From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Audacity

Audacity 1.2.6 on Windows Vista
Developer(s)	The Audacity Team
Initial release	28 May 2000[1]
Stable release	1.2.6  (2006-11-15; 3 years ago) [+/−]
Preview release	1.3.10 Beta  (2009-12-1; 42 days ago) [+/−]
Written in	C and C++ (using the wxWidgets toolkit)[2][3]
Operating system	Cross-platform
Available in	over 20 languages
Type	Digital audio editor
License	GNU General Public License
Website	audacity.sourceforge.net

Audacity is a digital audio editor and recording application. Audacity is free, open source and cross-platform, available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and BSD.

Audacity was created by Dominic Mazzoni while a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University. Mazzoni now works at Google, but is still the main developer and maintainer of Audacity, with help from many others around the world.

The latest release of Audacity is 1.3.10, a beta, released on 1 December 2009.^[4]As of 20 October 2009, it was the 6th most popular download from SourceForge.net, with 63 million downloads.^[5] Audacity won the SourceForge.net 2007 Community Choice Award for Best Project for Multimedia.^[6] Audacity is free software and is licensed under the GNU General Public License version two, but may update to version three after version 2.0.0.^[7]

Features

Some of Audacity's features include:

• Importing and exporting WAV, AIFF, MP3 (via the LAME encoder, downloaded separately), Ogg Vorbis, all file formats supported by libsndfile library
• Version 1.3.2 and later also support Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• Version 1.3.6 and later also support additional formats such as WMA, AAC and AC3 via the optional FFmpeg library.
• Recording and playing sounds
• Editing via Cut, Copy, Paste (with unlimited Undo)
• Multitrack mixing
• A large array of digital effects and plug-ins. Additional effects can be written with Nyquist
• Amplitude envelope editing
• Noise removal
• Audio spectrum analysis using the Fourier transformation algorithm
• Support for multi-channel modes with sampling rates up to 96 kHz with 32 bits per sample
• The ability to make precise adjustments to the audio's speed while maintaining pitch (Audacity calls it changing tempo), in order to synchronize it with video, run for the right length of time, etc.
• The ability to change the audio's pitch without changing the speed.
• Contains major features of modern multi-track audio software^[8] including navigation controls, zoom and single track edit, project pane and XY project navigation, non-destructive and destructive effect processing, audio file manipulation (cut, copy, paste)
• Converting cassette tapes or records into digital tracks by automatically splitting one track into multiple tracks based on silences in the track and the export multiple option.
• Multi-platform: works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix-like systems (including GNU/Linux and BSD), among others.
  • The latest stable version supports Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista, but Windows 95 and NT are not supported. Windows 7 support is still provisional. For Windows 7, the developers recommend the latest 1.3.x Beta.^[9]
• Audacity uses the wxWidgets software library to provide a similar graphical user interface on several different operating systems.

Audacity can also be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including podcasts. It can be used for finishing podcasts by adding effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out.^[10]

It is currently used in the OCR National Level 2 ICT course for the sound creation unit.

Limitations

A plug-in is required for VST plug-ins in Audacity 1.2.x.^[11] Audacity lacks dynamic equalizer controls, real time effects and support for scrubbing.^[12] MIDI files can only be loaded visually.^[13]

Language support

In addition to English language help, the ZIP file of the downloadable Audacity software program includes help files for Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian and Welsh in its user interface. A partial Bengali help file is also included.

The Audacity website also provides tutorials in several languages.

See also

Free software portal

• Free audio software
• List of Linux audio software
• Multitrack recording

References

External links

• Audacity homepage
• Audacity Wiki
• Editing audio in Linux:Audacity

From Wikiversity

Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for download here for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.

What's it for?

This is a Wikiversity learning resource placed here to help folks with:

• Getting started with sound recording
• Creating music with your PC
• Wiki Campus Radio
• Topic:Audio Engineering
• Topic:Learning Objects (The kind that can be heard)
• Topic:Internet Audio
• ...

Converting to OGG for Wikiversity

One of the most important uses for Audacity at Wikiversity is to convert WAV and AIFF files to OGG files.

Wikiversity only uploads OGG files. Attempts to upload other file formats gets a very vague error message so you must use a program like Audacity to do the conversion.

To do this, start a new page in Audacity. Then IMPORT your WAV or AIFF file. Trim and export to OGG. Very easy!

Getting started

Audacity article at Wikipedia

• Audacity Home at SourceForge
• Download Audacity

Main menu

Audacity

The main menu of audacity contains:

1. File - New, Open, Close, Save Project, Save Project As, Export... (8 export options), Page Setup, Print, Preferences, Exit
2. Edit - Undo, Redo, ... Move Cursor, Snap to...
3. View - Zoom In, Zoom Normal, Zoom Out, ... Float Mixer Toolbar, Float Meter Toolbar
4. Project - Import Audio, Import Labels, ... Add Label at Playback Selection
5. Generate - Silence, Tone, White Noise, ... Plugins 1 .. 32
6. Effect - Amplify, BassBoost, ... Reverse, WahWah
7. Analyse - Envelope Tracker, ... Peak Monitor
8. Help - Online Help, About Audacity

See also

Wikibooks

• Digital Music Composition/Tracking

Wikiversity

• Wiki Campus Radio - wiki & radio
• Wikiversity Reports - webcasts

External links

• Audacity at flossmanuals.net
• Audacity Wiki
• Sound editing tutorial by Daveydweeb
• Audacity tutorial
• #audacity at FreenodeIRC
• Audacity-JACK Integration (columbia.edu/pipermail post)
• The Audacity of it! (pdf)
• Using Audacity (WikEducator)

From Wikibooks, the open-content textbooks collection

Wikipedia has related information at Audacity

This is a book about Audacity, a multilingual, digital audio editor and recording application. It runs on multiple platforms, including Linux, BSD, Mac OS X and Windows.

Contents

Screenshot of Audacity 1.3.4 beta

Beginning

• Introduction

HOWTOs

• Import Audio Importing audio causes Audacity to read an audio file into a format Audacity understands.

• Import Labels

• Import MIDI

• Import Raw Audacity's feature to import raw sound data.

Other

• Contributors

Links

Audacity Home Page Audacity Wiki

A reader has identified this book as an undeveloped draft or outline. You can help to develop the work, or you can ask for assistance in the project room.