Professional Documents
Culture Documents
4 Manual
Dominic Mazzoni
Scott Granneman
Tony Oetzmann
Matt Brubeck
Gale Andrews
Richard Ash
Leland Lucius
James Crook
Christian Brochec
Alexandre Prokoudine
2
Contents
3
4 CONTENTS
5 Effect Menu 39
5.1 Classes of Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.2 Purpose of Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
5.3 List of Built-in Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
5.4 VST Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
5.5 Nyquist Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
5.6 LADSPA Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47
6 Effect Menu 49
6.1 Classes of Effect . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
6.2 Purpose of Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
6.3 List of Built-in Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
6.4 VST Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56
6.5 Nyquist Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
6.6 LADSPA Effects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
7 Digital Audio 59
7.1 Digital Sampling . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
7.2 Digital Audio Quality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.3 Sample rates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
7.4 Sample formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
7.5 Size of audio files . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
7.6 Clipping . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
7.7 Compressed Audio . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
9 Audacity Selection 71
9.1 Special characteristics of audio selection . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
9.2 Selecting using the mouse . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
9.3 The Selection Bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
9.4 Selecting using the keyboard . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
9.5 Selecting while audio is playing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
9.6 Snap-to Guides . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
CONTENTS 5
11 Audacity Projects 87
11.1 Audacity Projects on disk = . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
13 Zooming 99
13.1 Time Scale Zooming (Horizontally) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 100
13.2 Vertical zooming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
17 Recovery 121
19 Customization 125
21 Accessibility 131
31 Toolbars 185
31.1 List of Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 185
31.2 Arranging Toolbars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 186
39 Timeline 207
40 Tracks 209
40.1 Audio Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209
40.2 Label Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
40.3 Time Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
40.4 Note Tracks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 210
44 Preferences 225
44.1 Where are preferences stored? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
53 Index 255
53.1 Audacity 1.4 User Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
54 Glossary 259
54.1 General Terms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
54.2 Audio File Formats . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 262
55 FAQ 263
55.1 General . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 264
56 Credits 267
56.1 Brief History . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
56.2 The Manual . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
57 License 269
57.1 Audacity License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
57.2 GNU General Public License . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 270
This manual is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution
3.0 License1 .
You are free:
• Attribution. You must attribute the work in the manner specified by the
author or licensor (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or
your use of the work).
For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of
this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from
the copyright holder. Nothing in this license impairs or restricts the author’s moral
rights.
1
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/
13
14 CONTENTS
Introduction
Why Audacity?
Audacity is one of the most frequently downloaded digital audio editors in the
world. Tens of millions of people have used it to record a podcast, create a demo
CD of their garage band, transfer old vinyl records to CD, or just have fun with
audio. But there are dozens of other software programs with similar capabili-
ties...why should you choose Audacity?
The simplest reason? Because it’s free.
Audacity is developed by a team of volunteers and released under an open-source
license (more on this below). What that means for you is that you don’t have to
pay for Audacity - it’s freely downloadable from the Internet with no limitations
or restrictions. We hope you’ll find Audacity to be an enormously useful and fun
tool that will put you in control of digital audio files. Even if you find Audacity
too limited for your own advanced needs, there’s no reason you can’t use other
software alongside Audacity - perhaps even expensive commercial software. As
long as Audacity is free and has some unique capabilities, or is better at some
tasks than other software, it can always be part of your toolbox.
Another reason to choose Audacity is that it’s the only audio editing software that
runs on Windows, Mac and Linux computers. Every other piece of software you
will find only works on one, or maybe two of these platforms. Why should this
matter to you? Most of us only have one type of computer; perhaps like the major-
ity of people you have a typical PC running Microsoft Windows. Or maybe you
have a Macintosh and you’ve used nothing but Macs for years. But your friends or
co-workers may well use different sorts of computer, and Audacity enables both
you and them to use the same audio software, sharing tips and resources with one
15
16 CONTENTS
another. You can even share your Audacity project file with those on other oper-
ating systems, as long as it’s complete with all its audio data, so doesn’t depend
on files only on your computer.
Also, Audacity has been translated into more than 30 languages and has large user
communities in countries around the world. If you have business partners, friends
or family in another part of the world, they can use Audacity too.
Finally, many people simply find Audacity the easiest to use. That’s not to say that
everything will be obvious or easy at first - editing audio is not usually as easy as
editing an email. But Audacity was written with the average user in mind. We
don’t assume you’ve been in a recording studio and that you know what a ”mixer
bus” or an ”edit decision list” is. Whenever possible, Audacity lets you do what
you want to do without worrying about how it works internally. You may still
have to learn some new terminology along the way where it really is necessary,
but that’s what this Manual is for.
Why free?
So why is Audacity given away for free like this? First, free, open source soft-
ware is more common than you may realize - the popular Firefox, BitTorrent or
OpenOffice applications are all open-source software. More than half of the web
sites on the Internet are powered by Apache, another open-source software pro-
gram, and many of these run on Linux, an entirely open-source operating system.
Sometimes open-source developers are paid by major corporations who benefit
from the software; in other cases they survive on donations, a small amount of rel-
evant advertising or on individual contributors doing paid consultancy. Audacity
is a case of the latter.
Audacity’s team of about a dozen developers around the world are thus volunteers
for the most part, developing Audacity in their spare time because they love it. But
we always need more help. Besides more programmers with C++ knowledge, we
need ordinary users to help the project in many ways. There is always work to be
done keeping documentation up-to-date, translating Audacity into new languages,
and answering user queries on our Forum2 . If you would like to contribute, don’t
hesitate to write to us at audacity-feedback@lists.sourceforge.net.
2
http://audacityteam.org/forum/
CONTENTS 17
Open-Source Software
Open-source software means that all of the programming source code is dis-
tributed free along with the software. Usually, source code is kept secret, meaning
that the person or organization that created the software is the only one with the
power to change it. By this means they control the software, charging whatever
price they want, or can throw away the source code at any time and discontinue the
software altogether. With open-source software, the source code is licensed to the
world so that anyone can see how the program works, and even modify it if they
so choose. In the case of Audacity, the source code is provided under the terms of
the GNU General Public License3 (GPL). The GPL allows you to do whatever you
want with Audacity, including modify it and redistribute it, providing you offer it
under the same license and make its source code available. For more details, see
the full text of the License at the end of this Manual.
Why should you care that you can modify Audacity? You’re probably not a pro-
grammer yourself. But the fact that anyone can download the Audacity source
code and modify it means that Audacity is not likely to die. Even if the original
developers move on to something else, it’s always possible for another developer
to come along and continue where they left off. In fact, this is almost certain to
happen if enough people want Audacity to continue and are willing to chip in a
little.
the beginning, introducing you to the fundamentals of digital audio and then ex-
plaining the concepts you need in order to work with Audacity. We recommend
you read ”Foundations” through from beginning to end, since each concept builds
on the previous one. Then there is a ”Help with Advanced Issues” section. Here
you can read only those pages that apply to you, such as working with Audio CDs
or customizing Audacity with additional plug-ins, as and when you need to.
The main part of the Manual is a complete Reference to Audacity, including an
explanation of every button, tool, menu item, and dialog box in the whole pro-
gram. This is the place to turn when you need to know exactly what something in
the program does.
At the end of the Manual, you’ll find an alphabetical Index where you can search
the page contents, a Glossary of technical terms used in the Manual, and our
Frequently Asked Questions. Finally there are our Credits and License pages.
Chapter 1
The easiest way to use Audacity is to open up an existing audio file and make
small changes. If you’ve never used Audacity before, this is a great place to start.
19
20 CHAPTER 1. TUTORIAL - EDITING AN EXISTING FILE
(Linux users: you can run Audacity on the command line and give the name of
the file to open as a command-line argument.)
Talk about the Play and Stop buttons. If you don’t hear anything, see Audacity
Setup and Configuration (page 83).
Introduce the Spacebar as a shortcut. Click on the waveform to choose a place
to start, then press Play. Click and drag to create a selection, and then when you
press Play, only the selection will Play.
Note that you can select audio entirely using the keyboard.
Introduce the Skip to Start button and its keyboard shortcut (the Home key on
most keyboards? - please check this). It’s kind of like Rewind, but it’s not for
playback, it’s for
1.5. STEP 4: CREATE A 10-SECOND CLIP 21
WAV first. Close and open the file. Always suggest a new name for the edited file,
and keep the original around unless you’re absolutely sure you can delete it.
Then optionally talk about exporting MP3. This is tricky because it requires down-
loading an extra program. Note that version 1.3.3 makes this much easier and we
have new LAME installers.
Chapter 2
Talk about various types of audio cables you might have and how you need to
adapt them for a typical sound card. Some of the images to use.
23
24 CHAPTER 2. TUTORIAL - YOUR FIRST RECORDING
Undo
27
28CHAPTER 3. TUTORIAL - MIXING A NARRATION WITH BACKGROUND MUSIC
You can use Audacity and your computer to record sound from any external device
which outputs an audio signal. Although cassette tapes and records (LPs) are the
most popular examples, Audacity can be used just as easily to record audio from
the following:
• Radios
• Mixers
• Video cassette recorders (VCRs) and DVD players (recording from a dedi-
cated line-out containing audio output only)
• Other computers
29
30CHAPTER 4. TUTORIAL - COPYING TAPES, LPS OR MINIDISCS TO CD
The RCA end might connect to the jacks in the back of your cassette player:
4.1. CONNECTING THE EQUIPMENT 31
The stereo-mini end should be connected to your computer’s line-in jack, usually
found in the back. The line-in is normally coloured blue, but check your computer
manual. You should not generally connect to the microphone port of the computer,
as this port, besides typically being monophonic, will excessively amplify the
stronger signals produced by a tape deck or receiver/amplifier. The only exception
to this might be the outputs of some personal recorders supplied with a minijack
intended for connection to the microphone input of a recorder. To record in stereo,
plug the audio cable into the blue port.
32CHAPTER 4. TUTORIAL - COPYING TAPES, LPS OR MINIDISCS TO CD
The terms ”jack”, ”socket”, and ”port” can be used interchangeably. Until the
advent of the Walkman in the 1980s, audio sockets were frequently 1/4 inch
in diameter. Although professional audio equipment and guitar amplifiers
continue to use this 1/4 inch standard, most contemporary consumer audio
equipment has standardised on sockets that are half that size. Often called
a ’minijack’ or a ’miniplug’, these sockets will appear as 1/8 inch (3.5 mm)
diameter holes. On computers, minijacks are used for the headphone, mi-
crophone (if present), and line-in (line-input) sockets. Most portable music
players - including cassette players, CD players, and MP3 players - use mini-
jacks exclusively for the headphones. However, some smartphone devices
that can also play music use a 2.5 mm jack to maintain compatibility with
hands-free telephony devices. Adapters to allow use of 2.5 mm equipment
with 3.5 mm jacks are readily available at electronics stores and online. An-
other significant exception to this rule involves the headphone jacks used in
better quality (home) audio equipment, such as home theater receivers and
cassette decks, where the larger 1/4 inch jack is normally used.
Also note that audio plugs (which fit into these sockets) can be either mono-
phonic or stereophonic. A stereophonic plug can be identified by its use of
three metallic rings separated by an insulator, while monophonic plugs will
have only two rings. Note that the very tip of the plug and the shaft itself
are both considered ’rings’. Some electronic stores sell cables that are mono-
phonic, so it would be wise to inspect the plug to make sure it is what you
want prior to making a purchase. In general, and especially if you are a
novice, you will always want to purchase cables that are stereophonic.
If your device does not have RCA out, the headphone jack is a good ”out” jack to
choose, since it will allow you to adjust the output level of the source device. If
you choose this approach, the most typical setup is to use a cable with a 1/8 inch
(3.5 mm) stereo jack at one end (for connecting to the device’s headphone jack),
and an identical 1/8 inch stereo jack on the other end (for connecting to the line-in
socket on your computer). If the device you are recording from has a 1/4 inch
(6.3 mm) headphone jack, you will need to get a 1/4 to 1/8 inch adaptor. Such
an adapter is often included free with most new headphones, or can be purchased
separately at any electronics store.
4.1. CONNECTING THE EQUIPMENT 33
Some professionals with high-grade equipment would prefer to use the source de-
vice’s ”aux out”, ”tape out”, ”line-out” or ”record” output (if so equipped), since
that approach bypasses an unnecessary stage of (possibly low-quality) amplifica-
tion, and standardises the signal at a fixed (non-adjustable) level of approximately
1 - 1.5 volts, resulting in a higher quality recording. If you choose this approach,
you will need a cable that has dual RCA red/white plugs at one end (for connect-
ing to the ”aux out”, ”tape out” or ”record” jack of the device) and a stereophonic
1/8 inch (3.5 mm) plug at the other end (for connecting to your computer’s line-in
port).
If you wish to record from an audio cassette or a reel-to-reel tape deck, you can
connect that deck directly to your computer without the need for any external
amplifier or receiver. Simply connect the deck’s ”line-out” RCA jacks to your
computer’s ”line in” jack, using a cable described above. You can also connect to
the headphones out jack of an integrated cassette deck or to that of an amplifier
connected to the tape deck. If you do this (or if the ”line-out” volume of your deck
is adjustable), it’s best to set that level quite close to its maximum, and adjust the
recording level using Audacity’s input volume slider (see below). This helps keep
the inherent tape noise to a minimum in the signal sent to Audacity. If the cassette
you are playing has been encoded with Dolby ®1 as denoted by the Dolby
Double-D symbol2 , then you must enable Dolby playback on your tape deck, or
the recording of the tape will sound over-bright.
Before transferring your cassette, you may want to clean and align your tape
heads.
1
http://www.dolby.com
2
http://www.dolby.com/images/mainnav/logo.gif
34CHAPTER 4. TUTORIAL - COPYING TAPES, LPS OR MINIDISCS TO CD
If you have a standalone turntable, you must not connect it directly to your com-
puter. Instead, you must connect it to an amplifier or receiver with a ”phono”
or turntable input, or to a phono pre-amplifier - and then record from the am-
plifier’s ”line out” or ”tape out” jacks. This is for two reasons: (1) the audio
signals produced by a phono cartridge are too weak to record directly, and (2)
most records manufactured from the 1950s onwards were produced with a stan-
dard type of equalization called ”RIAA”, which emphasizes high frequencies and
de-emphasizes (reduces) low frequencies. If left uncorrected, this will result in
a recording that sounds very ”tinny”. All amplifiers containing a ”phono” stage
will both boost the signal to line-level so it’s suitable for input into a tape deck
or a computer, and will reverse the RIAA equalization so that the records sound
”normal” again. If you have an integrated ”stack system” or ”entertainment cen-
ter” into which you plug your speakers, your record deck is already connected to
a suitable amplifier.
Some users find that the line-level output of Minidisc players is too strong for
recording on a computer and causes distortion, since its level is not adjustable.
If you are encountering this problem, try connecting your cable to the player’s
4.2. SETTING UP AUDACITY 35
headphone jack instead. Since the strength of the headphone signal is easily ad-
justable, you can then reduce the signal level sent to the PC. On most players, this
means using the same shared line out/headphones out socket/jack, but choosing
the headphones out option in the player’s ”Sound Out” Preferences menu.
Create a new Project by clicking File ¿ Save Project As. Start your recording
by pressing the red Record button, then starting the player. You can pause and
restart the recording between tracks or sides with the blue Pause button, which
keeps your recording on one track within Audacity. This is the easiest way to
record into Audacity, because having just one track on screen allows you to split
the recording up into the different songs or sections using ”labels”. See Step 10)
below for more on this.
If you do want to start new tracks or sides of the tape or LP on a new track in
Audacity, then press the yellow Stop button to stop recording, get the LP or tape
to where you want to go to, then press the red Record button in Audacity and start
the player. The recording will now restart on a new track.
When you have finished recording, press the yellow Stop button and save your
recording into the Project you started (File ¿ Save Project). Now the data is safe,
you can edit it in Audacity if you want to (for example, cut redundant pieces out),
or come back to it later by re-opening the saved Project file with the File ¿ Open
command. See Cut, Paste, and More (page ??) for help with editing.
You may also want to remove steady noise such as tape hiss or vinyl roar using
Audacity’s Noise Removal (page 171), and clicks from records using its Click
Removal (page ??)
8) When you are happy with your editing, you need to export the recording as an
audio file such as .WAV or .MP3 that you can either play on your computer media
player (e.g. on iTunes or Windows Media Player), or which you can burn to an
audio or MP3 CD. See sections 9) and 10) below about the difference between
audio and MP3 CDs. To export a single audio file, use the File ¿ Export As..
command. If your recording contains multiple tracks or songs, you may want to
export these from your Project as separate audio files. This would be necessary if
you wanted to burn a CD with separate CD tracks corresponding to each track in
your recording. To prepare your recording for export as separate audio files, mark
the split points between the sections with the Project ¿ Add Label at Selection
command. This places labels (in a new Label Track underneath the audio track)
which both act as split points to divide your recording and can carry the name you
want for the track. Then you use the File ¿ Export Multiple command to export
your multiple audio files at one go, based on your chosen split points.
4.3. RECORDING, EDITING AND EXPORTING 37
9) .WAV, .AIFF and .MP3 are the most common formats for exporting. .WAV and
.AIFF files are of identical quality to the original recording, but take up 10 MB or
more of disc space per minute. If you want to burn an ”audio CD” that will play
on any standalone CD player (note these only give you 74 - 80 minutes’ playing
time), export your recording as a 44 100 Hz, 16 bit stereo .WAV or .AIFF file.
See: Audio CDs (page 109).
10) If you want your exported audio file to be smaller (you’d want to do this for
example if you wanted to make it available on the internet), you can export as
.MP3, at the expense of losing some of the audio quality of the original. You can
also burn the MP3s to a ”data CD” or ”MP3 CD” which will give you (at Audac-
ity’s default MP3 export settings) over 11 hours’ playing time on the CD. Note
you can only play these kind of CDs in computers, MP3 CD players (including
some newer automotive players), or some DVD players. Generally, you will see
an MP3 logo printed somewhere on the device if it is MP3-capable. Note that
most players manufactured prior to 2005 will not be able to play MP3 CDs. To
export as an .MP3, you first need to add the LAME encoder (page ??) to your
system and show Audacity where it is.
11) If you are exporting your file to a media program which has its own ”Library”
such as Windows Media Player, iTunes or Real Player, you would generally drag
your exported file into the program’s Library, or use the media program’s built-in
commands to add the exported file to its Library. For more help on importing
your audio file into iTunes (e.g. for burning to CD or for putting on an iPod), see
Exporting to iTunes and iPod (page ??).
38CHAPTER 4. TUTORIAL - COPYING TAPES, LPS OR MINIDISCS TO CD
Chapter 5
Effect Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuEffect textbfRepeat Last EffectPerform the la
Audacity includes many built-in effects and also lets you use a wide range of plug-
in effects. You can download many free plugins for Audacity on http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugi
Website. More information is also available at http://www.kvr-vst.com, http://www.plugin.org.uk/
and http://www.ladspa.org/.
To apply an effect, select part or all of the tracks you want to modify, and select
the effect from the menu. Titles which end in an ellipsis (...) will bring up a dialog
asking you for more parameters.
• Built-in Effects
39
40 CHAPTER 5. EFFECT MENU
Effects in any of the four classes can perform similar tasks. These are Audacity’s
built-in effects grouped by purpose:
Bass Boost Echo Equalization (page ??) Phaser Wahwah create additional links
(page ??)
Change Pitch without changing tempo Change Tempo without changing pitchChange
Speed affecting pitch and tempo create links (page ??)
Click Removal Noise Removal (page ??) Repair Truncate Silence create addi-
tional links (page ??)
5.3. LIST OF BUILT-IN EFFECTS 41
Most built-in effects have a ”Preview” button. This allows you to listen to
how the first three seconds of your selected audio will sound with your effect
applied. If it does not sound quite as you want, simply adjust the controls
of the effect and preview again. The preview length can be changed on the
Audio I/O (page 227) tab of Preferences (page 225).
5.3.1 Amplify...
This effect increases or decreases the volume of the audio you have selected.
When you open the dialog, Audacity automatically calculates the maximum amount
you could amplify the selected audio without causing clipping (distortion caused
by trying to make the audio too loud).
create link to the Amplify page (page ??)
5.3.3 BassBoost...
This is a safe, smooth filter which can amplify the lower frequencies while leaving
most of the other frequencies alone. It is most effective if you don’t try to boost
too much; 12 dB is usually just right.
5.3.8 Compressor...
Compresses the dynamic range by making the soft parts louder, and the loud parts
softer.?????? More details here (page ??)
5.3.9 EchoEcho...
Repeats the selected audio again and again, normally softer each time. The delay
time between each repeat is fixed, with no pause in between each repeat. For
a more configurable echo effect with a variable delay time and pitch-changed
echoes, see Delay... (page 175)
5.3.10 Equalization...
5.3.11 Fade In
Applies a linear fade-in to the selected audio - the rapidity of the fade-in depends
entirely on the length of the selection it is applied to. For a more customizable
logarithmic fade, use the Envelope Tool (page ??) on the Tools Toolbar (page
187).
187).
5.3.13 Invert
This effect flips the audio samples upside-down. This normally does not affect
the sound of the audio at all. It is occasionally useful, for example when the left
and right channels of a song both contain equal amounts of vocals, but unequal
amounts of background instruments. By inverting one of the channels and not the
other and then converting from stereo to mono, the vocals will cancel each other
out, leaving just the instrumentals. This only works if the exact same vocal signal
is present in both of the channels to begin with.
5.3.14 Leveller...
• In the first step you teach the software about the noise, using a portion of
your sound which contains all noise and no signal,
• In the second you use that information to remove the noise from the rest of
the recording.
First off, you need to find a section of recording that contains only noise, and
not any of your wanted sound, or people talking and the like. This doesn’t need
to be very long, a second is enough, and in necessary you can make it up from
several places in the project (using copy and paste).Now choose Noise Removal...
from the Effect menu and click ”Get Profile”. Audacity learns from this selection
what the noise sounds like, so it knows what to filter out later.Next, select all of
the audio where you want the noise removed from and choose Noise Removal...
again. In th elower half of the dialog adjust the slider to control how agressive
the noise removal is. Most of the time you want a low setting unless the noise is
really bad.Finaly, click the ”Remove Noise” button to start processing. This may
take a little while because it’s quite a complex effect to apply.
If too much or not enough noise was removed, you can Undo (from the Edit menu)
and try Noise Removal... again with a different noise removal level. You don’t
have to get a new noise profile again if you think the first one was fine.
5.3. LIST OF BUILT-IN EFFECTS 45
Removing noise usually results in some distortion. This is normal and there’s
virtually nothing you can do about it. When there’s only a little bit of noise, and
the signal (i.e. the voice or the music or whatever) is much louder than the noise,
this effect works well and there’s very little audible distortion. But when the noise
is very loud, when the noise is variable, or when the signal is not much louder
than the noise, then the result is often too distorted.
If you are still having problems then the following tips may help:
• Do any click removal, compression or other effects after doing noise re-
moval, not first. It works best as close to the source of the noise as possible.
• Make the selection you use to teach audacity about the noise a little quieter
before you do ”Get Profile”, using the amplify effect.
• Duplicate your source track before you apply noise removal, and adjust the
relative volume of the two tracks to get the best sound quality.
5.3.16 media:Normalize.pngNormalize...
5.3.18 Phaser
The name ”Phaser” comes from ”Phase Shifter”, because it works by combining
phase-shifted signals with the original signal. The movement of the phase-shifted
signals is controlled using a Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO).
5.3.19 Repair
fix one particular very short click, pop, or other glitch no more than 128 samples
long
46 CHAPTER 5. EFFECT MENU
5.3.20 :media:Repeat.pngRepeat...
5.3.21 Reverse
This effect reverses the selected audio temporally; after the effect the end of the
audio will be heard first and the beginning last. Some people reverse small por-
tions of audio to make inappropriate language unintelligible, while others believe
you can hear subliminal messages if you listen to speech backwards. You can
also create interesting sound effects by recording natural events and reversing the
audio.
5.3.23 Wahwah...
Rapid tone quality variations, like that guitar sound so popular in the 1970’s.
This effect uses a moving bandpass filter to create its sound. A low frequency
oscillator (LFO) is used to control the movement of the filter throughout the fre-
quency spectrum.
The WahWah effect automatically adjusts the phase of the left and right chan-
nels when given a stereo recording, so that the effect seems to travel across the
speakers.
• You will also need to download and unzip the VST Enabler (page ??) broken
link (page ??) to the same directory.
5.5. NYQUIST EFFECTS 47
• The next time you launch Audacity, any plug-ins you added will appear in
the Effect menu.
• The next time you launch Audacity, any plug-ins you added will appear in
the Effect, Generate or Analyze menus.
5.5.3 Delay...
5.5.6 Tremolo...
Getting a good reverb sound depends a lot on the source audio and can take a
lot of experimentation. One good strategy is to select a small portion of audio (a
few seconds) and try to add reverb. Listen to it, then Undo and try it again with
different settings. Keep doing this until you’ve found the settings you like the
sound of best, and then Undo one last time, Select All, then apply the effect to
your entire recording.
Chapter 6
Effect Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuEffect textbfRepeat Last EffectPerform the la
Audacity includes many built-in effects and also lets you use a wide range of plug-
in effects. You can download many free plugins for Audacity on http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugi
Website. More information is also available at http://www.kvr-vst.com, http://www.plugin.org.uk/
and http://www.ladspa.org/.
To apply an effect, select part or all of the tracks you want to modify, and select
the effect from the menu. Titles which end in an ellipsis (...) will bring up a dialog
asking you for more parameters.
• Built-in Effects
49
50 CHAPTER 6. EFFECT MENU
Effects in any of the four classes can perform similar tasks. These are Audacity’s
built-in effects grouped by purpose:
Bass Boost Echo Equalization (page ??) Phaser Wahwah create additional links
(page ??)
Change Pitch without changing tempo Change Tempo without changing pitchChange
Speed affecting pitch and tempo create links (page ??)
Click Removal Noise Removal (page ??) Repair Truncate Silence create addi-
tional links (page ??)
6.3. LIST OF BUILT-IN EFFECTS 51
Most built-in effects have a ”Preview” button. This allows you to listen to
how the first three seconds of your selected audio will sound with your effect
applied. If it does not sound quite as you want, simply adjust the controls
of the effect and preview again. The preview length can be changed on the
Audio I/O (page 227) tab of Preferences (page 225).
6.3.1 Amplify...
This effect increases or decreases the volume of the audio you have selected.
When you open the dialog, Audacity automatically calculates the maximum amount
you could amplify the selected audio without causing clipping (distortion caused
by trying to make the audio too loud).
create link to the Amplify page (page ??)
6.3.3 BassBoost...
This is a safe, smooth filter which can amplify the lower frequencies while leaving
most of the other frequencies alone. It is most effective if you don’t try to boost
too much; 12 dB is usually just right.
6.3.8 Compressor...
Compresses the dynamic range by making the soft parts louder, and the loud parts
softer.?????? More details here (page ??)
6.3.9 EchoEcho...
Repeats the selected audio again and again, normally softer each time. The delay
time between each repeat is fixed, with no pause in between each repeat. For
a more configurable echo effect with a variable delay time and pitch-changed
echoes, see Delay... (page 175)
6.3.10 Equalization...
6.3.11 Fade In
Applies a linear fade-in to the selected audio - the rapidity of the fade-in depends
entirely on the length of the selection it is applied to. For a more customizable
logarithmic fade, use the Envelope Tool (page ??) on the Tools Toolbar (page
187).
187).
6.3.13 Invert
This effect flips the audio samples upside-down. This normally does not affect
the sound of the audio at all. It is occasionally useful, for example when the left
and right channels of a song both contain equal amounts of vocals, but unequal
amounts of background instruments. By inverting one of the channels and not the
other and then converting from stereo to mono, the vocals will cancel each other
out, leaving just the instrumentals. This only works if the exact same vocal signal
is present in both of the channels to begin with.
6.3.14 Leveller...
• In the first step you teach the software about the noise, using a portion of
your sound which contains all noise and no signal,
• In the second you use that information to remove the noise from the rest of
the recording.
First off, you need to find a section of recording that contains only noise, and
not any of your wanted sound, or people talking and the like. This doesn’t need
to be very long, a second is enough, and in necessary you can make it up from
several places in the project (using copy and paste).Now choose Noise Removal...
from the Effect menu and click ”Get Profile”. Audacity learns from this selection
what the noise sounds like, so it knows what to filter out later.Next, select all of
the audio where you want the noise removed from and choose Noise Removal...
again. In th elower half of the dialog adjust the slider to control how agressive
the noise removal is. Most of the time you want a low setting unless the noise is
really bad.Finaly, click the ”Remove Noise” button to start processing. This may
take a little while because it’s quite a complex effect to apply.
If too much or not enough noise was removed, you can Undo (from the Edit menu)
and try Noise Removal... again with a different noise removal level. You don’t
have to get a new noise profile again if you think the first one was fine.
6.3. LIST OF BUILT-IN EFFECTS 55
Removing noise usually results in some distortion. This is normal and there’s
virtually nothing you can do about it. When there’s only a little bit of noise, and
the signal (i.e. the voice or the music or whatever) is much louder than the noise,
this effect works well and there’s very little audible distortion. But when the noise
is very loud, when the noise is variable, or when the signal is not much louder
than the noise, then the result is often too distorted.
If you are still having problems then the following tips may help:
• Do any click removal, compression or other effects after doing noise re-
moval, not first. It works best as close to the source of the noise as possible.
• Make the selection you use to teach audacity about the noise a little quieter
before you do ”Get Profile”, using the amplify effect.
• Duplicate your source track before you apply noise removal, and adjust the
relative volume of the two tracks to get the best sound quality.
6.3.16 media:Normalize.pngNormalize...
6.3.18 Phaser
The name ”Phaser” comes from ”Phase Shifter”, because it works by combining
phase-shifted signals with the original signal. The movement of the phase-shifted
signals is controlled using a Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO).
6.3.19 Repair
fix one particular very short click, pop, or other glitch no more than 128 samples
long
56 CHAPTER 6. EFFECT MENU
6.3.20 :media:Repeat.pngRepeat...
6.3.21 Reverse
This effect reverses the selected audio temporally; after the effect the end of the
audio will be heard first and the beginning last. Some people reverse small por-
tions of audio to make inappropriate language unintelligible, while others believe
you can hear subliminal messages if you listen to speech backwards. You can
also create interesting sound effects by recording natural events and reversing the
audio.
6.3.23 Wahwah...
Rapid tone quality variations, like that guitar sound so popular in the 1970’s.
This effect uses a moving bandpass filter to create its sound. A low frequency
oscillator (LFO) is used to control the movement of the filter throughout the fre-
quency spectrum.
The WahWah effect automatically adjusts the phase of the left and right chan-
nels when given a stereo recording, so that the effect seems to travel across the
speakers.
• You will also need to download and unzip the VST Enabler (page ??) broken
link (page ??) to the same directory.
6.5. NYQUIST EFFECTS 57
• The next time you launch Audacity, any plug-ins you added will appear in
the Effect menu.
• The next time you launch Audacity, any plug-ins you added will appear in
the Effect, Generate or Analyze menus.
6.5.3 Delay...
6.5.6 Tremolo...
Getting a good reverb sound depends a lot on the source audio and can take a
lot of experimentation. One good strategy is to select a small portion of audio (a
few seconds) and try to add reverb. Listen to it, then Undo and try it again with
different settings. Keep doing this until you’ve found the settings you like the
sound of best, and then Undo one last time, Select All, then apply the effect to
your entire recording.
Chapter 7
Digital Audio
Analog recording media such as a phonograph records and cassette tapes represent
the shape of the waveform directly, using the depth of the groove for a record
or the amount of magnetization for a tape. Analog recording can reproduce an
impressive array of sounds, but it also suffers from problems of noise. Notably,
each time an analog recording is copied, more noise is introduced, decreasing the
fidelity. This noise can be minimized but not completely eliminated.
59
60 CHAPTER 7. DIGITAL AUDIO
Digital audio can be edited and mixed without introducing any additional noise.
In addition, many digital effects can be applied to digitized audio recordings to
simulate reverberation, enhance certain frequencies, or change the pitch, for ex-
ample. Audacity is a software program for editing, mixing, and applying effects
to digital audio recordings.
Audacity’s ability to play or record audio directly from your computer depends
on your specific computer hardware. Most desktop computers come with a sound
card with 1/8” jacks for you to plug in a microphone or other source for recording,
and speakers or headphones for listening. Many laptop computers have speakers
and a microphone built-in. The sound card that comes with most computers is
not particularly high quality; if you are interested in high-quality recording, see
Recording Quality (page 117) for more details. For information on how to set up
Audacity for playback and recording, see Audacity Setup and Configuration (page
83).
Sample rates are measured in hertz (Hz), or cycles per second. This value simply
represents the number of samples captured per second in order to represent the
waveform; the more samples per second, the higher the resolution, and thus the
more precise the measurement is of the waveform. The human ear is sensitive
to sound patterns with frequencies between approximately 20 Hz and 20,000 Hz.
Sounds outside that range are essentially inaudible, although Rupert Neve1 has
subjectively proven the existence of pysychoacoustic fidelity that can be heard
above this supposed limit of 20,000kHz.
Capturing a sound at a particular frequency requires a sampling rate of at least
twice that frequency (known as the Nyquist2 frequency). Therefore a sample rate
of 40,000 Hz is the absolute minimum necessary to reproduce sounds within the
range of human hearing, though higher rates (called over sampling3 ) may increase
quality even further by avoiding any aliasing artifacts around the Nyquist fre-
quency. The sample rate used by audio CDs is 44,100 Hz. Human speech is
intelligible even if frequencies above 4,000 Hz are eliminated; in fact telephones
only transmit frequencies between 200 Hz and 4,000 Hz. Therefore a common
sample rate for audio recordings is 8,000 Hz, which is sometimes called speech
quality. Note that very steep filtering (called an anti-aliasing filter) is required
above the Nyquist frequency in order to prohibit signal above this cutoff point
from being folded back into the audible range by the digital converter, and creat-
ing the distorting artifacts of aliasing noise.
The most common sample rates, measured in kilohertz (KHz, or 1,000 Hz), are 8
KHz, 16 KHz, 22.05 KHz, 22.25 KHz, 44.1 KHz, 48 KHz, 96 KHz, and 192 KHz.
Audacity supports any of these sample rates, however most computer sound cards
are limited to 48 KHz or sometimes 96 KHz. Again, the most common sample
rate by far is 44.1 KHz (44100 Hz).
In the image below, the left half has a low sample rate, and the right half has a
high sample rate (ie. high resolution):
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert neve
2
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nyquist frequency
3
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oversampling
62 CHAPTER 7. DIGITAL AUDIO
• 8-bit integer: 45 dB
• 16-bit integer: 90 dB
• 24-bit integer: 135 dB
• 32-bit floating point: near-infinite dB
Other sample formats such as ADPCM approximate 16-bit audio with compressed
4-bit samples. Audacity can import many of these formats, but they are rarely used
because of much better newer compression methods.
7.5. SIZE OF AUDIO FILES 63
Audio CDs and most computer audio file formats use 16-bit integers. By default,
Audacity uses 32-bit floating-point samples internally while you are working on a
project and exports your final mix using 16-bit integers. This gives you somewhat
better quality than audio programs that use purely 16-bit or 24-bit audio samples.
Audacity’s default sample format can be configured in the Quality Preferences
(page 231) or set individually for each track in the Track Drop-Down Menu (page
??).
In the image below, the left half has a sample format with few bits, and the right
half has a sample format with more bits. If you think of the sample rate as the
spacing between vertical gridlines, the sample format is the spacing between hor-
izontal gridlines.
7.6 Clipping
One limitation of digital audio is that it cannot deal with sound pressure waves
that exceed the maximum levels it is designed to deal with. When a signal is
64 CHAPTER 7. DIGITAL AUDIO
recorded that exceeds the maximum level, samples outside the range are clipped
to the maximum value, like this:
A sound recorded with clipping will sound distorted and harsh. While there are
some techniques that can eliminate a small amount of noise due to clipping, it is
always preferable to avoid clipping while recording. Change the volume on your
input source (microphone, cassette player, record player) and set Audacity’s input
volume control (in the Mixer Toolbar (page 197)) such that the waveform is as
large as possible (for maximum fidelity) without clipping.
ports the ”Ogg Vorbis”4 format, which is similar to MP3 but is a completely open,
patent-free standard. Over time the quality of Ogg Vorbis files has come to sur-
pass the quality of MP3, and its format is more extensible so more improvements
are possible. Ogg Vorbis is a great choice for your own audio, however the reality
is that many more devices such as iPods and other portable audio players support
MP3 but not Ogg Vorbis yet.
Other well-known compression methods include ATRAC, used by Sony Minidisc
recorders, Windows Media Audio (WMA), and AAC.
4
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ogg vorbis
66 CHAPTER 7. DIGITAL AUDIO
Chapter 8
An Audacity project can contain as many tracks as you want. Each track can
contain several audio clips which can be moved around independently, but share
several properties of the track such as its overall volume, panning, sample rate,
and sample format.
The Audacity project shown above has three tracks (”Sax 1”, ”Sax 2”, and ”Drums”).
The first track has 2 clips, the second track has no clips, and the third track has 1
67
68 CHAPTER 8. AUDACITY TRACKS AND CLIPS
clip. A clip can be moved from one track to another simply by dragging it using
the Time Shift Tool (page 189):
All audio files that are imported or new audio that is recorded goes into a new
track. Afterwards, you can move or copy and paste audio into existing tracks. To
split a track into multiple clips, select part of the track and choose Split Cut from
the Edit Menu (page 143).
Many track properties can be accessed by clicking the title of the track, near the
upper-left corner, bringing up a menu something like this:
8.1 Stereo
Stereo Tracks contain a single label area to the left with two waveforms on the
right. The top waveform represents the left channel and the bottom waveform
represents the right channel, as in this example:
8.1. STEREO 69
By default, the two channels of a stereo track are always edited simultaneously.
However, you can split them apart and work with them independently by opening
the track menu (see above) and selecting Split Stereo Track.
- ToDo (page pagereftodo) ”’THIS IS OLD CONTENT FROM Tracks and Clips (page pagereftracks and
70 CHAPTER 8. AUDACITY TRACKS AND CLIPS
Chapter 9
Audacity Selection
using the Selection tool and click the cursor at 5.0 seconds in the first track,
and drag rightwards to 7.0 seconds on the timeline (page 207) so that the gray
selection area extends down into the second track:
71
72 CHAPTER 9. AUDACITY SELECTION
Note that the selection area does not extend down to the third track because that
track is not selected. Therefore, any operation you perform will now only affect
the selected area of the first two tracks.
It’s possible to change the selected time range and which tracks are selected inde-
pendently. To change the selected time range, you have several options:
• Move the mouse cursor to one of the edges of the selection until it changes
to a different pointer. Click and drag to change that edge of the selection.
• Shift-click near one of the edges of the selection to extend or contract the
selection to the time point you clicked on.
• Use Shift + LeftArrow, Shift + RightArrow, Control + Shift + LeftArrow,
and Control + Shift + RightArrow to move the two edges of the selection
in either direction.
To change which tracks are selected without affecting the time range, you also
have multiple options:
• Shift-click on the Audio Tracks#Track Panel (page 211) to left of the wave-
form to toggle its selection
9.2. SELECTING USING THE MOUSE 73
• Press UpArrow or DownArrow to change the focused track, then press the
Enter key to toggle its selection.
Note that it is possible to have a time range selected but no tracks selected. In that
case, you will only see the evidence of the selected time range in the timeline.
Audio editing is different from text editing in another way, too. With audio, it
usually isn’t obvious from the waveform what you want to select, so you really
want to listen just to the left and right edges (page 78) of a selection to make sure
you are editing the correct part. But if you are new to audio editing, don’t worry.
For now, you can just click and drag (page 73) to create a selection on a single
track, and hit spacebar to listen to all of it. Come back here for more help when
you start to work on more advanced projects and are having trouble selecting what
you want.
Besides clicking and dragging with the mouse, there are several other ways to
select audio, some of which will be better for visually impaired users or those
who have difficulty with the mouse. Let’s look at all the different ways to select
audio now.
Now click the left mouse button anywhere inside of an audio track, and click and
drag to the other edge of your selection, and release. Some tips:
• You can drag from left to right or from right to left, it doesn’t matter.
74 CHAPTER 9. AUDACITY SELECTION
• You can start your selection in one track, and end it in another track, and
both tracks (plus the tracks in-between) will all end up selected.
• If you move the mouse past the left or right edge of the window while drag-
ging, Audacity will scroll the window in that direction as long as the mouse
button is down.
To extend or contract an existing selection, hold down the Shift key while clicking
the mouse. The nearest edge of the selection will jump to the current mouse cursor
location. This is really useful if you know exactly what you want to select but it
doesn’t easily fit on the screen at once:
You can also extend or contract a selection by positioning the mouse near the edge
of a selection, then clicking and dragging. The selected portion of a track with the
cursor is changed to a pointing hand, see below:
The cursor changes to a pointing hand when you are near the edge of a selection,
so you know when you can click and drag to extend or contract the selection.
Do you find it annoying when Audacity drags the edges of a selection when
you were trying to create a new selection? No problem, you can turn off
that feature! Just open the Preferences, then click on the Interface tab, and
uncheck the box labeled ”Dragging of left/right selection edges”.
9.3. THE SELECTION BAR 75
One handy way to keep track of what you’ve selected and to make precise modi-
fications is to use the Selection Bar (page 205) (shown above). For our purposes
here, let’s concentrate on the main purpose of the bar, the Selection Start and
End/Length boxes. By changing the radio button from End to Length, you can
display and control the length of the selection instead of the endpoint. Which
one is useful for you depends on the circumstances: if you need a clip from a
song that’s exactly 30 seconds long, you may want to set the length to 30, and
then modify the start until you have just what you want. Other times you may
know the exact end time but need to figure out where to start, independent of the
resulting length.
You can edit the time displayed in the Selection Bar using the mouse and/or key-
board. To change a particular digit, you can just click on it and type a new value,
see below.
You can also edit the boxes in the Selection Bar entirely using the keyboard, see
below.
Key Action
Ctrl-F6 Move the focus to/from the Selection Bar
Tab Move between controls in Selection Bar
Left/Right arrow Move cursor in a Selection Bar control
Up/Down arrow Increase or decrease the highlighted digit
Backspace Delete the last number pressed
76 CHAPTER 9. AUDACITY SELECTION
In the figure above, the selection is displayed in units of hours, minutes, and sec-
onds. As shown, it doesn’t display any more accuracy than that, so it’s hard to
tell if you have half of a second selected, which can be very important sometimes.
That’s no problem, because Audacity gives you a plethora of choices of possible
ways to display the time in the selection bar. To get these choices, click on the
right triangle to the right of each box, or alternatively, right-click anywhere in the
box to open the context menu.
The different time formats are listed in the table below. It’s okay if most of them
don’t mean anything to you. Most of them are intended for people using Audacity
for very specific purposes, especially editing soundtracks for video, and those
people will know which one they want.
To change the focused track, just press the up and down arrow keys. In this image,
we pressed down arrow to change focus to the ”Bkgnd” track:
To modify the time range, press the left and right arrow keys in combination with
SHIFT + CTRL. If you don’t already have a selection, just a cursor, then pressing
the left or right arrow keys will move the cursor. If you do have a selection,
pressing the left arrow will take you to the beginning of the selection, and the
right arrow will take you to the end.
If you hold down Shift while pressing the right arrow, you can extend the selection
to the right. Similarly, SHIFT + LEFT extends the selection to the left.
CTRL + SHIFT contracts the selection. CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT contracts the
right edge to the left, and CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT contracts the left edge to the
right.
the selection boundaries or the boundaries of the clip you’re time-shifting will
snap to the following locations:
• Time 0
Whenever snapping is taking place, a yellow vertical line appears to indicate snap-
ping is taking place. If there is more than one logical place to snap to within a
couple of pixels, it will not snap anywhere, to err on the side of caution. In that
case, zoom in.
In the image below, we’re dragging a clip in the ”Guest” track leftwards with
the mouse. When the clip reaches the right-hand boundary of the clip above it,
a bright vertical guide line appears showing the position of the snap boundary
through all the tracks. Now that the guide line has appeared, we can release
the mouse and the dragged clip will be perfectly aligned with the one above:
A Snap Guide appears (the vertical yellow line) when the selection has snapped
to the start or end of an audio clip from any of the tracks.
80 CHAPTER 9. AUDACITY SELECTION
If there are two boundaries very close to one another and it’s not obvious which
one is better, Audacity will not snap to either. If you want to snap to one of them,
zoom in so that you can clearly position the mouse closer to one than the other.
There are two very useful things you can do by clicking in the label area to the
left of a track, like this - make sure that you click in a neutral area, not inside one
of the buttons or sliders.
Clicking on a track’s label area will select the entire track. That’s a very easy
way to apply an effect to an entire track. If you want to select all tracks, you can
alternatively choose Select All from the Edit menu.
There’s another handy way to select an entire track or clip: just double-click inside
of it.
If you hold down Shift while clicking on a track’s label, you can toggle the selec-
tion of that track. For example, if you want to select the first and third tracks only,
you could choose Select All and then shift-click on the middle track to deselect it
while leaving the others selected.
Note that it is possible to have a time range selected but no tracks selected. In that
case, you will only see the evidence of the selected time range in the timeline.
9.8. MENU COMMANDS FOR SELECTING 81
Command Action
Select... All Select all audio in all tracks
Select... None Deselect everything and move the cursor to 0.0
Left at Playback Position Sets the left selection boundary based on audio playback
Right at Playback Position Sets the right selection boundary based on audio playback
Start to Cursor Select from the start of the track or clip to the cursor position.
Cursor to End Selection from the cursor position to the end of the track or clip.
Selection Save Remembers the current selection time range
Selection Restore Restores the time range from Selection Save
For many users, Audacity will just work ”out of the box”, and you can immedi-
ately begin playing and recording. However, because there are so many different
types of computers and ways to configure computers, some users may need to set
up Audacity the first time they use it.
83
84 CHAPTER 10. AUDACITY SETUP AND CONFIGURATION
output (to your speakers or headphones) andthe blue jack is for stereo line input
(like from a cassette player).
If you have a Mac, your audio ports will look something more like the image
below. In this picture, the left jack is for stereo line input (like from a micro-
phone or cassette player) and the right jack is for line output (to your speakers or
headphones).
For better audio quality, many people use a USB audio device. If you have such
a device, attach your microphone and speakers to that device, and plug the device
into your computer’s USB port.
If you are using a USB audio device, or if your computer has more than one built-
in sound card to choose from, you will need to tell Audacity which device to use
for recording and playback. Open the Preferences (page 225) (in the Edit menu,
10.3. VOLUME CONTROLS 85
or the Audacity menu on Mac OS X) and click on the Audio I/O tab. Choose your
preferred sound card or audio device from the lists provided. Usually you should
choose the same device for recording and playback, but it is possible for them to
be different.
The two sliders control the volume levels on your sound card, and the selector
on the right controls the input source for recording (such as ”Line In” or ”Mic”).
Adjust these appropriately.
• If you are unable to move the sliders, or if the sliders always ”jump back”
to the same value no matter where you put them, don’t panic: some sound
cards do not have level controls, and some of them have controls that are not
compatible with Audacity. To adjust your sound card levels, you will need
to use other system software or perhaps a special control panel that came
with your sound card.
Audacity Projects
Audacity projects contain audio clips arranged onto tracks along with additional
information. These projects are stored in AUP files. Whilst this Audacity Project
Format (page 281) makes working with the audio easier and more rapid, the for-
mat is not compatible with any other audio program. When you Save an Audacity
project, you save in the Audacity Project Format, i.e. as an AUP file. The AUP
file cannot be used in an MP3 player.
To use the audio outside Audacity, you Export the audio into another format, as
described on the File Menu (page 135). The format you need will depend on how
you plan to use the audio. For an MP3 player you will want MP3 format. For
burning to a CD you will want WAV format.
If instead you have audio which you want to use in Audacity but which wasn’t
recorded in Audacity, you will usually need to Import the audio. This is also an
option on the File Menu (page 135).
11.0.1 Dependencies
When you open or import an uncompressed audio file such as WAV or AIFF,
Audacity saves time by not making a copy of the file. Instead, it refers back to
the original file as you manipulate it within your project (while not ever making
any changes to that file unless you tell it to). You must be careful not to modify
files that you have open in Audacity with another program. When you save an
Audacity project, Audacity will tell you about these dependencies and give you
87
88 CHAPTER 11. AUDACITY PROJECTS
the option of copying all of the audio data into your Audacity project, making
it safe to delete, move, or modify the original audio files if you choose. At any
time, choose Check Dependencies... from the File Menu (page 135) to see if your
project depends on any external files.
11.0.2 Outline
• Close Audacity.
Much less top heavy with explanation, much more a walk through of steps. Doesn’t
try to tackle ’dependencies’.
Possible title for tutorial:
• Or rather than a new tutorial, add the information in in the relevant place in
Tutorial - Editing an Existing File (page 19)? It already has a note that it
needs the exporting/saving difference explaining.
89
Audacity projects are stored in an AUP file, which is a format thathas been highly
optimized for Audacity so that it can open and saveprojects extremely quickly. In
order to achieve this speed, Audacitybreaks larger audio files into several smaller
pieces and stores thesepieces in a directory with a similar name as the project.For
example, if you name a project ”chanson”, then Audacity will create aproject file
called which stores the generalinformation about your project, and it will store
your audio in severalfiles inside a directory called .The Audacity Project format
is not compatible with any other audioprograms, so when you are finished work-
ing on a project and youwant to be able to edit the audio in another program,
selectExport As... (page ??) from the File Menu (page 135).
Audacity is sometimes used to open a file, make a quick change, and write it back
to disk, and it is sometimes used to mix together a dozen tracks with hundreds of
effects to create a song. For all of these needs, big and small, Audacity encapsu-
lates whatever you’re working on inside an Audacity project.
In Audacity, each window represents an Audacity project. A project represents
one complete piece of audio, which might be a short recording, a 3-minute song,
or an hour-long entire CD. It can have multiple tracks, hundreds of audio clips,
labels, and more, but a single timeline. Audacity projects can be saved to disk and
then loaded back later so you can continue where you left off. When you save an
Audacity project, nearly everything about the window is saved: all of your tracks
and editing information, for example. The only thing that is lost when you save
and close the window is the history; you can no longer undo changes. (However,
you can always save ”snapshots” of your project at any time.)
Audacity projects are saved to disk in a way that is very efficient for Audacity.
While the format is open in theory, it is not intended to be used by other pro-
grams. When you want to create audio that can be opened by another program,
copied to an iPod, or burned to a CD, for example, you should export the file
as a standard format like WAV or MP3. See Audio File Formats (page ??) for
more info. However, when you export audio, you lose information about sepa-
rate tracks, labels, and other Audacity-specific editing information. Only the final
mixed audio is saved. So you should save an Audacity Project if you want to make
90 CHAPTER 11. AUDACITY PROJECTS
changes later.
Both of these items, and all of the files inside the data folder, are totally critical
to the project! If you move one to another location, you must move the other. If
you need to send an Audacity project to someone else, and a standard format like
WAV or MP3 won’t do, it’s often best to create a Zip archive of the project file
and data folder.
If you accidentally lose the project file or some of the data files, you will need
to have Audacity recover as much of the project as possible. You will lose a lot
of editing information, but often much of your recording can be salvaged. See
Recovery (page 121) for more information.
In most software programs you talk about Opening and Saving. Audacity can do
those too. So what’s up with Importing and Exporting?
A really common operation in Audacity is to combine many audio files into one.
This could be for creating a mix tape, splicing together different segments from a
mix tape, or reassembling a complete symphony from movements stored as four
different CD tracks.
While it is possible to open each file and then copy and paste the contents into the
same file, the preferred method in Audacity is to open just one project window,
then import all of the different audio files into that window.
When the Import dialog is open, shift-click, control-click, or cmd-click (Mac) to
select multiple files to import at once.
11.1. AUDACITY PROJECTS ON DISK = 91
You can also drag and drop files directly into Audacity’s window.
Save: saves a project, in Audacity’s internal format. Fast to open again later, but
you can’t use the Audacity project in a different program.
Export: mixes all of your audio down to a single mono or stereo track. You lose
any extra information, like multiple tracks, volume edits, or labels; only the audio
is saved.
In the chapter on Digital Audio (page 59), we talked a little bit about compression.
When you export audio from Audacity, you have to decide whether to export it
compressed or uncompressed.
The most common uncompressed export formats are WAV (most common on
Windows), AIFF (most common on Mac). Good for CD-quality audio. Good
for burning onto a CD. Not good for emailing or uploading to the Internet unless
it’s just a few seconds worth of audio.
Audacity supports three common types of compressed audio as well: MP3, MP2,
and Ogg Vorbis.
MP3 is the most common file format found on the Internet. If you’re creating a
song or podcast to share with others online, this is probably your best bet. If you
use the 128 kbit compression setting, you’re getting a factor of 10 compression.
MP2 is used in radio broadcast industry. If you’re sending something to a radio
station, this may be the format they expect. For anything else, there’s probably no
good reason to use it, because MP3 supercedes it.
Ogg Vorbis is a free alternative to MP3. Independent listening tests consistently
show that an Ogg Vorbis file that’s the same size as an MP3 file will sound better,
or equivalently, if you have two files that sound the same, the Ogg Vorbis file will
be smaller. You can find free Ogg Vorbis players for Windows, Mac OS X and
Linux, and hundreds of portable digital players support it as well. However, Ogg
Vorbis is still less well-known, and many portable devices like the iPod do not
support it. The fact that Ogg Vorbis is great and patent-free means that Audacity
comes with full Ogg Vorbis support built-in, while MP3 support must be added
on separately.
92 CHAPTER 11. AUDACITY PROJECTS
There are two famous compressed audio formats that Audacity does not sup-
port. One of these is WMA, a secret format developed by Microsoft. Au-
dacity cannot work with that format at all because Microsoft keeps its details
hidden. The other is AAC, which is famous for being used by iTunes and the
iPod. AAC is a public, documented format, and a future version of Audacity
will probably offer full support for it - but not at the time of this writing.
Chapter 12
The easiest way to control Audacity playback and recording is with the Control
Toolbar (page 191) (below).
Play: If a subset of the time range is selected in the main window, only the
selection will be played. If there is no selection, playback will begin wherever the
editing cursor is. To start playback from the beginning, choose Skip to Start.
Loop: Hold down Shift while pressing Play to loop the current selection,
playing it over and over again until you press Stop.
Pause: will temporarily pause playing or recording without losing your place.
Skip to Start: move the cursor to the beginning of the audio. This is often
useful if you want to play everything, or record a new track starting from the
beginning.
93
94 CHAPTER 12. PLAYING AND RECORDING
There are several keyboard shortcuts you can use that work exactly the same as
the buttons in the Control Toolbar (page 191), listed in the table below.
Key Action
textbfSpacebar Play or Stop
textbfL or textbfShift-Spacebar Loop
textbfR Record
textbfP Pause
textbfHome Skip to Start
textbfEnd Skip to End
The current region being played is indicated by arrows in the ruler - for example
in the figure below, the play region is from 15 to 45 seconds. During playback, a
green triangle indicates the current playback position - in this example, at about
the 25 second mark (second figure below).
You can play simply by clicking and dragging in the Ruler to create a play region!
That’s a great way to play without modifying the selection. Also, if you do modify
the selection or the play region after playback has begun, it does not affect the
active play region. The audio will stop whenever it would have based on the play
region when playback began.
12.3. SPECIAL PLAYBACK KEYBOARD COMMANDS 95
Key Action
textbf1 Play One Second
textbfB Play To Selection
textbfC Play Cut Preview
Suppose you’ve selected a range of audio (above), and you want to make sure it’s
exactly what you want to cut out. In order to determine whether you’ve selected
exactly the right range of audio, you can not only listen to the selection, but you
can listen to the audio before and after the selection. If you press the spacebar,
you’ll hear the whole selection (indicated by the playback region shown in the
ruler) (below).
The ”B” key lets you play the audio from the mouse to the selection - what you
get depends on where the mouse pointer is. Move the mouse to a part of the audio
you’re interested in hearing, and press ’B’, without clicking the mouse button (the
first through the fourth figures below).
If the mouse pointer is to the left of the selection and you press ’B’, you’ll hear
the audio up to the selection.
If the mouse pointer is inside the left side of the selection and you press ’B’, you’ll
hear the first part of the selection up to the mouse pointer.
12.4. TIMER RECORDING 97
If the mouse pointer is inside the right side of the selection and you press ’B’,
you’ll hear from the mouse pointer to the end of the selection.
Finally if the mouse pointer is to the right of the selection and you press ’B’, you’ll
hear from the selection to the mouse pointer.
All keyboard shortcuts are customizable! Change using the Keyboard tab of
the Preferences (page 225).
Use it to start recording later, or to record for a certain duration before stopping.
Chapter 13
Zooming
(The figure above) shows Audacity’s view of an entire song, zoomed all the way
out. It’s really useful to get an idea of the whole piece from start to finish, but it’s
hard to see much detail - like a forest with no trees.
Zooming the time scale, or zooming ”horizontally”, is something you’ll do all the
time. It lets you focus on the first 15 seconds, for example (first figure below), the
last 15 seconds (second figure below), or even a tiny fraction of a second, where
you can see the individual audio samples, much more detail (third figure below).
Occasionally you will even want to zoom vertically in order to see individual
samples more clearly (below).
99
100 CHAPTER 13. ZOOMING
If you get lost, refer to the ruler at the top of the window. It always shows
you exactly where you are in time, in hours:minutes:seconds.
You’ll find all sorts of useful commands for zooming at the top of the View Menu:
• Zoom Normal: Reverts back to Audacity’s default zoom, where you can see
5 - 10 seconds at a time.
• Fit In Window: Zooms out just enough so that you can see the entire project.
• Fit Vertically: This doesn’t actually zoom, it resizes all of your tracks so
that they fit in the window vertically.
• Zoom to Selection: If you have audio selected, this zooms and scrolls so
that the selection just fits in the window.
13.1. TIME SCALE ZOOMING (HORIZONTALLY) 101
You can get very precise control over zooming using the Zoom Tool, which you
can choose from the Tools Toolbar. The Zoom Tool is in the lower-left cor-
ner(below).
To zoom in, position the mouse cursor over a track and click. To zoom out, you
can shift-click or press your right mouse button. The zooming is centered on the
position of the mouse cursor, so if you click on the left side of a waveform, the
audio will be centered at that point after zooming.
You can zoom in on a specific region by clicking and dragging. Position the mouse
at the left edge of the region you are interested, then click and hold the mouse
button, then drag the mouse to the right (first image, below). When you release
the mouse button, Audacity will zoom in to that region (next image, below).
And After zooming in on the selection. the selection fits the Audacity window.
102 CHAPTER 13. ZOOMING
The four buttons on the right of the Edit Toolbar (below) give you additional
shortcuts you can use for zooming.
• Zoom to Selection: If you have audio selected, this zooms and scrolls
so that the selection just fits in the window.
• Fit In Window: Zooms out just enough so that you can see the entire
project.
If your mouse has a scroll wheel, you can use it to zoom. Position the mouse
cursor over the audio tracks, hold don the Control key on your keyboard, and
scroll up to zoom in, or scroll down to zoom out.
Mac users: Hold down both Command and Control while using the scroll
wheel.
13.2. VERTICAL ZOOMING 103
Click once to zoom in, and shift-click or right-click to zoom out. Alternatively,
click once and hold down the mouse button, then drag to select a vertical region
(first image, below). When you release the mouse button, exactly the range you
outlined will be shown vertically (next image, below).
You can zoom in quite a bit, and zoom out by a factor 2 also.
When zooming out, sometimes it takes two clicks to get back to the normal
vertical zoom level, where the vertical ruler goes from -1.0 to 1.0. Just click
again; Audacity will automatically snap to the normal zoom level whenever
you’re close.
104 CHAPTER 13. ZOOMING
Chapter 14
105
106 CHAPTER 14. UNDO, REDO AND HISTORY
Only changes that modify the document matter - things that you can’t undo in-
clude:
• Saving or exporting
Once you undo, if you then choose a new action, you’ve lost the original path, i.e.
you can’t undo the undo! Here’s another way to look at it - suppose you made ten
edits, numbered 1 through 10. Now you undo your way back to step 5, and then
perform a new edit, which we’ll call 6b because it’s different than the original 6.
At this point you can undo back to step 5 or all the way back to 1, but you can’t
get back to the original 6 through 10 anymore. Once you make a change in step
5, you lose whatever edits you had made after that step.
Saving does not erase your undo history. But closing a document does; only the
last saved version is remembered, you can’t save multiple versions all at once.
The Undo History lets you view and manage all of the actions you’ve taken since
you opened a document. You can open it by selecting View ¿ History...
14.2. HISTORY WINDOW 107
Next to each action in the History window is a number telling you how much
space each edit took on disk. If you’re running low on disk space, you can delete
some of the levels of undo in order to recover the space instantly by pressing the
Discard button. The only other way to recover it would be to save your document
and quit, then restart Audacity.
You can click on any action to jump directly to that point in time. It’s the same as
choosing Undo or Redo multiple times.
108 CHAPTER 14. UNDO, REDO AND HISTORY
Chapter 15
Audio CDs
15.1 CD Format
The vast majority of music CDs are encoded according to the Red Book (page
??) Standard. The Red Book standard is a 16-bit, 44.1KHz PCM (page ??) audio
signal. This is very similar (though not directly compatible with) WAV and AIFF
files encoded at 16-bit, 44.1KHz. The sound quality is identical across those for-
mats, but the data is organized differently/// i.e. a data stream not a file which is
why most OSes can’t open it///
15.3 CD creation
Just as Audacity cannot read CD-audio, it also cannot be used to create audio CDs
directly. Software that can is called CD-burning software.
109
110 CHAPTER 15. AUDIO CDS
• 2-second gap added to the end of each track. Your CD-burning software
should provide an option to remove this gap.
RIPPING
Audacity does not contain any function for importing (ripping) audio from CDs.
This can, however, be achieved by using other programs to extract the data into a
file format Audacity does support.
15.4 Introduction
Users new to audio editing are often surprised to find that they cannot import the
audio from CDs into Audacity with the Project ¿ Import Audio command. In
fact, most operating systems don’t actually allow the import of data from the CD
tracks into applications, because audio CDs don’t have files or a file system like
computer media, but consist essentially of a stream of bits on the disk. That is
why when you look at an audio CD in a file manager like Windows Explorer, each
CD track will appear only as a small .cda ”file” 44 bytes in size, which is merely
header information for the stream.
15.5. WINDOWS 111
So in order to import tracks from an audio CD, you must first usually extract
(or ”rip”) the tracks to a .WAV or .AIFF audio file using CD extraction software.
Then you can import that .WAV or .AIFF into Audacity with the usual Project ¿
Import Audio command. You can also extract CDs to the much smaller .MP3
format, but this is not recommended if you want to edit the audio in Audacity,
because every time you encode to MP3 you lose audio data. On the other hand
.WAV and .AIFF are lossless. You can always export your audio from Audacity
to .MP3 after you’ve edited it, but to save un-necessary losses, import the audio in
the first place as .WAV or AIFF.
15.5 Windows
For users on Windows, Audacity recommends ”’CD-EX”’1 as a fully featured CD
extraction program which can extract to the .WAV format you need for editing the
audio in Audacity.
In the CD-EX window, simply select the CD tracks you want to extract to .WAV
and press F8 or Convert ¿ Extract CD track(s) to .WAV. Normally, every CD
track will be extracted to its own audio file, but CD-EX also has a nice feature that
lets you extract any range of audio (including all of it) to a single file. So if you
want to extract a sample of two CD tracks that starts in the middle of one track
and ends in the middle of another, you can. To do this, right-click on any of the
tracks ¿ Extract partial CD Track, or press F10.
Make sure you know where to look for the exported .WAV files when you import
them into Audacity. By default CD-EX saves the .WAV to one of your Documents
and Settings folders for whatever account you are logged into at the time. If in
CD-EX you click Options ¿ Settings ¿ Filenames tab and look in the second
text box from the top (marked ”.WAV –¿ MP3”), you will see the location where
it saves its output files from CD extraction or file conversion.
You can also extract audio CDs to .WAV with Windows Media Player 11 (click
Tools ¿ Options ¿ Rip Music and choose ”WAV (Lossless)” in the Format drop-
down in ”Rip Settings”), or to .WAV or .AIFF with the Windows version of
”’iTunes”’2 (see below). Earlier versions of Windows Media Player are not recom-
mended for extracting CD audio for editing in Audacity, because they are unable
1
http://gnuwin.epfl.ch/apps/cdex/en/install/cdex 151.exe
2
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
112 CHAPTER 15. AUDIO CDS
to extract to .WAV.
15.6 OS X
”’iTunes”’3 is the built in media player for Mac computers.
To extract CD audio in iTtunes, set the ”conversion format” in its Preferences
at Advanced ¿ Importing: Import using .WAV or .AIFF encoder. Under that,
choose the ”automatic” setting. Then insert your CD in the computer and click
”Audio CD” on the ”Source” pane on the left. Select the tracks you want to
extract and right-click or control-click on them and then click the option ”convert
selection to .WAV” (or ”.. to .AIFF”).
OS X users do have an additional quick way to import CDs, because when a CD is
put in the drive, the .cda tracks are mounted as .AIFF files in the Finder. It’s thus
possible to either drag the .AIFF files from the Finder into Audacity, or use the
Project ¿ Import Audio command, instead of extracting the audio. Note however
that if you import CD tracks into Audacity from Finder and save them as a Project,
the CD must be present next time you open the Project, unless you set Audacity to
make a copy of the data. To do this, go to the File Formats tab of Preferences and
where it says ”when importing uncompressed audio....”, check the radio button
”make a copy of the file before editing”.
Another possibility is to use ”’Max”’4 , a free software CD-ripping and encoding
application. It has full support for encoding into the FLAC (page ??) loss-less
audio format, which is rather tricky to set up in iTunes5 .
15.7 Linux
If you are on Linux or other Unix-like systems you can use ”’K3b”’6 or ”’Grip”’7
for Gnome desktops.
3
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
4
http://sbooth.org/Max/
5
http://www.apple.com/itunes/
6
http://www.k3b.org/
7
http://www.nostatic.org/grip/
15.8. BURNING 113
15.8 BURNING
Audacity does not enable you to burn CDs directly, so you need to export an
audio file (usually a .WAV or .AIFF) from Audacity, then burn that file to a CD
with burning software such as Windows Media Player (built into Windows) or
iTunes (built into OS X). Either of these applications will require you to add the
files for burning to a playlist before you can burn them. You can do this by simply
dragging the files from the location you exported them to, into the playlist. Real
Player is different and requires you to add files to ”My Library” with its File ¿
Add Files to My Library command before you can burn them to CD. If you have
not yet created a Real Player library, see this link8 and for help burning to CD on
Real Player go here9 .
You can also use a standalone burning program like Nero or Toast to burn your
exported files. If you do this, it’s always best to open the files from within that
software, not drag and drop them from your file manager.
Hint: Windows Media Player 11 will not accept .WAV files for burning if they
are dragged straight into a burn list, but have not previously been played in Media
Player. You will see a red symbol and a ”length of file cannot be determined”
error. To solve this problem with a .WAV that has never been played in Media
Player, drag the file into the Media Player Library or into a playlist, then from
there into a burn list. Also, this version of Windows Media Player does not accept
.AIFF files for burning, so you must export as .WAV. Neither of these problems
affect previous versions of Media Player.
others and be sure they’ll be able to play it, you need to tell your burning software
to burn as an audio CD. For example, to set iTunes up to burn an audio CD, you
go to the Advanced tab of its Preferences, click the Burning tab, and at ”Disc
Format”, select the ”Audio CD” radio button.
Audio CDs always contain high quality uncompressed PCM stereo data at 44 100
Hz sample rate, 16 bit resolution. So if you want to burn an audio CD, you should
always export the file you want to burn as a 44 100 Hz 16 bit stereo WAV or AIFF
file. To configure Audacity to do this:
Be sure to tell your burning software to burn an ”audio CD” or ”music CD” (not
a ”data CD” or MP3 CD”). Always use a high quality CD-R disc, as some stan-
dalone CD players may refuse to play CD-RW discs properly.
Because audio CDs must always contain uncompressed 44 100 Hz 16 bit stereo
audio, they are necessarily limited on a 650 MB (”Red Book Standard”) or 700
MB audio CD to 74 - 80 minutes playing time respectively. If you need more
playing time (e.g. to try and accommodate a C90 cassette or two LPs onto one
CD), some CD burners will let you ”overburn” into the blank CD space so as to
extend the playing time by a further few minutes, so giving you the possibility of
up to 80 minutes’ playing time on a 650 MB disc or up to 86 minutes on a 700
MB disc. Overburning (if your burning software and burner supports it) is always
done using Disc at Once (DAO) mode in which the tracks are burnt continuously
without turning the laser off. It is also theoretically possible to overburn using ”90
minute” (790 MB) or ”99 minute” (870 MB) CD-R discs. However there is no
guarantee whatsoever that your CD burner will accept such CD-R discs, or that
your CD player will play anything other than a Red Book Standard 650 MB disc
burned with 74 minutes of audio.
For burning really long files to optical media, you must burn either a ”data CD” or
a ”data DVD”. For example if you burn MP3 files to a 700 MB ”data CD” (which
your burning software may call an ”MP3 CD”), using Audacity’s default 128 kbps
MP3 export bitrate, this gives you over 11.5 hours’ playing time on the CD. If you
15.10. BURNING SEPARATE CD TRACKS FROM A LONG FILE OR RECORDING115
went to ”MP3 Export Setup” in the File Formats tab of Audacity Preferences and
reduced the MP3 bitrate to 64 kbps, you would reduce the quality of the exported
audio but could then fit about 23 hours of audio on the CD. If your DVD player
can read data DVDs containing MP3 files, then you could get for example nearly
80 hours of 128 kbps quality MP3 audio on a 4.7 GB data DVD.
Recording Quality
There are many factors that will affect the quality of any recordings you make.
Factors like performance and environment are beyond the scope of this manual,
but they should not be ignored.
The biggest factor for making a digital recording is often the Analog to Digital
Converter or ADC (page ??). In a computer system, this piece of equipment
is often called a sound card. Sound cards that are integrated into a computer’s
motherboard are ubiquitous now, but have a poor reputation for recording quality.
Anyone who wants to make high quality recordings should seriously consider
using a higher-quality sound card, but for many users the motherboard sound card
might well be acceptable.
A typical Sound Card has three or more ports, often color-coded (though not uni-
versally). Each of these ports has a different purpose and it’s up to the user to
select the right port to plug their audio equipment in to.
117
118 CHAPTER 16. RECORDING QUALITY
Mic In
Generally the Mic In port on a computer is only meant to have a small computer
microphone plugged into it. If you have a microphone with an 1/8” (3.5mm)
3-conductor jack plug1 , it will probably work if plugged into this port.
Line In
The Line In port is the highest quality input available on most sound cards (like
the one pictured above). It expects to have a Line level signal plugged into it, this
is the same level used by most consumer-level audio equipment. Equipment such
as tape decks, record players, MiniDisc players, Video Game Systems and so on
should be plugged into this port.
1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack plug
16.1. INSIDE THE COMPUTER (INCLUDING EXTERNAL AUDIO DEVICES)119
Recovery
121
122 CHAPTER 17. RECOVERY
Chapter 18
Batch Processing
• Adding a small amount of echo to a number of files and then reducing the
bitrate.
Audacity has simple batch processing abilities. You can set up a fixed chain of
commands to be applied to audio files and then apply them to a number of audio
files.
123
124 CHAPTER 18. BATCH PROCESSING
• Once you have the batch chain set up, you can apply it to a number of files
using the menu item Files¿Batch processing
Chapter 19
Customization
125
126 CHAPTER 19. CUSTOMIZATION
page3 for details. It’s also now possible to add ”’VAMP”’4 plug-ins
to Audacity these are used to output descriptive information about the
selected audio.
3
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugins
4
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Vamp Plug-ins
5
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/community/developers#cvs
Chapter 20
Simplifying Audacity
This page is intended for teachers and people who want to create an easier
version of Audacity for others to use.
127
128 CHAPTER 20. SIMPLIFYING AUDACITY
different language in the Interface Preferences (page 239) Audacity will use text
from the file you specify in place of the text that it has built in. The language files
end with the suffix ”.mo”.
We’ve created a ”simplified” language file which reduces the menus in a way
which we think is helpful.
Currently we only have a simplified language file for English. We may release
simplified language files in other languages, if there is demand for them.
We suggest:
• You set up Audacity normally and confirm that recording, playback and
MP3 exporting work fine. The default sample rate is 44100 Hz. You may
want to set a lower rate if audio quality is not that important.
• You can hide the Mixer Toolbar (page 197) now, using the View Menu (page
153).
• If you want to hide the Transcription Toolbar (page 203) and the Selection
Toolbar (page 205) you can do so too.
– If you don’t want the solo buttons, set the ”Solo button” mode to
”None”.
– Then in the ”Language” choice just above, select ”Simplified” as the
language.
• When you exit the Preferences dialog, you should find that menus have been
reduced and now contain fewer items.
If you look in the View Menu (page 153) you will see that there is a new item
called ”Simplified View” and that it has a check mark beside it.
Many of the items in the menus will now have gone. One of these is the ”Pref-
erences (page 225)” menu item at the foot of the Edit Menu (page 143), and its
hotkey (by default CTRL + P) will no longer work. If you need to access Prefer-
ences you can enable the full mode of Audacity again by unchecking ”Simplified
View” in the View Menu (page 153). This restores the full menus, letting you
make your changes. Click ”Simplified” again to remove access to Preferences.
In simplified mode the option to show or hide toolbars is removed from the menus,
which is why we suggest you choose which toolbars to show before enabling the
Simplified interface.
If you use this feature but find it is not helpful, you can either hide it or
remove it completely. To hide it, switch back to English as the language in
the Preferences. To remove it completely, remove the special language folder
called ”en-simple” from your Audacity installation folder.
20.3 Advanced
This is for people who have already got the existing ”Simplified” language
file and the steps above working, and now want to go further.
130 CHAPTER 20. SIMPLIFYING AUDACITY
• If you want to customize what menu items are made available and what
items are not, it is quite a lot more complex. If you ask on the Audacity
forum, there may be someone willing to create a custom ”simplified” lan-
guage file for you.
• If you want to create a new simplified language file yourself, it’s best to get
in touch with the Audacity developer list (audacity-devel AT lists DOT sourceforge DOT net
or click [mailto:audacity-devel@lists.sourceforge.net?subject=Customizing the simplified lan
here]. This is a new feature, and customizing it is not yet as easy as we
would like it to be. People who have used the tools for translating Audacity
will be familiar with the steps:
1
http://poedit.sourceforge.net/
Chapter 21
Accessibility
131
132 CHAPTER 21. ACCESSIBILITY
Chapter 22
Menu Reference
Every command in Audacity should appear in one of the menus, and is docu-
mented on these pages:
• File (page 135) - working with Audacity project files and other audio files
• View (page 153) - changing how Audacity and your project appear on screen.
• Generate (page 163) - creating new audio in your project. Audio generating
plug-ins will also appear here.
• Effect (page 167) - processing the audio in your project. External Effects
plug-ins will also appear in this menu.
• Analyze (page 177) - analyzing the audio in your project. External plug-ins
that act on audio but don’t produce audio output will appear here, as well as
tools like Silence Finder and spectrograms.
• Help (page 183) - Short and detailed Help documents; license, build and
audio device information.
133
134 CHAPTER 22. MENU REFERENCE
Chapter 23
File Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuFile textbfNewCreates a new, empty Audacit
//////////////////////
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuFile textbfNewCreates a new, empty Audacit
//////////////
23.1 New
Creates a new and empty project window to start working on new or imported
Tracks. This new work environment can then be saved as an .AUP (page 281) file
for easy and full retrieval of its contents via the Save Project (page 136) or Save
Project As... (page 137) File menu functions.
135
136 CHAPTER 23. FILE MENU
23.2 Open...
Selecting Open presents you with a standard dialog box where you can select
either audio files, a list of files (.LOF) or an Audacity Project file to open. If your
current project window is ’blank’ then you essentially have an empty project to
work with, which will be used to load the file you choose here. If the project
already has tracks/data in it, then the file you open here will be loaded into a new
project, and appear in a new window.
The audio formats recognized by Audacity include :WAV (page ??)AIFF (page
??)MP3 (page ??)Ogg Vorbis (page ??)FLAC (page ??)
23.4 Close
Closes the current project window, prompting you to save your work if you haven’t
saved.
23.9 Import...
23.9.1 Audio...
Similar to ’Open’, except that the file is added as a new track to your existing
project. This lets you mix two files together.
138 CHAPTER 23. FILE MENU
23.9.2 Labels...
23.9.3 MIDI...
This function attempts to import an uncompressed audio file that might be ”raw”
data without any headers to define its format, might have incorrect headers or be
otherwise partially corrupted, or might be in a format that Audacity is unable to
recognize.
First, select the file in question in the ”Select any uncompressed audio file” dialog.
Then select appropriate parameters to assist Audacity in the formatting of the data.
23.10. EXPORT... 139
• byte order (this is almost always Little-endian if the file was created on
Windows)
23.10 Export...
Exports the current Audacity project as an audio file format that can be read by
other programs.If there are multiple tracks in your project, they will be automat-
ically mixed in the exported data. For more information about mixing, see Mix
and Render (page 158) on the Tracks Menu (page 157).
You can choose the exported file format and settings from the File Export Dialog
(page ??).
speech utterances and phrasesand then export the annotation to be later processed
by another program.To import these labels into a different project later, use theIm-
port... command, above.
This allows you to do multiple exports from Audacity with one command.Export
either multiple files based on the multiple tracks in the project, or based on the
labels in a single audio track. A great timesaver for splitting up long recordings
into separate CD tracks, or archiving multiple working tracks.See the Tutorial -
Copying tapes, LPs or minidiscs to CD (page 29) for an example of howthis is
used.
This function allows you to either edit, remove, or rename existing Chains, or add
a new Chain. When editing an existing Chain, the commands are listed in order
of first to last (End), and can be modified by double clicking, or highlighting
and pressing the spacebar. When adding a new chain, the Insert button allows
you to choose from a selection of common Audacity functions and effects, and
also specify the function parameters to be applied (see help items for specific
functions if required). These chained Commands can also be re-ordered or deleted
accordingly.
23.16. PAGE SETUP... 141
23.17 Print...
Prints the contents of the Audacity window. The time ruler and all of your track
waveforms and label tracks are printed, with no decorations. Everything is printed
to one page.
23.18 Exit
Closes all project windows and exits Audacity.Although you will be asked if you
want to save changes to your project, it isn’t necessary for you to save changes
if you’ve already exported your mix as a WAV or MP3 and you are now finished
with it. On the other hand, if you areworking on a mix and plan to continue where
you left off, saving anAudacity Project will let you restore everything (as it is)
later.
142 CHAPTER 23. FILE MENU
Chapter 24
Edit Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuEdit textbfUndoUndoes the last command yo
24.1 Undo
This will undo the last editing operation you performed to your project. You
can undo as many times as you want, all the way back to when you opened the
window. To undo many operations, select History... from the View Menu (page
153).
24.2 Redo
This will redo any editing operations that were just undone.After you perform a
new editing operation, you can no longer redothe operations that were undone.
143
144 CHAPTER 24. EDIT MENU
24.3 Cut
Removes the selected audio data and places it on the clipboard. Any audio to the
right of the selection is shifted to the left.Only one ”thing” can be on the clipboard
at a time, but it may contain multiple tracks and clips.
Same as Cut, but none of the audio data to the right of the selection is shifted.
This leaves a gap and also splits the existing audio clip into two clips that can be
moved independently using the Move Tool (page ??).
24.5 Copy
Copies the selected audio data to the clipboard without removing it from the
project.
24.6. PASTE 145
24.6 Paste
When you select Paste and the cursor is outside a clip, and there is enough room
for the audio on the clipboard, the audio on the clipboard is inserted without any
other clips being shifted over
146 CHAPTER 24. EDIT MENU
24.7 Trim
Removes all audio from the current clip except the selected part. Does not affect
other clips in the same track.
24.8 Delete
Removes the audio data that is currently selected withoutcopying it to the clip-
board.
Removes the selected audio without placing it on the clipboard, but does not shift
the following audio. The preceding and following audio are now separate clips
that can be moved independently.
24.10. SILENCE 147
24.10 Silence
24.11 Split
Splits the current clip into up to three clips at the selection boundaries. The audio
before, within, and after the selection can now all be shifted independently
148 CHAPTER 24. EDIT MENU
24.12 Join
If you select an area that overlaps one or more clips, they are all joined into one
large clip. Regions in-between clips become silence.
24.13 Disjoin
24.14 Duplicate
Creates a new track containing only the current selection as a new clip
24.15. LABELED REGIONS... 149
Select this command while Audacity is playing or recording to set the right edge
of the selection.
Changes the left edge of the cursor to be the start of the selected clip.
Changes the right edge of the cursor to be the end of the selected clip.
Moves the cursor or the edges of the selection to the nearest point where the audio
waveform passes though zero. Use this to help achieve click-free cuts in audio, as
the two ends of the cut will exactly line up.
Changes the right edge of the selection to equal the left edge.
Changes the left edge of the selection to equal the right edge.
24.24. MOVE CURSOR TO TRACK START 151
24.28 Snap-To...
Turns snapping of the cursor to a grid of time values on or off.When off, your
cursor can be positioned on any sample in the audio file.When on, it is restricted
to certain points in time, determined by the timeformat in use. This is useful if
your project must follow an external timecodeexactly. You can change the current
timecode using the Selection Bar (page 205).
View Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuView textbfZoom inFits a shorter length of ti
25.1 Zoom In
Zooms in on the horizontal axis of the audio, displaying more detailabout less
time. You can also use the zoom tool to zoom in on aparticular part of the window.
Zooms to the default view, which displays about one inch per second.
153
154 CHAPTER 25. VIEW MENU
Click this menu item to turn display of clipped samples on and off - a check mark
in the item indicates that display is turned on. A clipped sample is one that is
outside the volume envelope defined by +1.0 to - 1.0 dB (this is the vertical scale
to left of the waveform when default Waveform (page 211) view is enabled, as
shown below). Clipped samples are bad, as they cause distortion and lost audio
information - avoid them where possible, for example by setting the recording
level (page 119) correctly. A clipped positive sample will have a red vertical line
through it extending from the top of the waveform to the center line. A clipped
negative sample will have the line extending from the bottom of the waveform
to the center line. Turn ”Show Clipping” off if it behaves sluggishly on slower
machines.
156 CHAPTER 25. VIEW MENU
By going to Analyze (page 177) ¿ Find Clipping (page 180), clip-
ping can also be shown diagrammatically in a Label Track (page 215) so that
screen-readers can access the information.
25.10 History...
Brings up the history window. It shows all the actions you have performed during
the current session,including importing. The right-hand column shows the amount
of hard disk space your operations used.You can jump back and forth between
editing steps quite easily by simply clicking on the entriesin the window.
The history window can be kept open at all times. It doesn’t interfere with any
other operations.
25.11 Toolbars...
These commands hide or show the six Audacity Toolbars:
Tools (page 187), Control (page 191), Edit (page 195), Mixer (page 197), Meter
(page 201) and Transcription (page 203)
Chapter 26
Tracks Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuTracks textbfAdd NewAdds a new audio, lab
This creates a new empty audio track. This command is rarely needed,since im-
porting, recording, and mixing automatically create new tracksas needed. But
you can use this to cut or copy data from an existingtrack and paste it into a blank
track.
Creates a stereo version of the new audio track above. You may needthis if you
start with a load of mono tracks and want to export a stereo mix.
157
158 CHAPTER 26. TRACKS MENU
and you select them all and perform a Mix and Render, you will end upwith two
tracks: the first will contain a mix of tracks 1, 2, and 4(the new left channel) and
the other will contain a mix of tracks3 and 4 (the new right channel).
Your tracks are implicitly mixed whenever you hit thePlay button on the Control
Toolbar (page 191) and whenever you select Export (page ??).
Note that if you try to mix two very loud tracks together, you mayget clipping (it
will sound like pops, clicks, and noise). To avoidthis, you should use the track
gain controls to reduce the amplitudeof all of your tracks.
26.4 Resample...
Allows you to change the sample rate of a track by resampling the audio to that
new rate.
This command removes the selected track or tracks from the project.Even if only
part of a track is selected, the entire track is removed.You can also delete a track
by clicking the X in its upper-left corner.To cut out only part of the audio in a
track, useDelete (page ??), Split Delete (page ??) or Silence (page ??).
160 CHAPTER 26. TRACKS MENU
26.6 Align...
26.7 ”alignzero”
26.8 ”aligncursor”
26.9 ”alignselectionstart”
26.10 ”alignselectionend”
26.11 ”alignendcursor”
26.12 ”alignendselectionstart”
26.13 ”alignendselectionend”
26.14 ”aligntogether”
26.15 ”alignmovecursor”
Align and Move Cursor
These commands work just like the align commandswith the move cursor (page
??)command immediately following it.
The label saves your current selection - so when you clickon the label later it
will return the selection to the state it was in whenyou created the label.See the
discussion on Label Tracks (page 215) for more informationon how to use label
tracks.
Generate Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuGenerate textbfChirp...Sound that smoothly
163
164 CHAPTER 27. GENERATE MENU
If there is no selected region of audio, the length of the created audio defaults to
30 seconds unless you specify another length. However some of the generators
such as Noise always remember the last length entered, so that last length becomes
their default.
27.2 Examples
Example 1: Insert two seconds of silence at the start of the track as a ”lead-
in”:
The different types of generator are described below. All generators which have
a choice of amplitude allow a value between 0 (silence) and 1 (the maximum
possible volume without distortion).
27.3 Chirp...
Produces four varieties of pure tone like the Tone Generator, but allows you ad-
ditionally to set the starting and ending amplitude and frequency. Short tones can
thus be made to sound very much like a bird-call. As with Tone, created frequen-
cies can be in a range from 1 Hz to 20000 Hz (these outer limits are beyond the
hearing range of most humans).
and the * and # characters. You can also type the four ”priority” tones used by
the US Military (upper case A, B, C and D). As with most of the generators, you
can choose the amplitude and overall duration of the sequence. Use the slider to
select the ratio between the length of each tone in the series and the length of the
silences between them. This ratio is displayed underneath the slider as the ”duty
cycle”, along with the resulting duration of each tone and silence. For example, if
you create four tones in a sequence lasting four seconds, with a duty cycle of 50%,
the four tones and the three silences between them will all be the same length (571
milliseconds).
27.5 Noise...
Choose amplitude and one of three different ”colours” of noise. White noise is
that which has the greatest ability to mask other sounds, as it has similar energy at
all frequency levels. Pink noise and brown noise both have more energy at lower
frequencies, especially brown noise, which has the most muffled, low pitched
sound of the three types.
27.6 Silence...
Creates audio of zero amplitude, the only configurable setting being duration.
When applied to an audio selection, the result is identical to Edit (page 143) ¿
Silence (page 147).
27.7 Tone...
Choose amplitude and one of four different pure tones: Sine, Square, Sawtooth or
Square (no alias), with a frequency of 1 Hz to 20000 Hz.
166 CHAPTER 27. GENERATE MENU
27.8.2 Pluck...
A synthesized pluck tone with abrupt or gradual fade-out, and selectable pitch
corresponding to a MIDI note.
Effect Menu
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuEffect textbfRepeat Last EffectPerform the la
Audacity includes many built-in effects and also lets you use a wide range of plug-
in effects. You can download many free plugins for Audacity on http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/plugi
Website. More information is also available at http://www.kvr-vst.com, http://www.plugin.org.uk/
and http://www.ladspa.org/.
To apply an effect, select part or all of the tracks you want to modify, and select
the effect from the menu. Titles which end in an ellipsis (...) will bring up a dialog
asking you for more parameters.
• Built-in Effects
167
168 CHAPTER 28. EFFECT MENU
Effects in any of the four classes can perform similar tasks. These are Audacity’s
built-in effects grouped by purpose:
Bass Boost Echo Equalization (page ??) Phaser Wahwah create additional links
(page ??)
Change Pitch without changing tempo Change Tempo without changing pitchChange
Speed affecting pitch and tempo create links (page ??)
Click Removal Noise Removal (page ??) Repair Truncate Silence create addi-
tional links (page ??)
28.3. LIST OF BUILT-IN EFFECTS 169
Most built-in effects have a ”Preview” button. This allows you to listen to
how the first three seconds of your selected audio will sound with your effect
applied. If it does not sound quite as you want, simply adjust the controls
of the effect and preview again. The preview length can be changed on the
Audio I/O (page 227) tab of Preferences (page 225).
28.3.1 Amplify...
This effect increases or decreases the volume of the audio you have selected.
When you open the dialog, Audacity automatically calculates the maximum amount
you could amplify the selected audio without causing clipping (distortion caused
by trying to make the audio too loud).
create link to the Amplify page (page ??)
28.3.3 BassBoost...
This is a safe, smooth filter which can amplify the lower frequencies while leaving
most of the other frequencies alone. It is most effective if you don’t try to boost
too much; 12 dB is usually just right.
28.3.8 Compressor...
Compresses the dynamic range by making the soft parts louder, and the loud parts
softer.?????? More details here (page ??)
28.3.9 EchoEcho...
Repeats the selected audio again and again, normally softer each time. The delay
time between each repeat is fixed, with no pause in between each repeat. For
a more configurable echo effect with a variable delay time and pitch-changed
echoes, see Delay... (page 175)
28.3.10 Equalization...
28.3.11 Fade In
Applies a linear fade-in to the selected audio - the rapidity of the fade-in depends
entirely on the length of the selection it is applied to. For a more customizable
logarithmic fade, use the Envelope Tool (page ??) on the Tools Toolbar (page
187).
187).
28.3.13 Invert
This effect flips the audio samples upside-down. This normally does not affect
the sound of the audio at all. It is occasionally useful, for example when the left
and right channels of a song both contain equal amounts of vocals, but unequal
amounts of background instruments. By inverting one of the channels and not the
other and then converting from stereo to mono, the vocals will cancel each other
out, leaving just the instrumentals. This only works if the exact same vocal signal
is present in both of the channels to begin with.
28.3.14 Leveller...
• In the first step you teach the software about the noise, using a portion of
your sound which contains all noise and no signal,
• In the second you use that information to remove the noise from the rest of
the recording.
First off, you need to find a section of recording that contains only noise, and
not any of your wanted sound, or people talking and the like. This doesn’t need
to be very long, a second is enough, and in necessary you can make it up from
several places in the project (using copy and paste).Now choose Noise Removal...
from the Effect menu and click ”Get Profile”. Audacity learns from this selection
what the noise sounds like, so it knows what to filter out later.Next, select all of
the audio where you want the noise removed from and choose Noise Removal...
again. In th elower half of the dialog adjust the slider to control how agressive
the noise removal is. Most of the time you want a low setting unless the noise is
really bad.Finaly, click the ”Remove Noise” button to start processing. This may
take a little while because it’s quite a complex effect to apply.
If too much or not enough noise was removed, you can Undo (from the Edit menu)
and try Noise Removal... again with a different noise removal level. You don’t
have to get a new noise profile again if you think the first one was fine.
28.3. LIST OF BUILT-IN EFFECTS 173
Removing noise usually results in some distortion. This is normal and there’s
virtually nothing you can do about it. When there’s only a little bit of noise, and
the signal (i.e. the voice or the music or whatever) is much louder than the noise,
this effect works well and there’s very little audible distortion. But when the noise
is very loud, when the noise is variable, or when the signal is not much louder
than the noise, then the result is often too distorted.
If you are still having problems then the following tips may help:
• Do any click removal, compression or other effects after doing noise re-
moval, not first. It works best as close to the source of the noise as possible.
• Make the selection you use to teach audacity about the noise a little quieter
before you do ”Get Profile”, using the amplify effect.
• Duplicate your source track before you apply noise removal, and adjust the
relative volume of the two tracks to get the best sound quality.
28.3.16 media:Normalize.pngNormalize...
28.3.18 Phaser
The name ”Phaser” comes from ”Phase Shifter”, because it works by combining
phase-shifted signals with the original signal. The movement of the phase-shifted
signals is controlled using a Low Frequency Oscillator (LFO).
28.3.19 Repair
fix one particular very short click, pop, or other glitch no more than 128 samples
long
174 CHAPTER 28. EFFECT MENU
28.3.20 :media:Repeat.pngRepeat...
28.3.21 Reverse
This effect reverses the selected audio temporally; after the effect the end of the
audio will be heard first and the beginning last. Some people reverse small por-
tions of audio to make inappropriate language unintelligible, while others believe
you can hear subliminal messages if you listen to speech backwards. You can
also create interesting sound effects by recording natural events and reversing the
audio.
28.3.23 Wahwah...
Rapid tone quality variations, like that guitar sound so popular in the 1970’s.
This effect uses a moving bandpass filter to create its sound. A low frequency
oscillator (LFO) is used to control the movement of the filter throughout the fre-
quency spectrum.
The WahWah effect automatically adjusts the phase of the left and right chan-
nels when given a stereo recording, so that the effect seems to travel across the
speakers.
• You will also need to download and unzip the VST Enabler (page ??) broken
link (page ??) to the same directory.
28.5. NYQUIST EFFECTS 175
• The next time you launch Audacity, any plug-ins you added will appear in
the Effect menu.
• The next time you launch Audacity, any plug-ins you added will appear in
the Effect, Generate or Analyze menus.
28.5.3 Delay...
28.5.6 Tremolo...
Getting a good reverb sound depends a lot on the source audio and can take a
lot of experimentation. One good strategy is to select a small portion of audio (a
few seconds) and try to add reverb. Listen to it, then Undo and try it again with
different settings. Keep doing this until you’ve found the settings you like the
sound of best, and then Undo one last time, Select All, then apply the effect to
your entire recording.
Chapter 29
Analyze Menu
Analyze contains tools for finding out about the characteristics of your audio, or
labeling key features. Plug-ins that accept input but produce no output will also
be placed in the Analyze menu.
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/AnalyzeMenu textbfPlot SpectrumA graph display
177
178 CHAPTER 29. ANALYZE MENU
This takes the selected audio (which is a set of sound pressure values at points in
time) and converts it to a graph of frequencies against amplitudes. This is done
using a piece of maths known as a Fast Fourier Transform or FFT (page ??).
This gives a value for each narrow band of frequencies that represents how much
of those frequencies is present. All the values are then interpolated to create the
graph. Note that currently only the first 23.8 seconds of selected audio can be
analyzed.
The image above is a spectrum of the word ’Audacity’ spoken aloud. This
is the same waveform used as part of the example on the Track Drop-Down
Menu (page ??) page.
The following drop-down boxes let you configure the way the plot is calculated:
29.1. PLOT SPECTRUM... 179
29.1.1 Algorithm
Determines what type of processing is done on the audio data.
29.1.2 Size
This controls how many frequency divisions are used for the spectrum, or how
many samples are used for the autocorrelation. In the Spectrum, a larger number
gives more accurate frequencies (narrow bands) but averages the result over a
longer period of time(because more samples are needed for the calculation). In
the Autocorrelation, a large size looks for repeating patterns over a larger range of
time offsets, and so will detect lower frequency patterns.
29.1.3 Function
Selects which mathematical function is used to pre-process the data. The basic
forms of the FFT and autocorrelation algorithm require infinitely long sections of
audio to work on, and so take infinitely long to complete. Hence the available
audio must be pre-processed in such a way that the finite length of the audio has
minimum effect. The available functions are known as ”windows”:
• Rectangular: is the simplest - it just cuts off the given block of samples
with a sharp cut, and so leaves a sharp click at each end of the data. This
means the results are often poor with a lot of random frequencies in them.
180 CHAPTER 29. ANALYZE MENU
• Blackman, Blackman-Harris:
• Welch:
• Gaussian:
29.1.4 Axis
When using the Spectrum, the frequencies can be displayed on a linear scale (de-
fault, which gives equal width to each increment on the scale) or on a logarithmic
scale.
Help Menu
Help Menu:
Audacity version and build information, credits, and License.
”Getting Started” information and detailed help
Audacity speed test and audio device information.
183
184 CHAPTER 30. HELP MENU
About Audacity... (page 184) Version and build information, credits and Li-
cense
Show Welcome Message... (page 184) ”Getting Started” andIndex... (page
184) detailed help¡hr¿Run Benchmark... (page 184) Audacity Speed Test
¡hr¿Audio Device Info... (page 184) technical details of your sound device
//////////////////////////////////////////////
Menu
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/MenuHelp textbfAbout AudacityAudacit
30.3 Index...
Toolbars
Toolbars contain buttons, sliders and other controls covering most opera-
tions of Audacity, including playback, recording and editing. All are enabled
by default except Device Toolbar, but individual toolbars can be enabled or
hidden by clicking View (page 153) ¿ Toolbars (page 156) and checking or
unchecking the item as required.
• Device (page ??): Convenient way to select playback and recording devices
without going into Audio I/O Preferences (page 227) to do so.
• Edit (page 195): Cut, copy, paste, trim, silence plus undo/redo and zoom
in/out
• Meter (page 201): Monitors the playback and recording volume to avoid
distortion.
• Mixer (page 197): Sets the playback and recording volume and (on some
systems) input source.
185
186 CHAPTER 31. TOOLBARS
• Selection (page 205): Display of timeline and audio position. Also sets the
project sample rate (page 61).
• Tools (page 187): Cursor tools for selecting, adjusting volume, zooming
and time-shifting audio.
Tools Toolbar
::
Tools Toolbar allows you to choose various tools for selection, volume ad-
justment, zooming and time-shifting of audio.
Click to select a start point for audio playback, or click and drag to select
a range of audio to play or edit. You can also create a selection area between two
points by clicking at one point, then holding down SHIFT while clicking at the
other point.
187
188 CHAPTER 32. TOOLS TOOLBAR
32.3 Draw
When zoomed in (page 99) to maximum level, lets you adjust the volume
level of individual audio samples (page 59). It can be used to eliminate narrow
clicks and pops in audio by smoothing out the contour of the samples, so that one
sample is not at a very different vertical position to its neighbors.
• Click above or below a sample to move it to that point (holding down CTRL
while clicking ensures only one sample is affected, even if you click near
another sample). Remember, the closer the sample is to the horizontal line
through the center of the track, the quieter the sample will be.
• Smooth a group of samples by holding down ALT, which changes the cursor
symbol to a brush. Then click halfway along the group to progressively
smooth out the samples.
Note: Draw Tool only works when using the default Waveform (dB) view (se-
lectable on the Track Drop-Down Menu (page ??)).
For very short lengths of audio up to 128 samples long, you can smooth out
audio automatically with Repair tool under the Effect Menu (page 167)
32.4. ZOOMINGZOOM 189
32.4 ZoomingZoom
Clicking once zooms in one step. Shift-click or right-click zooms out one
step. If you have a middle button, middle-click zooms in or out to Audacity’s
default zoom level of about one inch per second. Otherwise, use View (page 153)
¿ Zoom Normal (page 153) to do the same thing. You can zoom in without using
Zoom Tool by using keyboard shortcuts (page ??), or the zoom buttons on the
Edit Toolbar (page 195).
track, use the Selection Tool to drag a selection area over them, then switch
to the Time Shift Tool and drag.
32.6 Multi-ToolMulti
Combines all five tools in one. One tool is available at a time, according to
the mouse position.
190 CHAPTER 32. TOOLS TOOLBAR
Chapter 33
Control Toolbar
191
192 CHAPTER 33. CONTROL TOOLBAR
Temporarily pauses playing or recording without losing your place. Press Pause a
second time to resume.
Move the cursor to the beginning of the audio. This is useful if you want to play
everything, or record a new track starting from the beginning. SHIFT + Click
creates a selection area from the cursor to the start, or from the right edge of a
selection area to the start.
Move the cursor to the end of the audio. SHIFT + Click creates a selection area
from the cursor to the end, or from the left edge of a selection area to the end.
33.8. PLAY AND RECORD 193
• The Control Toolbar has buttons for controlling playback and record-
ing.
• These buttons can also be controlled with keyboard shortcuts (page ??).
Play: If an area of track is selected, only that selection will be played. Other-
wise, playback begins wherever the selection cursor is.
Loop Play: Hold down SHIFT while pressing Play to loop the current selec-
tion or the whole track, playing it over and over again until you press Stop.
Record: Recording begins at either the current cursor location or at the be-
ginning of the current selection. Pressing Record always creates a new track, but
holding down Shift while pressing Record starts the recording at the end of the
currently selected track(s).
Holding SHIFT down whilst clicking either of these buttons extends a selec-
tion area from the cursor position or current selection area to the start or end
respectively.
Skip to Start: Move the cursor to the beginning of the audio. This is useful
if you want to play everything, or record a new track starting from the beginning.
Edit Toolbar
These tools perform the same functions as those accessible through the Edit menu
(page 143),View menu (page 153) and keyboard shortcuts (page ??).
34.1 Editing
Cut: Removes the selected audio data and places it on the clipboard.
Copy: Copies the selected audio data to the clipboard without re-
moving it from the project.
195
196 CHAPTER 34. EDIT TOOLBAR
Redo: Restores the previous editing operation that was just undone.
Note: If you undo an operation then perform any new one that appears in the
Undo History (page 156), you can no longer redo that undone operation.
34.3 Zooming
Zoom Out: Zooms out to a lower magnification level. You can zoom
out so far as to fit 228 hours of audio on the screen.
Fit Project: Zooms in or out so that the entire audio of the project
fits in the available horizontal window area.
Chapter 35
Mixer Toolbar
The sliders will jump to zero (left most position) if the sound card drivers do
notgive Audacity access to these functions. This is the case with some digital
I/O cardsfrom RME. Sound cards that have a custom mixer application rather
than the standard OS volume control usually won’t work with this function
of audacity.
On these cards you will not be able to control anything with these sliders.
You will need to set up the recording levels and the recording source using
the card’s mixer program.
197
198 CHAPTER 35. MIXER TOOLBAR
with different sound cards. The image shows an example of the options you might
see, in this case with an an ESS 1969 sound card with the Line In input selected.
200 CHAPTER 35. MIXER TOOLBAR
Chapter 36
Meter Toolbar
The green bar shows the playback level, and the red bar shows recording level.
The meter toolbar can also be undocked and displayed as a window in its own
right. It can be resized, giving longer scales for the meters and hence a more
accurate view of the volume levels.
201
202 CHAPTER 36. METER TOOLBAR
Chapter 37
Transcription Toolbar
Transcription Toolbar lets you play audio at a slower or faster speed than
normal, also affecting pitch. Slower than normal speeds can make it easier to
transcribe speech or song lyrics.
Transcription Toolbar has its own own Play button which plays selected audio at
the speed set by the slider to the right. Press spacebar to stop playback. Note that
whatever the setting on the slider, audio only plays at normal speed if you use
spacebar or the Play button on the Control Toolbar (page 191) to play.
Drag the slider to set a speed from one-hundredth of normal to three times as
fast, or use the arrow keys on your keyboard to change speed by 0.3x increments.
To set a precise playback speed, double click over the slider, enter your desired
speed in the box and click OK. It isn’t currently possible to change speed during
playback - changing speed takes effect after you stop and restart playback.
203
204 CHAPTER 37. TRANSCRIPTION TOOLBAR
Chapter 38
Selection Bar
The Selection Bar (above) is normally at the bottom of your Audacity window,
but like any of the Toolbars (page 185), you can move it wherever you want by
dragging the grab bar on the left side of the bar. Selection Bar shows and allows
editing of :
• Project Rate: The sample rate for the project, typically 44100 Hz. Chang-
ing this value immediately changes the sample rate at which new tracks will
be recorded or generated, and at which existing tracks will be played back,
mixed or exported.
• Snap To: If checked, selections and mouse clicks snap to the currently cho-
sen units. For example, the units in the image above are set to hours:minutes:seconds.
With Snap To enabled and the cursor at the start, clicking in the track at
2.8 seconds causes the cursor to jump to the nearest preceding unit, in this
case 2.0 seconds. To change the units to another format such as samples or
CDDA frames, click the downward pointing arrow in any of the three boxes
to right of Snap To. See Audacity Selection (page 75) for advanced usage
of the Selection Bar.
205
206 CHAPTER 38. SELECTION BAR
• (Selection) End/Length: Click the ”End” radio button to show the end
point of the selection. If there is no selection, the value is the same as
the Selection Start. Clicking the ”Length” button shows the length of the
selection instead (the value shows as zero if there is no selection).
Timeline
The ruler above the tracks measures time. Depending on zooming (page 99) the
ruler may span minutes of audio or give a ’close up view’ of a few seconds.
The ruler is also marked up with various symbols:
• Quick-Play range: A selectable time range that always plays ”on demand”,
shown by arrowheads with a line connecting them. Select a range on the
ruler by dragging with the mouse, and that range will play as soon as you
release the mouse, even if audio is already playing elswhere. Neither an
already selected region or the cursor is affected by defining a Quick-Play
range. For other methods of navigating to playback points or areas, see
Playing and Recording (page 93).
The image of the ruler shows a selection and to the right a quick-play region with
the playback cursor part way through playing it.
207
208 CHAPTER 39. TIMELINE
Chapter 40
Tracks
Anything that is added to your project will be placed inside a track container,
underneath the timeline (page 207) of the project. These are the different types of
track:
Audio tracks contain digitally sampled (page 59) sounds. The tracks can be stereo
(with either joined or split left and right channels), or single channel (mono, left
or right). All tracks can be mixed (page ??) together, individually muted or made
solo, panned left or right , or given their own gain settings. Each can also have
their own sample rate (page 61) and bit depth (page 62). The track display offers
spectrum and pitch views as well as two waveform views. All these features can
be controlled on the Track Panel (page 211) and its Drop-Down Menu (page ??).
There is no limit imposed by Audacity on the number of audio tracks in a project,
though a fast, modern computer is needed to edit and play back more than three
or four long tracks.
209
210 CHAPTER 40. TRACKS
Audio Tracks
An audio track containing digital audio has a Track Panel, a vertical scale with
units (except in the Pitch view) then the representation of the track itself (by de-
fault this is the ”Waveform” view as in the image above). New tracks are cre-
ated whenever you /import/ an audio file or /record/ into your project , can be
/generated/ with particular types of tone or noise. Or Tracks ¿ Add New ***
Expand/add links ***
211
212 CHAPTER 41. AUDIO TRACKS
• Title: Clicking on this title gives a drop-down menu (page ??) giving vari-
ous options that affect this track only. Newly created tracks are called ”Au-
dio Track”. Options in the drop-down menu include changing the name,
sample rate and how the track is displayed.
• Track information: Gives in order, Stereo or Mono, the sampling rate in
Hz and the manner in which samples are represented.
• Mute: Click to silence this track when playing. Click again to unsilence.
• Solo: Click to play just this track. Click again to cancel. Solo takes prece-
dence over mute - the mute buttons usually have no effect whilst any solo
button is down. There are three options for exactly how the solo button op-
erates, described in Interface Preferences (page 239). One of the options is
not having the solo button at all.
• Gain: For this track.
• Collapse: Click on this to make the track ’fold up’ into a smaller size. Click
again, or drag the lower edge of the track to restore the size.
With the Gain and Pan sliders, holding shift down whilst dragging the slider
will move in smaller increments.
Move the entire track up or down in the list of tracks by clicking on the panel
on the left and then dragging up or down.
41.2 Scale
• The scale for the waveform shows the number of dB. When the mouse is
over the scale it changes to a magnify icon. Clicking can increase the zoom,
41.3. DISPLAY 213
shift clicking to zoom back out. This is a zoom in the vertical direction, and
is used more rarely than the zoom on the time axis. See Zooming (page 99)
which covers both vertical and horizontal zooming.
41.3 Display
Click and drag between the two waveforms to change their relative height.
See Audacity Tracks and Clips (page 67) for more details on using the waveform
display.
214 CHAPTER 41. AUDIO TRACKS
Chapter 42
Label Tracks
• Labels can also define different points in an audio track. This is a con-
venient way to mark different tracks in a recording then export them to
differently named audio files using File (page 135) ¿ Export Multi-
ple... (page 140)
215
216 CHAPTER 42. LABEL TRACKS
Here, we select the first question with the mouse (below). This may require listen-
ing to the audio several times to determine the exact boundaries of the selection.
Now choose Add Label at Selection from the Tracks menu, or type its keyboard
shortcut ( CTRL + B on Windows/Linux or CMD + B on the Mac). This creates a
new label track and a blank label outlining the current selection (below).
42.1. CREATING LABELS 217
The cursor is automatically positioned inside the label, so just type the name of
the label and then press Enter. Pressing Enter then allows you to use any cur-
rent keyboard shortcuts (page ??) normally, so you could press spacebar to listen
to the selection again if you wished. In the image below we’ve typed Question
1.
After this question comes the answer from the person being interviewed. We’ll
select this one by starting from the right side of the answer and dragging to the
left. Note that a vertical yellow guide appears when we get to the edge of the
first label, making it easy to line up the two labels (below). It’s common for the
next label to start exactly where the previous one ends, but it’s not necessary.
Once again, choose Add Label at Selection to create the next label, then type
its name and press Enter. Then in the following image, we’ve added even more
labels.
And here is a complete label track with several labels
218 CHAPTER 42. LABEL TRACKS
of the label.
Press TAB to move from one label to the next, and SHIFT + TAB to move back-
wards.
• Click on the label’s title to select it, then press the Backspace key on your
keyboard until the title is gone. Once the title is empty, press Enter or just
press Backspace again to delete the label.
• You can manipulate a label track much the same way you’d manipulate an
Audio Track. You can select an area extending over a range of labels then
use commands like Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete.
Another way to delete labels is to just remove the label track entirely and start
again. Click in the track and then choose Remove Tracks from the Tracks menu,
or alternatively click in the close box in the upper-left corner of that track.
If you need to cut or delete a section of audio that lies in-between labels,
select the area for deletion in both the audio track and the label track, then
the labels will remain in the correct place in relation to the remaining audio.
There is also a handy feature whereby you can select an area of text in a label,
then right-click (control-click on a Mac) and cut or copy that text. This allows
you to click in another label, right-click or control-click, then paste that text in.
So in our example you could select and copy ”Question” and then paste it into the
appropriate labels without having to type that word every time.
Sometimes it’s useful to edit multiple labels at once using a tabular view, similar to
editing a spreadsheet. To do this, select Edit Labels from the Tracks menu, which
the Tracks menu, or you can press its keyboard shortcut, Ctrl-M. Note that despite
the name of the command, it doesn’t only work while playing an existing track;
you can use it while recording a new one, too.
Note the difference between this and the previous command, Add Label at Selec-
tion. While playing or recording, both commands are useful. Use Add Label at
Playback Position to mark the exact spot you’re listening to, or use Add Label
at Selection if you want to make selections to label with the mouse while you’re
simultaneously listening.
Time Tracks
Time Track is used in conjunction with one or more audio tracks (page 211) to
gradually increase or decrease playback speed over the length of the audio. Speed
changes are controlled by manipulating the blue ”time warp” line with the same
Envelope Tool (page ??) used for making gradual volume changes. If the blue line
is dragged above the horizontal, the audio plays faster; if dragged below, it plays
slower:
The degree of speed warping that occurs when the line is dragged to the top and
bottom of the time envelope is determined by ”Set Range” on the Time Track’s
drop-down menu.
Only one Time Track can be used in a project, and it affects all audio tracks
on screen.
223
224 CHAPTER 43. TIME TRACKS
43.1 Menu
Clicking on the triangle on the panel on the left of the track provides some options
for the time track.
• "Set Range" lets you set first the minimum and then the max-
imum pitch change. Values are expressed in percentage values relative to
100%.
The converter used will be the one(s) set up on the Quality Preferences (page 231)
tab of thePreferences (page 225). You can make separate choices for Realtime
(playback) and High Quality (exporting), trading speed against quality.
Older computers may be incapable of playing audio in real-time that makes use of
a Time Track, however you can always Export the file as a WAV and then playback
the WAV file later.
• To edit the time warping, choose the envelope tool from the Control Toolbar
- the same tool you use to edit amplitude envelopes in Audio Tracks. Click
to create and edit control points. Drag points off the track to delete them.
The Time Track has a ruler. As you edit the warping, the ruler will warp to show
you at what time playback will reach each place in the audio.
Chapter 44
Preferences
The Preferences dialog can be selected from the Edit Menu (page 143) or using
the shortcut CTRL + P (CMND + P on Macs). Here you can change many of the
default behaviors of Audacity. The dialog is split into nine sections, each of which
have their own clickable tab:
• Audio I/O (page 227) : To select Audio devices and their properties.
• Quality (page 231) : To select data rates and other trade offs between speed,
size and quality.
• Import / Export (page 235) : Location of the LAME MP3 (page ??) library.
Whether imported audio is copied into projects, if tracks are normalized,
how audio is mixed upon export.
Advanced settings for file formats when exporting are accessed using the
Options (page ??) button at time of export (page ??).
225
226 CHAPTER 44. PREFERENCES
• Directories (page 247) : Where temporary files are stored and how often to
autosave.
• //// Batch (page ??) : Used for a chain of commands applied to a number of
audio files. Will almost certainly be removed/////
• OS X: /Library/Application Support/audacity.cfg
• Linux: /.audacity-data/audacity.cfg
However if you a create a directory called ”Portable Settings” in the same direc-
tory as the Audacity executable, ”audacity.cfg” will be stored there instead. This
facilitates transfer of the user’s customized settings (for example, via a USB stick)
if Audacity is used on another computer. Note: a workround1 is needed where au-
dacity.cfg is on a computer running OS X.
1
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Portable
Audacity#Possible problem under OS X
Chapter 45
Audio IO Preferences
45.1 Playback
• Device: Selects the device for playback.
Under the device selection box is an indicator of the audio library that Audacity
is using, for example Portaudio v18 or Portaudio v19.
227
228 CHAPTER 45. AUDIO IO PREFERENCES
45.2 Recording
• Device: Selects the device used for recording.
• Channels: Mono, stereo or other.
45.3 Playthrough
• Play other tracks while recording new one: check to enable the feature
where you can listen to audio on your PC whilst recording,
• Software Playthrough: check so that a track being recorded is patched to
output too. You probably will want to listen to the output via headphones.
• Play before: How much audio before the region that is being removed to
play.
• Play after: How much audio after the region that is being removed to play.
45.5 Latency
• Audio to buffer: If you set this to 100ms the audio will take 0.1 seconds
to travel through the sound card. If you decrease this value then recordings
will be laid down with less delay and ’software playthrough’ may respond
faster. However, the CPU will have to work harder as it is taking the audio
through the soundcard in smaller chunks. If you set this value too low for
example to 1ms, then the CPU will not be able to keep up and recording
won’t work. 100ms is about right for most people.
45.6. SEEK TIME 229
• Long Period:
Quality Preferences
231
232 CHAPTER 46. QUALITY PREFERENCES
46.1 Sampling
This panel sets the Default Sample Rate (page 61) and Default Sample Format
(page 62) (bit depth) which will be used each time Audacity is launched, or each
time a new project window is opened.
• Default Sample Rate: The dropdown will offer you a choice of six sample
rates plus any additional ones that appear to be supported by the your audio
device. Generally you will want to use the default value of 44100 Hz. To
choose some other rate, click ”Other...” in the dropdown and type your rate
into the box to right of the dropdown. Changing default sample rate in this
dialog is effective immediately.
If you just want to make a temporary change on the fly without changing the
default rate, simply click the Project Rate dropdown at left of the Selection
Bar (page 205) and select or type in the rate you require.
• Default Sample Format: Affects both imported and newly recorded ma-
terial. The default 32-bit float resolution gives the highest quality of the
three choices but takes twice the storage space on disk compared to 16 bit
resolution.
46.2 Conversion
These options concern the trade-offs that arise when converting from one sam-
ple rate to another and one sample format to another. For example, sample rate
conversion is necessary whenever the sample rate of the track does not match the
current project rate. Sample format conversion would be required upon export if
you used the default 32 bit float sample format but exported a 16 bit audio file.
• Real-time and High-quality: Both the Sample Rate Converter and the
Dither (for conversion between sample formats) have options for use in dif-
ferent circumstances. The ”Real-time” options are only used when convert-
ing sample rates or formats for playback in Audacity. The ”High-quality”
46.2. CONVERSION 233
options are used for sound that is being converted for storage on disk, for
example when mixing or exporting.
• MP3 Export Library Version: This shows the current version of the LAME
MP3 (page ??) encoding library being used by Audacity for MP3 export. If
a suitable version of LAME is not accessible to Audacity, the message will
235
236 CHAPTER 47. IMPORT / EXPORT PREFERENCES
instead state that the library is ”not found”. In that case, use the provided
buttons to either locate LAME on your computer or download a free copy
of it, following the instructions on the LAME MP3 (page ??) page.
• Find Library: If you already have the LAME library on disk and Audacity
can’t find it, use this button to tell Audacity where it is.
• Quality settings for all exported file formats: Users of the previous stable
1.2.x Audacity will recall that bit rate and bit depth for exported files were
set on this Preferences tab (which was then called ”File Formats”). How-
ever, in Audacity 1.4 you now choose export settings for the various formats
at the time of export by clicking Options in the File Export Dialog (page
??). This saves the separate step of going into Preferences each time you
want to to change export settings.
• Normalize all tracks in project: The imported file (in any format) and all
audio tracks already on screen will be normalized to your current setting for
the normalize (page ??) effect.
• Always copy all audio into project: Any dependency on external audio
files will be automatically removed. As soon as the project is saved, you can
safely move, rename or delete any audio files that were opened or imported.
• Do not copy any audio: The project will be saved automatically but will
depend on any opened or imported files remaining accessible and having
the same name and location as before.
• Ask User: Whenever you attempt to save a project that depends on other
audio files, you will be offered the option to copy the dependent audio files
in to the project, or not.
You can check at any time if your work depends on other files, and copy the
files in if you need to, by clicking File (page 135) ¿ Check Dependencies...
(page 137)
have any stereo tracks in your project (or any mono tracks panned away
from center), the exported file will be stereo, containing two channels (left
and right).
• Use custom mix: When this option is enabled, an Advanced Mixing Op-
tions (page ??) window appears immediately after the completing the File
Export Dialog (page ??). Advanced Mixing gives you much greater flexibil-
ity in mapping your audio tracks to specific output channels in the exported
file. In particular it allows export of multichannel files (that is, having more
than two channels of audio) in WAV, AIFF, OGG and FLAC formats.
Interface Preferences
239
240 CHAPTER 48. INTERFACE PREFERENCES
48.1 Behaviors
• Update display while playing: This steps the timeline (page 207) to left
during play or recording, so that the playback or recording cursor remains
visible. Most users would keep this enabled, but on slower computers turn-
ing it off can prevent interrupted playback or recording. Turning it off al-
lows you to drag the horizontal scrollbar at the bottom of the screen to a
new playback position then restart playback (page 93) from there.
• Closing last window quits Audacity: Sets Audacity to quit when the last
project window you are working with is closed. Unchecking this can be
useful as it lets you use File ¿ Close to close the last window and then
create a new empty Project. To shut Audacity down with this preference
unchecked, you must use File ¿ Exit (on a Mac, Audacity ¿ Quit Audacity)
or the respective hotkey.
• Enable dragging left and right selection edges: Lets you expand or con-
tract existing selection areas with the mouse after they have been created. If
unchecked you must use the Selection Bar or keyboard to modify existing
selection areas. See Audacity Selection (page 71) for further details.
• Ergonomic order of audio I/O buttons: Sets the Control Toolbar (page
191) button order as: Pause, Play, Stop, Skip to Start, Skip to End, Record,
rather than: Skip to Start, Play, Record, Pause, Stop, Skip to End.
• ”Move track focus” cycles repeatedly through tracks: When using the
up and down arrow keys to change which track is focused, moving the focus
off one end (top or bottom) makes the focus jump to the other end.
• Editing a clip can move other clips: This ensures that when cutting and
pasting audio in or to left of a clip (page 67), clips or audio to the right of
the edit point can move, and the total length of the track change accordingly.
Unchecking this option pins the clips so that they can’t move. Therefore if
you are cutting, space will be created, and if there is insufficient space to
paste, an error message will display.
48.2. SHOW / HIDE 241
• Select all audio in project, if none selected: If you select no audio before
applying an effect, the effect will be automatically applied to all audio in all
tracks. This also applies to other menu items requiring an audio selection to
be made. If this preference is unchecked, all menu items requiring an audio
selection will remain grayed out until audio is selected.
• Enable cut lines: Displays a light blue vertical line at the left edge of a cut
edit, which changes to red after clicking elsewhere in the track. Click on the
line at any time to restore the cut audio; if you restore in error, use Edit ¿
Undo Expand to get the cut line back. To remove the line without restoring
audio, right-click over it. Edit ¿ Undo Remove will restore the line if you
make a mistake.
• Show warnings about temp files: ??? When Audacity starts up, tells you
if there were files ’left over’ from a previous run of Audacity.
• Show prompt to save, even if project is empty: Most users should leave
this option enabled, so that Audacity warns you if you try to exit an un-
saved project with no tracks in it. You should not save an empty project, as
Audacity saves exactly what you see on the screen. If you see this warn-
ing that ”Saved project will be empty”, follow the instructions by clicking
”Cancel”, use Edit ¿ Undo to restore the tracks you want to save, then File
¿ Save Project.
48.3 Modes
• CleanSpeech Mode: A customization of Audacity by Lynn Allan with lim-
ited menu options. It’s mainly used for quick clean-up and MP3 export of
a number of speech recordings, carried out as a batch process. The avail-
able effects in the ”CleanSpeech” batch chain are limited to Fade In, Fade
Out, Leveller, Noise Removal, Normalize, Stereo to Mono and Truncate Si-
lence. A simple ”MP3 Conversion” chain is also provided which has only a
Normalize effect.
• Help:
– ”Standard” is what most people will want: Audacity will show help
in its built-in browser, using HTML files stored on your computer.
– ”In Browser” is similar, except the same files are displayed in your
default web browser.
– ”Internet” will always use the latest help files from the internet, open-
ing your default browser to do this.
48.5. OTHER INTERFACE CHOICES 243
• Solo Button: The ”Solo” button on the Track Panels (page 211) can behave
in three different ways:
– ”Standard” will suit those used to mixing desks and other profes-
sional audio software. Any number of tracks can be made solo so that
they mix (page ??) together, but if any solo button is down, the mute
buttons have no effect. If on any occasion you want the Solo button to
play only one track at a time (so that clicking it releases any other solo
buttons), hold down SHIFT when clicking Solo.
– In ”Simple” mode, ”Solo” means as it does in common parlance - a
track made solo is the only one that can be heard. If a track is solo, the
mute buttons are set down on all the other tracks, so that solo is just a
shortcut way of muting all tracks except one. If on any occasion you
want the Solo button to select multiple tracks for listening, hold down
SHIFT when clicking Solo.
– ”None” mode has no solo buttons, so you select the tracks you want
to play by unmuting them (clicking the mute buttons so that they are
up).
244 CHAPTER 48. INTERFACE PREFERENCES
Chapter 49
Spectrogram Preferences
245
246 CHAPTER 49. SPECTROGRAM PREFERENCES
49.2 Display
• Grayscale: Shows gray shades in the Spectrum view instead of full colors.
Directory Preferences
247
248 CHAPTER 50. DIRECTORY PREFERENCES
with plenty of free space. If you need to put it on a network drive, enable
the Audio cache option (see below).
• Auto save interval: Reduce the interval to make saving more frequent. This
will reduce the amount of audio lost if there is a crash between save points.
Keyboard Preferences
This preferences window sets the keyboard shortcuts which can be used for
numerous commands in Audacity as an alternative to using Menus (page
133), Toolbars (page 185) or mouse gestures (page 253).
249
250 CHAPTER 51. KEYBOARD PREFERENCES
• Move cursor
• Track Panel (page 211) and Track Drop-Down Menu (page ??) commands
for focused track
• Snap To
If you are looking for a particular command in the list and know its exact
name, you can jump to it by typing the first letter of its name until you reach
it.
A full list of the commands with their default key bindings is also available at
Keyboard Shortcut Reference (page ??).
51.2. MODIFYING THE KEY BINDINGS 251
• Clear: To remove a binding: select the item as above, then press ”Clear”.
• Defaults: Clicking this button reverts all bindings to those when you first
obtained Audacity. This button is handy if you decide you have not got
your changes right and want to start over again. Naturally you can also
press ”Cancel”, in which case all bindings will remain as they were before
you started to edit them.
Be sure not to delete the closing ”/¿” characters at the end of the command.
252 CHAPTER 51. KEYBOARD PREFERENCES
Chapter 52
Mouse Preferences
When using one of the Audacity tools (page 187), a number of tasks can be con-
veniently performed with the mouse by simple click and drag gestures. If your
mouse has a scroll wheel, you can also use the mouse for vertical or horizontal
scrolling of tracks on the Audacity screen, and to zoom in and out. The image
above has a complete list of the available mouse bindings, but currently these are
253
254 CHAPTER 52. MOUSE PREFERENCES
Index
255
256 CHAPTER 53. INDEX
• Editing
• Exporting
• LPs
• Recording
258 CHAPTER 53. INDEX
• Tapes
Glossary
This page gives very brief explanations of technical terms related to digital audio,
with some links to Wikipedia for much more comprehensive explanations.
Link
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amplitude fo
259
260 CHAPTER 54. GLOSSARY
Bit
Bit Rate:
The number of computer bits (page 260) that are conveyed or processed per unit
of time. Normally expressed in kilobits per second (kbps).
CBR:
Cepstrum:
Clipping:
• Cycle:
• DAC:
• Data CDs:
• Dynamic Range: The difference between the loudest and softest part in an
audio recording, the maximum possible being determined by its sample for-
mat (page ??). For a device, the difference between its maximum possible
undistorted signal and its Noise Floor (page ??).
• Filter: A sound effect that lets some frequencies through and suppresses
others.
• Gain:
• Interpolation:
• Linear:
• Logarithmic:
• Lossless:
• Lossy:
• Low Pass Filter: A filter that lets low (bass) frequencies through.
• MP3 CDs:
• Noise Floor:
• PCM:
• Pitch:
• Red Book:
262 CHAPTER 54. GLOSSARY
• RMS:
• Sample Rate (page 61): Measured in Hz like Frequency (page ??), this
represents the number of digital samples captured per second in order to
represent the waveform.
• Sample Format (page 62): Also known as Bit Depth. The number of com-
puter bits (page ??) present in each audio sample. Determines the dynamic
range (page ??) of the audio.
• VBR:
• Waveform:
• Wavelength:
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1 textbfFLAC (pag
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1 tex
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1 textbfMP2 (page
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1 textbfMP3 (page
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1 textbfOgg Vorbis (pag
includegraphics[trim=0 0 0 0, scale=1.000000]images/Wikipedia1 textbfWAV (page pagerefwa
Chapter 55
FAQ
To be categorized:
[Gale] FAQ to be added for can’t open WAV files from portable players
263
264 CHAPTER 55. FAQ
55.1 General
• If you are a programmer and you know C++, we can always use more de-
velopers. We especially need more Windows and MacOS programmers, as
many of the current developers prefer Linux.
• If you are bilingual, you can help us translate Audacity into another lan-
guage.
• If you are good at writing, you can help us write documentation and tutori-
als.
• Finally, anyone can submit bug reports and suggestions. The more detailed,
the better.
If you would like to help out in any one of these ways,please email the developers
at. You mayalso want to go to the Sourceforge web site and join themailing list
yourself.
The most important thing when reporting a bug is to beas specific as possible.
Give us enough information thatwe can reproduce the bug ourselves, otherwise
it’s unlikelythat we’ll be able to fix it.
• Be sure to let us know what operating system you run (such as Windows
98, MacOS 9.1, Fedora Linux 3, etc.) and any other information about your
computer that you think might be relevant.
• Then, can you reproduce the bug? If it happens consistently, tell us the
exact sequence of events which causes the bug to occur. If you get an error
message, make sure you send us
55.1. GENERAL 265
From the browser, select the option to ”Run from currentlocation”. This launches
the Audacity setup program, which will install theAudacity program files and
create an entry in the start menu.
• If you already downloaded the file, just double-click on it to start the in-
staller.
• If you prefer not to use the Installer program, you can also download Au-
dacity as a ZIP file, which you can decompress using WinZip or any other
extraction program.
You need a recent version of StuffIt Expander. StuffIt Expandercomes with all
Macintoshes and is usually configured by defaultwith all Mac web browsers. If
Audacity does not decompressautomatically, drag ”audacity.sit” to StuffIt Ex-
pander to decompressit.
There is no need to install Audacity. Just drag the Audacityfolder to your Appli-
cations folder, or wherever else you wouldlike to put it. To uninstall, just drag the
entire folder tothe trash.
266 CHAPTER 55. FAQ
Credits
• Dominic Mazzoni
1
http://www.sourceforge.net
267
268 CHAPTER 56. CREDITS
• Scott Granneman
• Tony Oetzmann
• Matt Brubeck
• Gale Andrews
• Richard Ash
• Leland Lucius
• James Crook
• Christian Brochrec
• Alexandre Prokoudine
Dominic is the current Audacity project leader. For a list of all past and present
contributors to the Audacity project and for personal contact information, please
visit the Credits2 page on our main website3 .
2
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/credits
3
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Chapter 57
License
• libogg and libvorbis: BSD-like license - Decodes and encodes Ogg Vorbis
files.
269
270 CHAPTER 57. LICENSE
Copyright (C) 1989, 1991 Free Software Foundation, Inc.51 Franklin Street, Fifth
Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USAEveryone is permitted to copy and distribute
verbatim copiesof this license document, but changing it is not allowed.
57.2.1 Preamble
The licenses for most software are designed to take away yourfreedom to share
and change it. By contrast, the GNU General PublicLicense is intended to guar-
antee your freedom to share and change freesoftware–to make sure the software
is free for all its users. ThisGeneral Public License applies to most of the Free
SoftwareFoundation’s software and to any other program whose authors commit
tousing it. (Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered bythe GNU
Library General Public License instead.) You can apply it toyour programs, too.
When we speak of free software, we are referring to freedom, notprice. Our Gen-
eral Public Licenses are designed to make sure that youhave the freedom to dis-
tribute copies of free software (and charge forthis service if you wish), that you
receive source code or can get itif you want it, that you can change the software or
use pieces of itin new free programs; and that you know you can do these things.
To protect your rights, we need to make restrictions that forbidanyone to deny
you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights.These restrictions translate
to certain responsibilities for you if youdistribute copies of the software, or if you
modify it.
For example, if you distribute copies of such a program, whethergratis or for a
fee, you must give the recipients all the rights thatyou have. You must make sure
3
http://www.gnu.org/licenses/lgpl.html
57.2. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 271
that they, too, receive or can get thesource code. And you must show them these
terms so they know theirrights.
We protect your rights with two steps: (1) copyright the software, and(2) offer you
this license which gives you legal permission to copy,distribute and/or modify the
software.
Also, for each author’s protection and ours, we want to make certainthat everyone
understands that there is no warranty for this freesoftware. If the software is mod-
ified by someone else and passed on, wewant its recipients to know that what they
have is not the original, sothat any problems introduced by others will not reflect
on the originalauthors’ reputations.
Finally, any free program is threatened constantly by softwarepatents. We wish
to avoid the danger that redistributors of a freeprogram will individually obtain
patent licenses, in effect making theprogram proprietary. To prevent this, we have
made it clear that anypatent must be licensed for everyone’s free use or not li-
censed at all.
The precise terms and conditions for copying, distribution andmodification follow.
0. This License applies to any program or other work which containsa notice
placed by the copyright holder saying it may be distributedunder the terms of
this General Public License. The ”Program”, below,refers to any such program
or work, and a ”work based on the Program”means either the Program or any
derivative work under copyright law:that is to say, a work containing the Program
or a portion of it,either verbatim or with modifications and/or translated into an-
otherlanguage. (Hereinafter, translation is included without limitation inthe term
”modification”.) Each licensee is addressed as ”you”.
Activities other than copying, distribution and modification are notcovered by this
License; they are outside its scope. The act ofrunning the Program is not re-
stricted, and the output from the Programis covered only if its contents constitute
a work based on theProgram (independent of having been made by running the
Program).Whether that is true depends on what the Program does.
1. You may copy and distribute verbatim copies of the Program’ssource code as
272 CHAPTER 57. LICENSE
you receive it, in any medium, provided that youconspicuously and appropriately
publish on each copy an appropriatecopyright notice and disclaimer of warranty;
keep intact all thenotices that refer to this License and to the absence of any war-
ranty;and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this Licensealong
with the Program.
You may charge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy, andyou may at
your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee.
2. You may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portionof it, thus
forming a work based on the Program, and copy anddistribute such modifications
or work under the terms of Section 1above, provided that you also meet all of
these conditions:
a) You must cause the modified files to carry prominent noticesstating that you
changed the files and the date of any change.
b) You must cause any work that you distribute or publish, that inwhole or in part
contains or is derived from the Program or anypart thereof, to be licensed as a
whole at no charge to all thirdparties under the terms of this License.
c) If the modified program normally reads commands interactivelywhen run, you
must cause it, when started running for suchinteractive use in the most ordinary
way, to print or display anannouncement including an appropriate copyright notice
and anotice that there is no warranty (or else, saying that you providea warranty)
and that users may redistribute the program underthese conditions, and telling
the user how to view a copy of thisLicense. (Exception: if the Program itself is
interactive butdoes not normally print such an announcement, your work based
onthe Program is not required to print an announcement.)
These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole. Ifidentifiable sections
of that work are not derived from the Program,and can be reasonably considered
independent and separate works inthemselves, then this License, and its terms, do
not apply to thosesections when you distribute them as separate works. But when
youdistribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work basedon the
Program, the distribution of the whole must be on the terms ofthis License, whose
permissions for other licensees extend to theentire whole, and thus to each and
every part regardless of who wrote it.
Thus, it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contestyour rights to
work written entirely by you; rather, the intent is toexercise the right to control the
distribution of derivative orcollective works based on the Program.
57.2. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 273
In addition, mere aggregation of another work not based on the Programwith the
Program (or with a work based on the Program) on a volume ofa storage or distri-
bution medium does not bring the other work underthe scope of this License.
3. You may copy and distribute the Program (or a work based on it,under Section
2) in object code or executable form under the terms ofSections 1 and 2 above
provided that you also do one of the following:
a) Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine-readablesource code,
which must be distributed under the terms of Sections1 and 2 above on a medium
customarily used for software interchange; or,
b) Accompany it with a written offer, valid for at least threeyears, to give any third
party, for a charge no more than yourcost of physically performing source distri-
bution, a completemachine-readable copy of the corresponding source code, to
bedistributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a mediumcustomarily
used for software interchange; or,
c) Accompany it with the information you received as to the offerto distribute
corresponding source code. (This alternative isallowed only for noncommercial
distribution and only if youreceived the program in object code or executable form
with suchan offer, in accord with Subsection b above.)
The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work formaking mod-
ifications to it. For an executable work, complete sourcecode means all the source
code for all modules it contains, plus anyassociated interface definition files, plus
the scripts used tocontrol compilation and installation of the executable. However,
as aspecial exception, the source code distributed need not includeanything that is
normally distributed (in either source or binaryform) with the major components
(compiler, kernel, and so on) of theoperating system on which the executable runs,
unless that componentitself accompanies the executable.
If distribution of executable or object code is made by offeringaccess to copy from
a designated place, then offering equivalentaccess to copy the source code from
the same place counts asdistribution of the source code, even though third parties
are notcompelled to copy the source along with the object code.
4. You may not copy, modify, sublicense, or distribute the Programexcept as
expressly provided under this License. Any attemptotherwise to copy, modify,
sublicense or distribute the Program isvoid, and will automatically terminate your
rights under this License.However, parties who have received copies, or rights,
from you underthis License will not have their licenses terminated so long as
274 CHAPTER 57. LICENSE
This section is intended to make thoroughly clear what is believed tobe a conse-
quence of the rest of this License.
8. If the distribution and/or use of the Program is restricted incertain countries
either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces, theoriginal copyright holder who
places the Program under this Licensemay add an explicit geographical distribu-
tion limitation excludingthose countries, so that distribution is permitted only in
or amongcountries not thus excluded. In such case, this License incorporatesthe
limitation as if written in the body of this License.
9. The Free Software Foundation may publish revised and/or new versionsof the
General Public License from time to time. Such new versions willbe similar in
spirit to the present version, but may differ in detail toaddress new problems or
concerns.
Each version is given a distinguishing version number. If the Programspecifies
a version number of this License which applies to it and ”anylater version”, you
have the option of following the terms and conditionseither of that version or of
any later version published by the FreeSoftware Foundation. If the Program does
not specify a version number ofthis License, you may choose any version ever
published by the Free SoftwareFoundation.
10. If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other freeprograms whose
distribution conditions are different, write to the authorto ask for permission. For
software which is copyrighted by the FreeSoftware Foundation, write to the Free
Software Foundation; we sometimesmake exceptions for this. Our decision will
be guided by the two goalsof preserving the free status of all derivatives of our
free software andof promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally.
57.2.3 NO WARRANTY
If you develop a new program, and you want it to be of the greatestpossible use to
the public, the best way to achieve this is to make itfree software which everyone
can redistribute and change under these terms.
To do so, attach the following notices to the program. It is safestto attach them to
the start of each source file to most effectivelyconvey the exclusion of warranty;
and each file should have at leastthe ”copyright” line and a pointer to where the
full notice is found.
¡one line to give the program’s name and a brief idea of what it does.¿Copyright
(C) 19yy ¡name of author¿
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modifyit under the
terms of the GNU General Public License as published bythe Free Software Foun-
dation; either version 2 of the License, or(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful,but WITHOUT ANY
WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty ofMERCHANTABILITY or
FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See theGNU General Public Li-
cense for more details.
57.2. GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE 277
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public Licensealong with
this program; if not, write to the Free SoftwareFoundation, Inc., 51 Franklin
Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.
Also add information on how to contact you by electronic and paper mail.
If the program is interactive, make it output a short notice like thiswhen it starts
in an interactive mode:
The hypothetical commands ‘show w’ and ‘show c’ should show the appropri-
ateparts of the General Public License. Of course, the commands you use maybe
called something other than ‘show w’ and ‘show c’; they could even bemouse-
clicks or menu items–whatever suits your program.
You should also get your employer (if you work as a programmer) or yourschool,
if any, to sign a ”copyright disclaimer” for the program, ifnecessary. Here is a
sample; alter the names:
This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program intopro-
prietary programs. If your program is a subroutine library, you mayconsider it
more useful to permit linking proprietary applications with thelibrary. If this is
what you want to do, use the GNU Library GeneralPublic License instead of this
License.
278 CHAPTER 57. LICENSE
Chapter 58
If you are interested in joining our developer community please subscribe1 to our
audacity-devel mailing list.
1
http://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/audacity-devel
2
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Category:For
Developers
279
280 CHAPTER 58. INFORMATION FOR DEVELOPERS
Chapter 59
59.1 aup
Audacity project files store information about the entirety of the project - the num-
ber of tracks and their time positions, details of clips (page 67) within the tracks,
amplitude envelope points (page ??), labels (page 215) and gain (page ??) and
pan data. In addition, ”summary information” is stored which enables the display
to be redrawn rapidly without Audacity examining the entire contents.
Audacity projects have a master file that ends with the suffix ”.aup”. In the same
directory as the master file is a folder called ” data”. This contains one or more
subfolders with many small audio files in .au format of size 1 MB or less. The
master file describes how to link these smaller files together to make up the clips
and tracks in the project.
• The individual .au files are uncompressed, using 4 byte floating point num-
bers.
• The summary files have the same format as the audio files, but there are
fewer of them.
The structure of the project files is designed to make editing audio faster in Au-
dacity. By updating the .aup file, which is much smaller than the data folder,
281
282 CHAPTER 59. AUDACITY PROJECT FORMAT
Audacity can move audio around in the project without copying large quantities
of data from one place to another.