2. Quick Tour

2.1 Overview

The following figure shows the different parts of the Tachyon application (click to zoom in and out).

Note

The screenshots and figures in this manual might slightly differ from the actual appearance of the application. The screenshots here correspond to the "Flat Light" theme, which might not be the default or current one. The current theme can be changed as described in section 4.3.3.

The different parts of the Tachyon application, shown on the figure above, are:

• (1) The "Input Files" list (top left). These are the existing audio files to transform
• (2) The time stretching settings (bottom). Here you can choose by how much to slow down or speed up the audio files. This part is only visible if at least one file is selected in the "Input Files" list, and the values apply to the selected file(s)
• (3) The Transform button (middle). Click here to start transforming the files selected in (1) using the time stretching settings defined in (2)
• (4) The "Output Files" list (top right). This list contains the transformed versions of the input files as well as the files being transformed, or waiting to be transformed.

2.2 Transforming audio files

When starting Tachyon, the application initially looks as follows:

The first step is to drag and drop one or more audio files (preferably in the WAVE (*.wav), AIFF (*.aiff) or AU (*.au) format) from the system explorer to the "Input Files" panel, where the "Drop audio files here" watermark is visible. You can also click on the Add Files... button to add audio files using a file chooser.

The next step is to choose the time stretching factor using the bottom panel, as shown in the next figure.

If the panel illustrated above does not appear, select one or more input files (use the Ctrl key while clicking to select multiple files) to make it appear.

You can either move the slider (1), or type a value (in percent) in the number field (2). A value of 120% for example will make the audio file 20% longer. A value of 80% will make it 20% shorter. Note however that nothing is done until you click on the Transform button.

Other ways of specifying the time stretching factor are described in more details in section 3.2.1.

Once you have set the time stretching factor, click the Transform button to start transforming the selected file(s). The selected files will disappear from the "Input Files" list, and appear on the "Output Files" list illustrated on the following figure. A rotating throbber () is visible on the left of a file while it is being transformed.

Hint: hold the Shift (⇧) key while clicking the Transform button to keep the original file(s) in the "Input Files" list.

Note: The input files are never deleted or modified: the application transforms them into new audio files. The transformed files have the same name, but with a suffix appended to the file name. The suffix corresponds to the time stretching ratio.

Once a file is fully transformed, the rotating throbber on the left of the file is replaced by a green checkmark (). By default, the transformed file is saved in the same directory as the corresponding original input file.

You can select a file in the "Output Files" list and click on the Play button to listen to the result. It is also possible to play a file that has not finished being transformed: the player will only play as much audio as available.