on with the signpost button in the timeline toolbar. Ripple is ideal for editing spoken word, podcasts, and any arrangement where removing a section should tighten everything that follows.

Note: Watch the ripple indicator before deleting — with ripple on, a delete shifts the rest of the track, which is exactly what you want for tightening, but a surprise if you forgot it was enabled.

Snap and zoom

• Snap locks edits to the bar/beat grid derived from your tempo and meter — toggle it for precise musical edits vs. free placement.
• Zoom in/out with the toolbar buttons or ⌘+ / ⌘−; tap the zoom percentage to reset to 100%. Zoom in for sample-accurate edits, out for the big picture.
• Follow Playhead auto-scrolls so the playhead stays visible during playback and recording. It pauses automatically if you scroll manually; toggle with F.

Automation

Automation lets a control (like volume or pan) change over time. On the timeline, open a track's automation lane to draw moves:

• Use the Pencil tool (or the Pointer) to add and drag breakpoints that the value glides between.
• Automation has playback modes (Read, Write, Touch, Latch) that decide whether moves are followed or recorded as you adjust the controls live — see Mixing.

The parameters you can automate are volume (fader), mute, pan, and each aux send level.

Undo / Redo

Every edit is undoable. Undo is ⌘Z, Redo is ⇧⌘Z; both are also in the main menu (☰) and clip context menus. Edit fearlessly.

Next: Mixing →