Compacting audio files is a good way to save space on your hard drive by removing unused audio data. Compacting audio is a destructive edit which changes the sound files on the hard disk and cannot be undone. When you highlight a soundbite in the soundbites window and choose compact the program will look at the audio file the soundbite is contained with in and remove all audio data that is not currently being used in a soundbite (or region). Once this data is removed the audio file is reassembled back into one continuous piece containing only the used soundbites.

Since soundbites are written into the actual Sound Designer 2 files it is possible that compact will not remove audio not being used in the current file because a soundbite exists in the SD2 file that does not exist in the project, either created in another project or program. Therefore, before compacting an audio file it is a good idea to get rid of all unwanted soundbites which are written into the SD2 file. By choosing select all unused soundbites and then delete from the Soundbites Window mini-menu, all soundbites not currently appearing in a track or take will be erased from the project file and from the SD2 audio file on the disk. If you delete the last remaining soundbite in an audio file DP will ask if you wish to remove the audio file from the computer completely. Compacting the remaining (in use) soundbites will then keep only the data currently used in the file and erase the rest of the data off of the disk.