Audacity is a free software, cross-platform digital audio editor and recording application.

It is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BSD.

Audacity was created by Dominic Mazzoni while he was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. Mazzoni now works at Google

Features and usage

Audacity can also be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including podcasts by adding effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out.

Audacity has also been used to record and mix entire albums

Audacity's features include the following:

Importing and exporting of WAV, AIFF, MP3 (via the LAME encoder, downloaded separately), Ogg Vorbis, WMA, AAC, AMR and AC3 via the optional FFmpeg library. Recording and playing back sounds Editing via Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited levels of Undo)

Multitrack mixing
A large array of digital effects and plug-ins. Noise Removal based on sampling the noise to be removed. Support for multi-channel modes Precise adjustments to the audio's speed while maintaining pitch Changes to the audio's pitch without changing the speed

Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or more commonly known as WAV due to its filename extension), (also, but rarely, named, Audio for Windows) is a Microsoft and IBM audio file format standard for storing an audio bitstream on PCs.

Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was co-developed[clarification needed] by Apple Computer in 1988

Windows Media Audio (WMA) is an audio data compression technology developed by Microsoft.

Advanced Audio Coding (AAC) is a standardized, lossy compression and encoding scheme for digital audio. Designed to be the successor of the MP3 format, AAC generally achieves better sound quality than MP3 at similar bit rates.

Adaptive Multi-Rate (AMR or AMR-NB) audio codec is a patented audio data compression scheme optimized for speech coding. AMR was adopted as the standard speech codec by 3GPP

Audacity LAME MP3 Encoder

The Audacity Lame MP3 encoder is needed to enable Audacity to export MP3 files.

Setting Up Audacity Preferences on Your Computer

Check the Preferences Edit Preferences Control P

Set Audio Input & Outputs

Set Playback Output

Set Recording Input

Sound Quality Tab

The higher the sample rate, the better quality your audio, but the larger the file size will be. For CD quality sound, record at 44,100 Hz.

Analog Recording
analog recording, the varying sound pressures in sound waves were reproduced with varying voltages produced by a microphone. These varying voltages were reproduced on magnetic tape with a metal coating.

Digital Recording
digital recording the soundwave is converted into an electric signal by a microphone. the physical propterties of the sound wave are converted into digital information which can then be decoded for final reproduction.

Measuring Sound
intensity of sound is measured in decibels (dB). It represents the relationship of sound pressure level to sound intensity.

Twenty decipbels (20dB) is about the sound made by rustling leaves.

A jet taking off at 200 feet away can be as loud as 125 dB.

The normal "Threshold of Hearing" is 0 dB and represents the hearing of someone with an undamaged ear.

Sampling
The intensity of the sound signal is measured at regular intervals which is called sampling. The more samples per second the greater the accuracy and quality of the recording.

CD quality sound is sampled at 44,100 samples per second or kHz. Digital Audio Tape (DAT) is capable of sampling at 32,000, 44,100, and 48,000 kHz.

Bit-rates
Bit-rate refers to how many bits (digital 1s and 0s) are used each second to represent the sound signal. The bit-rate for digital audio is represented in thousands of bits per second (kbps) and is directly proportional to file size and sound quality.

The recommended bit-rate for recording in Audacity is 32 - bit.

Audacity Tool Bars and Controls

Audacity includes six basic editing buttons which are located in two rows to the left of the play control buttons: Selection, Envelope, Draw, Zoom, Timeshift, and Multitool.

Selection Tool
Use to highlight audio selections by clicking and dragging across the audio wave form. The grayed area you selected is now ready to receive any number of editing tools or effects applied to the highlighted sample.

Envelope Tool
The Envelop tool is used to increase and decrease volume levels at various locations in your wave form. It is non-destructive which means that it will not effect the original audio file. Envelopes are useful for fading music into the background and for editing interviews or recording with two voices where one might be louder than the other.

Zoom Tool
The Zoom tool in indicated by the magnifying glass. You can use it to zoom in and out on specific parts of your wave form. Left click once to zoom in on a selection, or right click to zoom out.

Timeshift Tool
This Timeshift tool is a good way to cut and past or move an entire track. After selecting the Timeshift tool you can select a track and click on the wave form and drag it left or right to move it earlier or later in the timeline.

Multitool
The Multi-tool button lets you perform multiple editing actions with your mouse. It's like having all of the editing tools turned on at once. With the multi-tool selected you can adjust volumes up and down by adding envelope handles and you can select portions of the audio with the I-beam selection cursor. You can also zoom in on your selection by right clicking and dragging to select the sample you wish to see.

Play Back Control Buttons

The Basic Audacity Effects

Normalize Normalize will increase the volume of all of your tracks. This effect will make them as loud as possible without introducing clipping or distortion.