Basic Audacity - Introduction
Introduction
Welcome to the basics of Audacity. Here, we will become a little more familiar with Audacity and what we can do with it.
Audacity is a non-linear audio editing program. This means that it allows for "random" access to audio files; that is, you can play, trim, and composite several different audio files at once without altering the original source material. The advantage of this is that any changes you make to your project are easily reversible, as well as allows for rapid development of polished productions.
Audacity allows for the recording, playback, and editing of sound files. All of these topics will be covered throughout this document in one form or another.
All Things Audacity: The Audacity Team Wiki: http://www.audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
The Audacity Manual and some tutorials: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/
An animated tutorial highlighting some of the basic functionality of Audacity.
Preferences
In order to make sure that Audacity runs to your specifications, before you start to do any recording or editing, please make sure that the preferences are set to your requirements. To access the Preferences on Mac, just press Command-, or go to the Audacity menu and go to preferences. On PC, go to Edit -> Preferences.
In the first tab, Audio I/O, make sure that your devices are properly selected. Generally, whatever is selected for Playback is what you want, but for Recording, you may want to change it depending on what your input is (Line-In, Microphone, Wave Out, etc.). If recording through Wave Out or Line-In, you'll want to change the Channels setting to 2 (Stereo), and if recording through Microphone, you'll want to change the Channels to 1 (Mono), unless of course you are using a stereo microphone. Selecting "Play other tracks while recording new one" can be useful if you are trying to make a voice-over. Playthrough is useful for monitoring the sound input (through headphones if using a microphone), but can be distracting due to latency issues since it creates a kind of echo. Generally you should not have to worry about the "Do not modify audio device settings" option.
In the second tab, Quality, make sure that all settings are set to your liking. A higher sample RATE takes more samples of audio at the expense of file size without increasing the precision of the samples. A higher sample FORMAT takes higher-precision samples at the expense of file size without increasing the number of samples. You generally do not have to worry about the sample rate converter or dither settings, but generally you can get higher quality as you pick things lower on the drop-down lists, but at the expense of processing time. The settings in this tab are hardware dependent, so if you are not sure the computer can handle a 24-bit/96k sample rate/format, it is advised to be on the safe side and bring it down to something like 16-bit/44.1k. Generally, however, whatever is already there for you is good enough.
In the third tab, File Formats, it is advised to have the "Read directly from the original file" selected, as the first option to make a copy, while safer in the respect that it doesn't work off of the original audio file, takes up more disk space. Uncompressed Export Format should be set to either "WAV (Microsoft 16 bit PCM)" or "WAV (Microsoft 32 bit float PCM)," depending on the quality of your source audio and the quality you want it to be at (higher is better at expense of disk space). You can leave the OGG Export setting at default unless you will be exporting OGG format audio files (a file format that doesn't involve any legal issues) and would like to control the compression quality. You shouldn't have to touch anything under MP3 Export Setup unless you want to change the bit rate; higher is better, at the expense of disk space. For voice, 64 to 128 is good, while music should, ideally, be set to 192 or above (humor the audiophiles). If, next to "MP3 Library Version," there is no version number like "LAME 3.91" or similar, please see http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/faq?s=install&item=lame-mp3 for installation instructions.
You do not need to worry about the Spectrograms tab unless you need to do some advanced editing, in which case I'm not sure why you're reading this ;).
You do not need to worry about the Directories tab unless you are particular about where you'd like Audacity to keep its temporary files. Whatever is default is probably best.
The Interface tab is solely to customize to your preferences, so play around with them until you find what you like.
Finally, in the Keyboard tab, you can customize the keyboard shortcut buttons that you would like to use. The Mouse tab displays the different mouse buttons and actions that Audacity support, but you cannot configure them.
Recording
Now that you have all the settings set to your liking, it is time to start recording. To begin recording, just hit the red Record button in the Audacity window, and Audacity will begin recording for your selected input immediately. To stop recording, just hit the Stop button. Audacity automatically creates a new track starting at the playhead's current position and inserts the audio at that point. If you need to record another track, just hit record again and Audacity will create a new one, keeping the one you just made intact.
Playback
Now that you've recorded something, just click somewhere in your project and hit the play, pause, and stop buttons at your heart's content. Need to insert some music or didn't recording anything in the first place? That's fine, just go to Project -> Import Audio (On Mac: Command-I, on PC: Ctrl+I) and select the clip you want to import. A window may or may not come up to tell you that it is importing the file (depends on the format and size), and the selected audio clip will show up as a new track starting at the beginning of the project. You can repeat this for as many audio tracks as you need.
Editing
Arranging
Now that you have all your audio in your project, you can begin editing your project. I'm sure the first thing you're going to want to do is move around the tracks so everything is not playing all at once (at least I would!). To move the tracks around, just select the Time-Shift Tool (double-head arrow) in the group of six tools in the upper-left corner of the Audacity window. Hover over the track you want to move and click+drag left and right to position when in time you'd like for that track to start playing.
Volume/Pan
If you'd like to change the balance and volume of the tracks, just adjust the sliders on the track's settings on the left side of the Audacity window. If you want to hear what the project sounds like without a certain track, just click the Mute button. Also, if you'd like to see what just a single track sounds like and you don't want to click through all the tracks' Mute buttons, just hit the Solo button. Audacity also has an Envelope tool (the tool with the blue line and double arrows in the tool palette), which lets you customize the volume levels throughout an entire track. Just choose the envelope tool and play around with it by clicking and dragging on a track. Remember, if you don't like the changes, you can always hit Undo.
Selecting/Cutting/Pasting/Etc
Let's say you want to cut out a certain part of an audio clip and do whatever with it. First, make sure that the Selection Tool is selected (the I-beam shaped tool in the palette in the upper left corner of the Audacity window). Then, hover over the track that you would like to cut out a portion of (if you hover over the gray background, you will instead be resizing the channel view, so just move your cursor up or down a little bit), click and hold, then drag to the end point of what you want to cut out. Alternatively, if you want to select an entire audio track, you can just click once on the track's settings window all the way on the left side of the Audacity window.
- Cutting/Copying: To cut out/copy a part of a track and put it somewhere else, just select what you want to cut out, go to Edit -> Cut (or Copy). Click where you want your cut/copied selection to be inserted, and go to Edit -> Paste, and your selection will be inserted at the cursor. Remember, Copying a selection will make a copy of the selection to memory while keeping the original selection intact, while cutting a selection will completely cut it out, shortening the entire length of the track.
- Trimming: If you want to erase the whole track EXCEPT for the current selection, make your selection and go to Edit -> Trim.
- Deleting: If you want to cut something out but don't want it in the clipboard, just make a selection and go to Edit -> Delete.
- Silencing: If you want to cut out a section of an audio track but you do not want its length altered in any way, choose what part you want to cut out as outlined above, and then go to Edit -> Silence. This makes the entire selection silent while retaining the length of the audio track.
- Split: Make a selection and this command will silence the current selection while copying the original selection to a new track. Just like doing Copy, Silence, Project -> New Audio Track, Paste.
- Duplicate: Just like Split except it doesn't silence the current selection.
Effects
To apply an effect, select what you would like to affect with an effect, go to the Effects menu, choose your effect, and configure it if necessary. More information on what each effect does can be found in the Audacity Help under Menu Bar - Effect Menu or by going to http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/menu_effects.html.
Please go to the Effects Page for more information on the settings of the effects as well as sample clips demonstrating what each filter sounds like.
Generate
To generate a sound, just select where you'd like the sound to be generated and it will be created in a new track (unless you have a selection already highlighted, in which case it will overwrite the selection). More information on each sound can be found here: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/manual-1.2/menu_generate.html. The tone generator creates tones at a certain frequency. White noise creates a static-like noise as you'd hear on an un-tuned radio. Click track creates a metronome-like track. Pluck generates a single note from MIDI at a certain note number.
Other Tips
You can zoom in and out by holding control and the scroll the mouse wheel.
You can resize the audio tracks by going to their upper or lower bounding edge and clicking and dragging.
If something isn't working quite right with the mouse, make sure that you have the proper tool selected.
To create an MP3, make sure you select File -> Export as MP3.
Created by Andrew Davis
Last updated ~6pm on Wednesday, November 14, 2007.