Home

the Audacity 1.2 manual in PDF format.

1. 11 BECAUSE THE PROGRAM IS LICENSED FREE OF CHARGE THERE IS NO WARRANTY FOR THE PROGRAM TO THE EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW EXCEPT WHEN OTHERWISE STATED IN WRITING THE COPYRIGHT HOLDERS AND OR OTHER PARTIES PROVIDE THE PROGRAM AS IS WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND EITHER EXPRESSED OR IMPLIED INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY AND FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE THE ENTIRE RISK AS TO THE QUALITY AND PERFORMANCE OF THE PROGRAM IS WITH YOU SHOULD THE PROGRAM PROVE DEFECTIVE YOU ASSUME THE COST OF ALL NECESSARY SERVICING REPAIR OR CORRECTION 12 IN NO EVENT UNLESS REQUIRED BY APPLICABLE LAW OR AGREED TO IN WRITING WILL ANY COPYRIGHT HOLDER OR ANY OTHER PARTY WHO MAY MODIFY AND OR REDISTRIBUTE THE PROGRAM AS PERMITTED ABOVE BE LIABLE TO YOU FOR DAMAGES INCLUDING ANY GENERAL SPECIAL IDENTAL OR CONSEQUENTIAL DAMAGES ARISING OUT OF THE USE OR INABILITY TO USE THE PROGRAM INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO LOSS OF DATA OR DATA BEING RENDER INACCURATE OR LOSSES SUSTAINED BY Y E P J E OU OR THIRD PARTIES
2. Ill Common Editing Tasks Part 3 Cutting up long Tracks Part 3 Long Recordings You have You want to split it up in to parts that you wish to be separate audio tracks on a CD a large audio file a mix a live recording loads of voice overs You can cut it up so all the parts can be selected recorded at once easily for export Splitting tracks for CD burning Important The selection format for the track that contains the audio clip to be split has to be cdda min sec frames 75fps from ruler Also Set Snap To Mode to On for ruler based formats The result is that all the tracks you split away will lie within the grid that not only CD players can access but that CD burning programs can actually burn without pauses That grid consists of 1 75th of a second and beginnings and ends of any tracks on an audio CD cannot lie outside that grid Chop By The Numbers The goal is to split the long audio track in to several smaller tracks so that for each track we want to have on the audio CD there is one track in Audacity which is easy to export 1 Check and make sure that the right ruler format and Snap To On is selected see above for 50 Audacity Manual Title Page track you re working on 2 Place the cursor where you d like the current track to end and the new one to start 3 Go to the Edit menu and pick Select Cursor To End 4 Go to the Edit menu and pick Split 5 Repeat steps 1 to 4 as necessary
3. You can also select from Start to Cursor instead The track with the split away material will retain the ruler and Snap TO setting of its source track Get Them Ready for Deep Fry Once all the tracks are created you need to Export each Audacity track that you wish to be on your CD Check the preferences under File Formats The Uncompressed Export Format needs to be set to WAV Microsoft 16 bit PCM PC or Linux users or AIFF Apple SGI 16 bit PCM Mac users 1 Click on an empty part of the track panel left of the wave display with the mute and solo buttons of the track you wish to export The contents of that track will be selected 2 Go to the File menu and pick Export Selection as WAV or AIFF if you re on a Mac Pick your filename carefully Number them accordingly so it ll be easy to select them for burning the audio CD later on 3 Repeat steps 1 and 2 for each track you wish to be on your audio CD Roast Toast or Burn Them Open your CD burning application to burn your audio CD with the exported audio files Make sure that no pauses are between those tracks The only exception is the standard pause before the first track That s required by the Red Book standard so don t be alarmed Burn and enjoy Conclusion That was easy wasn t it Think you know how this could work a lot easier Do you need additional help or have suggestions on how to improve Audacity Drop us a line at audacity help lists sourcefor
4. 146 notices t Audacity Manual Title Page hat refer to this License and to the absence of any warranty and give any other recipients of the Program a copy of this License along wit You may c you may a 2 You h the Program harge a fee for the physical act of transferring a copy and t your option offer warranty protection in exchange for a fee may modify your copy or copies of the Program or any portion of it thus forming a work based on the Program and copy and distribute such modifications or work under the terms of Section 1 above provided that you also meet all of these conditions a You must cause the modified files to carry prominent notices stating that you changed the files and the date of any change b You must cause any work that you distribute or publish that in whole or in part contains or is derived from the Program or any part thereof to be licensed as a whole at no charge to all third parties under the terms of this License c If the modified program normally reads commands interactively when run you must cause it when started running for such interactive use in the most ordinary way to print or display an announcement including an appropriate copyright notice anda notice that there is no warranty or else saying that you provide a warranty and that users may redistribute the program under these conditions a
5. e Preliminary support for Time Tracks for changing playback speed over time e second preview command just hit the 1 key on your keyboard Audacity Manual Title Page e Vertical zooming of tracks e Improved look and placement of toolbars e New custom mouse cursors e Complete implementation of editable keyboard shortcuts e Find zero crossings e Mouse wheel can be used to zoom in and out e Multi Tool mode e Amplify and fade using envelope e Labels can store selections like Audacity 1 0 0 e Open multiple files from the same dialog New features in Audacity 1 1 1 User Interface e Tooltips appear in Statusbar e Vertical cursor follows play record e Pause button e Drawing tool with three different modes e Vertical Resizing of stereo tracks is more fun e Adjust selection by click dragging selection boundary e Toolbar button context sensitive enabling disabling e Better zooming functionality centers region e Looped play Shift click on the Play button Mac OS X e Support for more audio hardware e Support for full duplex play while recording e Support for MP3 exporting using LameLib Carbon e Hardware and Software playthrough support Unix e Audacity now has a man page it describes command line options and how to set the search path Audacity Manual Title Page e Multiple ways to display the cursor position and selection e Snap
6. to selection mode e Drag tracks up and down e Align and group align functions e Cursor save restore e Working history window Effects e Effects broken down into three menus Generate Effect and Analyze e Generate menu lets you generate silence noise or a tone e Nyquist support supports plug ins written in Nyquist an interpreted functional language based on Lisp Localization e Improved localization support e More languages available e Language selection dialog on first startup New features in Audacity 1 1 0 New libraries in Audacity 1 1 File Formats e Uses libsndfile which fixes some bugs and improves performance Allows a wide range of uncompressed audio formats to be imported and exported Searching for Files e On Windows and Mac OS Audacity now looks for translations in the Languages folder and all plug ins in the Plug ins folder relative to the program e On Unix Audacity looks for translations in lt prefix gt share locale and looks for everything else in lt prefix gt share audacity and also in any paths in the AUDACITY_PATH environment variable e libmad for fast MP3 importing e libid3tag for editing MP3 file information e libsndfile to read and write more audio file formats e PortAudio for cross platform audio playing and recording 10 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Welcome page here you d normally find links
7. 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 the exact text of the error message We want to squash all of the bugs Thanks for taking the time to help us track them down 142 5 Can I include or sell Audacity on a CDROM Basically the same as the first question so that is a big YES You are also free to do almost anything gu want with it We do like to hear about it of course but as long as you comply with the GNU Public License you ll be ok This means that you need to make any changes jou make to Audacity available including the source code The source code doesn t need to e on the CDROM but it should be available via the internet for example INSTALLATION 1 Windows What do I do with the exe file From the browser select the option to Run from current location This launches the Audacity setup program which will install the Audacity program files and create an entry in the start menu If you already downloaded the file just double click on it to start the installer If you prefer not to use the Installer program you can also download Audacity as a ZIP file which you can decompress using WinZip or
8. The reason I m deducting 11 ms from the 26 ms is that in a sample editor we already have the DIRECT SOUND In Cool Edit an EARLY REFLECTIONS parameter doesn t exist In Soundforge however there are a few ER times to choose from We choose whatever is closest to 15 ms Freeverb unfortunately does not have an Early Reflections feature 53 Audacity Manual Title Page Please note that the timing of the EARLY REFLECTIONS are defined by the rooms characteristics such as shape and size The sound colour of the EARLY REFLECTIONS is defined by the surfaces in the room These are parameters that are available to professional reverbs only hard or software so don t worry about not finding that stuff in great detail in either Soundforge s CoolEditPro s or plugins of other editors The PRE DELAY and REVERB TIME depend on more than just room size Wall and floor material as well as anything else that reflects disperses and dampens sound will influence the reverb in quite a few ways Our club has lots of wood on it s walls and floor and people are sitting at tables and the air s probably filled with a little smoke except in California The REVERB TIME a parameter found in almost all plugins should be set to no more than one second In small crowded rooms where little REVERB occurs it is quite important to set the EARLY REFLECTIONS right Experiment with the reverb time keep it lower than 1 2 seconds and above 0 7 seconds Freeverb puts all this
9. because audio CDs are so prevalent e Sample format or sample size Essentially this is the number of digits in the digital representation of each sample Think of the sample rate as the horizontal precision of the digital waveform and the sample format as the vertical precision An audio CD has a precision of 16 bits which corresponds to about 5 decimal digits Higher sampling rates allow a digital recording to accurately record higher frequencies of sound The sampling rate should be at least twice the highest frequency you want to represent Humans can t hear frequencies above about 20 000 Hz so 44 100 Hz was chosen as the rate for audio CDs to just include all human frequencies Sample rates of 96 and 192 KHz are starting to become more common particularly in DVD Audio but many people honestly can t hear the difference 16 Audacity Manual Title Page Higher sample sizes allow for more dynamic range louder louds and softer softs If you are familiar with the decibel dB scale the dynamic range on an audio CD is theoretically about 90 dB but realistically signals that are 24 dB or more in volume are greatly reduced in quality Audacity supports two additional sample sizes 24 bit which is commonly used in digital recording and 32 bit float which has almost infinite dynamic range and only takes up twice as much storage as 16 bit samples Playback of digital audio uses a Digital to Analog Converter DAC This takes the sa
10. both tracks in relation to one another The resize handle beneath the lower track resizes both tracks equally the same way It changes the overall vertical size of the whole stereo track Back to the Track page 112 Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the Track page Delete Pop Down Menu Solo Mute Gain and Panning Controls Vertical Track Resizing Name Waveform dB Spectrum Pitch EAC Mono Left Channel Right Channel Set Sample Format Set Rate Pop Down Menu Name Edit the name of the track Move Track Up Down Move Track Up or Down in the display Waveform Traditional display of audio material It displays the amplitude of the audio over time This is the default display mode Waveform dB Like Waveform but logarithmic instead of linear vertical units It displays the amplitude in dB of the audio over time Spectrum Displays the frequency spectrum of the audio over gt time Pitch EAC Tries to detect the pitch of the current audio and displays that information over time Mono Set playback of this single channel track on the left and right channels Left Channel Set playback of this single channel track on the left channel Right Channel Set playback of single channel track on the right channel Make Stereo Track The selected track and that beneath it is turned in to one stereo track Split Stereo Track Turn one stereo track in to two single channel 113 Audaci
11. music duplicating it and then fading the tracks one fading out the second fading in In the middle of those fades the level of the mix will drop audibly Do a fade over last two thirds for the fade out and first two thirds for the fade in and you probably won t notice any change in level Two thirds is a guideline but not the law so you may have to experiment a little The final mix is done with the Export as WAV function in the File Menu Here we ll be looking at creating submixes with the Quick Mix function You ve done a lot of edits and now have dozens of little tracks with little bits and pieces here and there It might look like this 42 Audacity Manual Title Page Dusk Tilda YL Dusk Tilda Y _ X Dusk Tilda Y X Dusk Tiina Y X lt Dusk Tilda YL Dusk Tiina YL X Dusk Tipa yL X Dusk Tinna Y Bits and Pieces spread all over the screen First four tracks selected for quick mixing We can use the Quick Mix function in the Project menu to bring down the number of tracks However you don t need to mix everything in to one new track Select the tracks you want to mix together by SHIFT click ing on the track panels In the graphics above the first four tracks are selected Then select Quick Mix In this example I have quick mixed everything down to two tracks i 2 3 a Se 0 u Bits and Pieces quick mixed down to two tracks And thus two submixes were created Remembe
12. use the track pop up menus to make both channels Mono channels and then mix them together using Quick Mix If you re lucky the vocals will be gone 3 When I try to record harmonies with myself why are the two tracks out of sync This is normal and it happens because there is a small coy between when Audacity starts playing sound and when it actually reaches your speaker Audacity does not automatically try to correct for this delay and you must do it manually To correct this delay use the Time Shift tool to slide one of the tracks over until they line up Note that you can use the tool while you are listening to the recording 4 Why doesn t Audacity ship with an MP3 encoder Unfortunately the algorithm to encode or create MP3 files is patented and Audacity would not be able to include an MP3 exporting algorithm without either charging a fee or violating the law in many countries As acompromise Audacity comes with the ability to use other MP3 encoders which you must downloa sepals It is up to you to make sure you are in compliance with any licensing restrictions imposed by MP3 encoders For more information see the page on Exporting MP3 files 144 Audacity Manual Title Page GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE Version 2 June 1991 Copyright C 1989 1991 Free Software Foundation Inc 59 Temple Place Suite 330 Boston MA 02111 1307 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim copies of thi
13. A clip is simply a piece of audio material Imported recorded split or duplicated from another track one track can only carry one piece of audio at a time You can extend it by pasting material or inserting silence in to it or cut a piece away but it will always be one continuous piece of audio 2 Audacity always records to a new track This new track is opened at the bottom You ll have to zoom out and then resize the track view of the bottom most track to see what is recorded You can actually use the window sliders at the bottom and right to do this after starting to record but this way no performance will be lost to the windowing system I suggest hitting CTRL F to get an overview of the entire project as well This only affects the horizontal zoom by the way left right zoom There is no way to zoom out vertically without using the mouse yet 3 Edit Duplicate will not create a new audio file This may not seem a big deal but it is if you re editing a large live recording What Audacity does is reference the original audio material until you actually perform some kind of edit on it such as cutting a piece away or using any effect on it One thing to remember is the UNDO function You can undo redo stuff as many times as you like and yes even after you have 19 Audacity Manual Title Page saved your project You may ask what happens if you do for example cut away a piece or mark off a 30 minute piece and split it to a new t
14. Align End with Selection End Aligns the start of any selected tracks to the start Aligns the end of any selected tracks to the end of of the current selection the current selection Align with Selection End Align Tracks Together Aligns the start of any selected tracks to the end If you select multiple tracks this command of the current selection adjusts their time offset so that they start at the same time It adjusts their starting time to the average of all of the tracks original starting times To adjust the time offset of one track use the Time Shift tool Align and Move Cursor These commands work just like the align commands with the move cursor command immediately following it Add Label at Selection This menu item lets you create a new label at the current selection You can title the label by typing with the keyboard and then hitting Enter when PA E E you re done The label saves your current selection so when you click on the label later it will return the selection to the state it was in when you created the label See the discussion on Label tracks for more information on how to use label tracks Like Add Label at Selection but the label is added at the current position during playback 73 Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the Reference page 74 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Analyz
15. Audacity Setup Audio Import and Playback Recording with Audacity Tutorial Basics Part 4 Recording with Audacity Part 4 1 Create a new project Save an empty project Or simply use the one from the previous part Remember that if you don t save your project before you start recording or importing that all recordings edit and other files will be written to directory set in the Directories preferences 2 Check the preferences Make sure your playback and recording device are set If you re going to record a stereo signal check the Record in stereo checkbox in the Audio I O preferences When picking a device to record from make sure you ve set up all the connections properly such as plugging a microphone in to the Mic Input and any other device in to the Line In of your sound card Then check that the gain level knob the amount by how much the input should be amplified of the mixer of your soundcard is set right Since most soundcards can mix the inputs back in to the outputs the easiest way to test your microphone is to speak in to it while playing with your sound card mixer The sound card mixer is a piece of software either provided by the sound card maker or by the operating system you re using The Windows mixer is pretty straight forward though some soundcards bring their own along The Mac s mixer is controlled via the Sound Control Panel and the Linux users have a variety of mixer applications at their disposal J
16. Bad takes are of course not usable so usually you ll have to cut that stuff away Just remember that cut and delete cut without copying to the clipboard work like cutting tape away and sticking the remaining pieces together If you re doing things that require critical timing you need to keep this in mind Use the Silence function instead The Three Options a quick How To Silencing e Select an unwanted piece of audio The best way is to have a very quiet recording room or location The second best way is to use volume automation to get rid of any unwanted stuff It allows you to change or take back what you did after you have made those changes to the volume curve with the envelope tool With volume automation you can mute sections of the audio without actually making any edits to the audio data e Listen to it a couple of times adjust your selection if necessary and listen again e Select Silence from the edit menu or hit CTRL L on your keyboard e Fade the edges of the audio beyond your selection to smooth it out e Listen to it If it doesn t sound good hit Undo or press CTRL Z on your keyboard and try again fading those edges e Repeat this procedure for every part you don t want in your audio Substitution Silence all unwanted bits as described in the section above Substitution expands and improves that option Be sure to only silence the bits you don t want and don t forget to fade t
17. Freeverb has the DAMPEN parameter for this This can effectively add to room s liveliness A room full of people will absorb high frequencies a lot faster than an empty room in which only the materials would make the difference so in Cool Edit we ll set the High Frequency Absorbtion Time very low since we re in a crowded club For Soundforge activate the Attenuate high frequencies above box and set the frequency parameter to around 2000 2500 Hz Experiment a bit The higher this frequency and the longer the Absorbtion Time parameter in Cool Edit the emptier and and colder your room will seem In small rooms this can cause the room to sound very metallic Sewer pipes and oil pipelines e g The Reverb EQs are the final processing stage and can change the sound dramatically These Hishelf and Lowshelf EQs are found in almost ANY Reverb plugin and hardware unit Freeverb has both in form of Hipass and Lowpass filters These are not EQs The parameters change the target frequencies of the filters Again listen The last thing you have to do is set the balance between the WET signal and your original DRY signal Here you can do as you please but remember that only very smoothed hard surfaces in big cavernous space create very loud reverbs A church might do that if there aren t a big number of people and wooden benches in there but a club doesn t Remember that in Audacity it is smarter to DUPLICATE the part you wish to add reverb to and run the
18. Selects all the audio from the cursor to the end of project which is as far as audio exists in the project Find Zero Crossings 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 Back to the main page have an exist selection for this to work Move Cursor These commands provide quick and accurate ways to manoeuvre the cursor around the project to the start and end of tracks and selections 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 time format in use This is useful if your project must follow an external timecode exactly Back to the Reference page 67 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Analyze View Menu Zoom In Zooms in on the horizontal axis of the audio displaying more detail about less time You can also use the zoom tool to zoom in on a particular part of the window Zoom Normal Zooms to the default view which displays about one inch per second Zoom Out Zooms out displaying less detail about more time Fit in Window Zooms out until the entire project just fits in the wi
19. These are keyboard shortcuts to the functions presented to you in the text These can be either single keys e g SPACE or combinations that need to be held down at the same time e g CTRL C You can usually create your own Check out the this page for more details The most basic editing step is cut and paste It s what people did with tape and it s easy with data in computers so take a look at these basic operations referred to as Cut Copy and Paste The next page will handle Silence Duplicate and Split You may also want to check out the reference section so you ll know where to find all the tools and how to resize tracks for example It is assumed that you have a project open and that at least one track of audio material is present Let s take a look at this example of an Audacity window The View The Audacity Window 32 Audacity Manual Title Page Example Project Bm x File iz a Project Generate Effect Analyze Help nen E2 2 IFIRST Fee 7 saad 1 0 x Example v 1 0 Mono 441 00Hz 16 bit j Mute Solo i j Click and drag to select audio Project rate 44100 Cursor 0 00 000000 min sec Snap To Off j RYZA As you can see by the graphics above the time shift tool Kad is selected It is used to move the entire audio clip around inside its track The cursor little blinking line across a track and the timeline will remain at its position so effectively you ll be sliding your audio mate
20. You must make sure that they too receive or can get the source code And you must show them these terms so they know their rights 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 USA 145 Also for each author s protection and ours that software wa authors reputations Finally patents program will program proprietary tent must be licensed for pa The precise terms and co modification follow veryon If the any free program is threatened co Audacity Manual Title Page software is modified by so we want to make certain understands that there is no warranty for this free meone else and passed on nt its recipients to know that what they have is not the original that any problems introduced by others will we SO not reflect on the original nstantly by software We wish to avoid the danger that redistributors of a free individually obtain patent lice NSES 0 no ERMS AND CONDITIONS F This License applies tice placed by the copyright nder the terms of this Ge efers to any suc ither th ans hat is to say ther verba a Herei h program work con To prevent this MS EG veryon us nditions for copying os F GNU G UBLIC LICENSE EN ERAL P to any prog
21. causes a single pressure wave that quickly dies out The image above shows the waveform for a typical hand clap In the waveform the horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis is for pressure The initial high pressure is followed by low pressure but the oscillation quickly dies out 14 Audacity Manual Title Page The other common type of sound wave is a periodic wave When you ring a bell after the initial strike which is a little like a hand clap the sound comes from the vibration of the bell While the bell is still ringing it vibrates at a particular frequency depending on the size and shape of the bell and this causes the nearby air to vibrate with the same frequency This causes pressure waves of air to travel outwards from the bell again at the speed of sound Pressure waves from continuous vibration look more like this Pressure gt How is sound recorded A microphone consists of a small membrane that is free to vibrate along with a mechanism that translates movements of the membrane into electrical signals The exact electrical mechanism varies depending on the type of microphone So acoustical waves are translated into electrical waves by the microphone Typically higher pressure corresponds to higher voltage and vice versa A tape recorder translates the waveform yet again this time from an electrical signal on a wire to a magnetic signal on a tape When you play a tape the process gets perfor
22. effect over that duplicate The volume of that reverbed material is easier to control so set the WET parameter in Freeverb to 0dB gt 100 and the DRY parameter to endless gt 0 left most slider position So when you create your next soon to be the hit song or want to put things in perspective be sure to check the possibilities of adding dimension and scope to your material through clever use of reverbs Put your snare to the front the piano a little to the back and the sax just a little in front of the drums Experiment With these basics you ll be able to get better results in less time Btw Snare always gets reverb How much and what kind up to you but it s generally good thing It s also important to decide whether you re trying to simulate a real live band or doing a multitrack sound which boasts all kinds of nice ideas like doubling another take of the same thing on top of the first take extreme panning and in general NOT reality 55 Audacity Manual Title Page Dry versus Wet Have you heard of those silent rooms where they test speakers and microphones They re great if you don t happen to be inside of one After a few minutes you hear the blood in your ears roar like an ocean You hear only your inner voice when you speak The room swallows almost everything else Most people can t stand being in a room like this for more than 10 15 minutes I am told that this is very different to wearing ear plugs Thos
23. example amount you could amplify the selected audio when the left and right channels of a song both without causing clipping from being too loud contain equal amounts of vocals but unequal amounts of background instruments By inverting Bass Boost one of the channels and not the other the vocals will cancel each other out leaving just the This is a safe smooth filter which can amplify instrumentals Obviously this only works if the 77 Audacity Manual Title Page the lower frequencies while leaving most of the exact same vocal signal is present in both of the other frequencies alone It is most effective if you channels to begin with don t try to boost too much 12 dB is usually just right Echo A simple delay line This effect repeats the audio you have selected Noise Removal This effect is ideal for removing constant background noise such as fans tape noise or hums It will not work very well for removing talking or music in the background again and again softer each time There is a fixed Removing noise is a two step process In the first time delay between each repeat First select the audio you want to apply the effect to You may want to first add silence to the end of your track s so that the echo has plenty of time to die out When you select Echo from the Effect menu Audacity will ask you for two numbers The first number is the amount of delay between the echos in seconds The sec
24. example of what is done in sound editing during the production of a television show or film In the next part we will run you through a few of those techniques in Audacity The Path of Sound in Film and TV Postproduction Film and TV crews have at least two people present that take care of recording sound during principal photography of a show Principal photography is usually shooting the scenes with actual live actors or real backgrounds by the way Sound in Principal Photography The first person is the boom pole operator The boom pole is an extendible stick with a microphone attached to it This is used to capture dialogue either during filming or not When not filming it might be capturing off scene dialogue or retakes of lines that the actors flunked during actual film takes The more expensive the show is and the more time there is to do the work the more people will resort to looping those takes which is recording those lines in a sound studio environment instead of a film studio or location 28 Audacity Manual Title Page The second person is the sound mixer who usually sits in a place farther off from the shooting and records the sound captures by the boom pole operator either via cable or wireless devices to tape optical disks or hard drive This is the raw sound material of a show It is called production sound and the only desirable parts it usually contains are dialogue and body sounds In post production depending on t
25. form under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above provided that you also do one of the following a Accompany it with the complete corresponding machine readable source code which must be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange or b Accompany it with a written offer valid for at least three years to give any third party for a charge no more than your cost of physically performing source distribution a complete machine readable copy of the corresponding source code to be distributed under the terms of Sections 1 and 2 above on a medium customarily used for software interchange or c Accompany it with the information you received as to the offer to distribute corresponding source code This alternative is allowed only for noncommercial distribution and only if you received the program in object code or executable form with such an offer in accord with Subsection b above The source code for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it For an executable work complete source code means all the source code for all modules it contains plus any associated interface definition files plus the scripts used to control compilation and installation of the executable However as a special exception the source code distributed need not include anything that is normally distributed in either source or binary for
26. from material ALT click smoothes a area of audio CTRL click amp hold edits only one sample no matter whether you move the mouse left or right Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 97 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Main Toolbar Edit Toolbar Input Output Mixer Toolbar Line In Output Input Input Selector These sliders control the mixer settings of the soundcard in your system The sliders will jump to zero left most position if the drivers do not expose these functions This is the case with some digital I O cards from RME and possibly others as well Generally most cards that have a custom mixer application rather than the standard OS volume control won t work with this function of audacity On these cards you will not be able to control the anything with these sliders and you will need to set up the recording levels and the recording source using the card s mixer program Output Slider Input Slider This is the left hand slider that lets you control This is the right hand slider that lets you control the the output level of your soundcard It actually level of the input selected in the Input Selector It controls the output setting of the soundcard actually controls the recording level setting of the driver soundcard driver Should your output sound distorted this is not What you record is also determined in the mixer the first place to look
27. key or combination of command key Shift CTRL ALT and alphanumeric key everything else The description of that key or key combo will appear in the field or replace the existing keystroke By clicking on the Set button you can add or change this key or key combo as a shortcut to the function selected in the Commands list e Saving your setup You can export your keyboard shortcut settings for safekeeping or to import into audacity on another machine Use Save to save you settings to a file Load to load a saved settings file and Defaults to restore the default audacity settings 88 Audacity Manual Title Page Head over to this page for step by step description of the dialog and how to edit the command keyboard combination list with a text editor Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 89 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Formats Audacity Project format AUP Audacity projects are stored in an AUP file which is a format that has been highly optimized for Audacity so that it can open and save projects extremely quickly In order to achieve this speed Audacity breaks larger audio files into several smaller pieces and stores these pieces in a directory with a similar name as the project For example if you name a project chanson then Audacity will create a project file called chanson aup which stores the general information about your project and it w
28. mixed affects whether it will be mixed into the left channel of the resulting track s the right channel or both mono For example if you have four tracks e Track 1 left channel e Track 2 left channel e Track 3 right channel e Track 4 mono channel and you select them all and perform a Quick Mix you will end up with 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 tracks 3 and 4 the new right channel Your tracks are implicitly mixed whenever you hit the Play button and whenever you select Export 70 Audacity Manual Title Page Import Raw Data This menu command allows you to open a file in virtually any format as long as it is not compressed When you select the file Audacity will look through it and try to guess its format It will guess correctly about 90 of the time so you can try just pressing OK and listening to it If it is not correct however you can use the dialog presented to try all of the different possibilities At the beginning of your imported track s you may notice a little bit of noise This is probably the file s header which Audacity was not able to parse Just zoom in and select the noise with the Selection Tool and then choose Delete Edit ID3 Tags Opens a dialog allowing you to edit the ID3 tags associated with a project for MP3 exporting ID3 Tags are used to store the Title Artist Auth
29. or 20ms oRange o pa pA actual oscilation 20 40 60 80 DELAYTIME ims Common parameters of a Chorus Delay Time Parameter Range 0 0 to xxx xx milliseconds 137 Audacity Manual Title Page This is your normal delay parameter Modulation Range Parameter Range 0 100 or sometimes in milliseconds This determines the maximum amount of modulation applied to the delay time Modulation Rate Parameter Range 0 20 Hz frequency Also sometimes referred to as the LFO frequency Higher frequencies produce extreme effects 138 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Effects page Compressor Uncompressed A simple sine wave that drops off by 6 dB at half time to demonstrate how some compressors handle signals l l l i l i i i l l i im After Attack The attack part of where the compressor is working is clearly visible at the start of the audio The release part still affects some audio that is beneath the threshold as the compressors gain change slowly ebbs out and the material fades back to normal level 139 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Effects page Processors and Effects A Reverb usually gives you the choice of how Not only do they output 100 WET signal but much effects signal also called WET part and nobody usually mixes the unprocessed signals how much of the original signal also called DRY with the processed either They d
30. original signal you can freely change the volume for both the original and reverb signal Also you can do weird and wonderful things to your duplicates to create special effects You ll have two pieces of the same audio to work with Silence parts reverb another phase a third filter another and see how that sounds It is so easy to duplicate a piece of audio and do weird things to it so try it Combining sounds produces magic A special note on performance The new piece of audio isn t actually copied on the hard disk Audacity will still play from the original audio file s until you change a piece of it Keyboard Shortcut CTRL D Split This performs the same as Duplicate but it also silences the selected material after copying it to a new track Again here s the illustration from the menu reference There are plenty of good uses for this function but I m not going to tell you about them here You ll have to go to the next part for the meat of this tutorial Keyboard Shortcut CTRL Y 38 Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page go to Part 4 Splitting and Submixes 39 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Introduction Cut Copy amp Paste Silence Duplicate and Split Splitting and Submixes ll Editing for Beginners Part 4 Splitting and Submixes Part 4 Moving bits of an Audio track In all projects you ll be pushing your audio around at some point Oth
31. title and author first means that someone downloading an MP3 you created will know that information before they ve finished downloading the song Creates a special track that can be used to speed up and slow down playback over the course of the project This affects all tracks in the project Remove Track s 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 use Delete or Silence Align functions All the align functions work on whole tracks or groups of tracks NOT on selections even if they span across multiple tracks Please read the tutorial on how to use the align functions You will also find some creative uses and solutions to common problems there These functions operate on each track individually If more than one track is selected these functions do not preserve their position to one another Align with Zero Aligns the start of any selected tracks to the start of the project Align with Cursor Aligns the start of any selected tracks to the cursor position Align End with Cursor Aligns the end of any selected tracks to the cursor position Align End with Selection Start Aligns the end of any selected tracks to the start of the current selection 72 Audacity Manual Title Page Align with Selection Start
32. to as the DRY part of the signal when using any effect Most digital reverbs produce two parts The Early Reflections and the Reverb component I Early Reflections The first Early Reflection reaches the listener milliseconds after the direct signal does The path of the Early Reflections is longer The difference in time between the arrival of the direct signal and the first Early Reflections is measured in milliseconds 127 Audacity Manual Title Page LISTENER Figure 1 II Reverb The sound reflects off the walls and objects in the room and in time individual reflections disappear and the Reverb develops Predelay The time between the reception of the DIRECT signal by the listener and start of the Reverb portion of the effect is called Predelay This is a parameter in many digital reverb effects and it is expressed in milliseconds ms 128 Audacity Manual Title Page Reverb Time The time difference between switching off any sound generator and the level of the reverb resulting from that sound dropping by 60dB is called RT60 D This is usually referred to as the Reverb Time When anyone refers to the reverb time of a real room or that of a digital reverb RT60 is what they re talking about Most digital reverbs feature this as a parameter Figure 1 Common parameters of a digital Reverb Early Reflections Usually controlled via Room type and or Room Size parameters The EARLY R
33. to stuff of the same category as the current page How to use this manual In this manual you ll find lots of common screen elements that you can rely on to navigate this manual Back to the main page Having trouble with this Take a nap TOP LEFT CORNER gt 3 and try again TOP MIDDLE gt Back to the previous page in this case probably the main page BOTTOM MIDDLE gt Back to the previous page in this case probably the main page BOTTOM LEFT l gt Back to the main page CORNER gt Back to the main page To reiterate to get back to the main contents page check the top left corner of the page To return to the page above the current one in the manual check the top middle of the page Any stuff that fits in to the same category of the current page is usually available as a link just above the page title and below the link back to the previous page That way you can jump around all the tutorial pages that belong together for example Keyword search We don t have one That s why we have the Index of Terms If you don t know where else to look look here 11 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page j 5 Tutorials I Basics ll Editing for Beginners 1 Digital Audio 1 Introduction to Editing 2 Rules of Audacity 2 Cut Copy amp Paste 3 Setup Audio Import and Playback 3 Silence Duplicate and Split 4 Recording with Audacity 4 Splitting and Submixes lll Common Editing Tasks IV Effects for
34. 2 This effect implements a singer in a tiny room all you can hear is the versatile and high quality reverb effect singer and no reverb A good place to start is to set both the dry level and wet level to 0 dB Getting a good reverb sound depends a lot on the However you may want to experiment with source audio and can take a lot of lowering the dry level while you are experimentation One good strategy is to select a experimenting with the sound of the reverb 80 Audacity Manual Title Page 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 There are a lot of parameters to Freeverb2 Room size Damping Predelay Lowpass Highpass Wet level and Dry level Let s start with the wet and dry levels Freeverb works by taking your audio signal and modifying it to create the reverberated sound i e the sound you hear echoing off the walls of the room This is called the wet part of the effect This is mixed together with the original sound which is called the dry part of the effect to produce the combination of direct unreverberated and indirect reverberated sound which is what you would naturally hear If you set the dry level to infinity and the wet level to 0 dB the resu
35. Audacity Manual Title Page Welcome to the GWAD Audacity g Manual Click here to continue or whack the logo Want to know How to use this manual Audacity Manual Title Page Introduction Tutorials Reference What s New FAQ Credits God suiacity Paw Introduction What s New in Audacity 1 2 How to use this manual N Tutorials I Basics About Digital Audio II Editing for Beginners HI Common Editing Tasks IV Effects for Beginners V Selecting and Aligning Be Reference Menus Toolbars Tracks Preferences Keyboard Shortcuts Audacity Manual Title Page Creating and Editing Shortcuts Effects How they work Frequently Asked Questions Credits Index of Terms Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page in this document Experienced users should head down to this section Introduction Audacity a free cross platform audio editor For new users to Audacity see the Tutorial in five parts for some basics on digital audio setting up Audacity selecting aligning and recording Audacity is currently in version 1 2 3 This is a stable release of Audacity it has been tested and works well for most people However it comes with no guarantee and we depend on your feedback in order to continue to improve on it Please check our website for the latest version Audacity is a collaborative project so there are lots of opportunities for you to get involved if you re interes
36. Audio I O tab and make sure Record in Stereo is checked e Connect one sound source to the left channel of your soundcard and the other on the right If you don t have an external mixer with a pan control use a stereo mono splitter cable e Record your stereo track e On the button with the track name is a drop down menu Select Split Stereo Track from this menu e Use the drop down menu again to change each track to mono e To position sounds in the stereo image use the pan control on each track e To export your recording in stereo you need to include at least one Stereo track If necessary add a blank one using Project gt New Stereo Track e Repeat as necessary for further tracks see Recording harmonies with yourself above If mastering from tape a click recorded across all tracks will help you synchronize them in Audacity Back to the Tutorial Page 46 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Quickies Editing Vocal Tracks Cutting up long Tracks Tutorial Ill Common Editing Tasks Part 2 Editing Vocal Tracks Part 2 The Situation You have You can combine three ways of handling this Vocals Speech or Wallas fx made with voices 1 Silence stuff you don t want 2 Substitute it with You want to a piece of ambience to prevent a sudden hole in the sound texture e remove inappropriate breathers more fitting breather that works coughing bad takes parts you
37. Beginners uickies 1 A virtual room with Reverbs 1 2 Editing Vocal Tracks 3 Cutting up long Tracks V Selecting and Aligning 1 Selecting Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Efecte How do effects work in Audacity Basic Calculus of Acoustics Reverb Delay Chorus Looking for a description of the stuff in the Effects Menu 13 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Digital Audio Rules of Audacity Setup Audio Import and Playback Recording with Audacity Tutorial Basics Part 1 Digital Audio Part 1 What is sound Sounds are pressure waves of air If there wasn t any air we wouldn t be able to hear sounds There s no sound in space We hear sounds because our ears are sensitive to these pressure waves Perhaps the easiest type of sound wave to understand is a short sudden event like a clap When you clap your hands the air that was between your hands is pushed aside This increases the air pressure in the space near your hands because more air molecules are temporarily compressed into less space The high pressure pushes the air molecules outwards in all directions at the speed of sound which is about 340 meters per second When the pressure wave reaches your ear it pushes on your eardrum slightly causing you to hear the clap Pressure gt o A Time gt A hand clap is a short event that
38. EFLECTIONS enable the human brain to quickly identify the room size They are therefore the most critical part of a reverb effect if a room simulation is the goal Predelay Parameter Range 0 to x milliseconds Time between Direct Signal and start of Reverb portion 129 Reverb Time Reverb Damping Audacity Manual Title Page The more space between you and walls or other reflective objects the greater the Predelay Parameter Range 0 1 to x x seconds The greater the enclosed volume of the space you re in the longer the reverb time This is of course true only to a certain extent The larger the room or chamber the louder your source signal needs to be to produce any significant level of reverb tail A good way to demonstrate this is to visit some huge cathedral and talk quietly Then yell a bit and you ll actually hear some significantly loud reverb The RT60 value is measured with a noise impulse but the level at which that impulse was sent out should be known too Many reverb effects let you set different reverb times for different frequency bands Most reverb units on PC and Mac architectures provide two bands so you get to set the reverb time for each frequency band individually Usually a Highshelf and or a Lowshelf EQ with variable Frequency These EQs are applied continuously to an evolving reverb of a piece of audio Over time as the reverb fades so do certain frequencies either in the lower or higher freq
39. License would be to entirely from distribution of the Program If any portion of this section is held invalid or unenfo any part apply an circumst t is no E p such cla integrit implemen generous through system to distr impose t This sec be a con 8 If certain original may add those co countrie the limi 9 The of the G be simil rceable under icular circumstance the balance of the section d the section as a whole is intended to apply in ances t the purpose of this section to induce you to i ims this section has the sole purpose of protec y of the free software distribution system whic is intended to other nfringe any atents or other property right claims or to contest validity of any ting the h is ted by public license practices Many people have mad contributions to the wide range of software dis that system in reliance on consistent applicatio it is up to the author donor to decide if he or hat choice tion is intended to make thoroughly clear what i sequence of the rest of this License the distribution and or use of the Program is re tributed n of that she is willing ibute software through any other system and a licensee cannot s believed to stricted in countries either by patents or by copyrighted interfaces th copyright holder who places the Program under this License an explicit geographical distribution limitatio
40. OR A FAILURE HE PROGRAM TO OPERATE WITH ANY OTH ROGRAMS EVEN IF SUCH HOLDER OR OTHER PARTY HAS BEEN ADVISED OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH DAMAGES GI N pal O j WHA J END OF TERMS AND CONDITIONS How to Apply These Terms to Your New Programs If you develop a new program and you want it to be of the greatest possible use to the public the best way to achieve this is to make it free software which everyone can redistribute and change under these terms 151 Audacity Manual Title Page To do so attach the following notices to the program It is safest to attach them to the start of each source file to most effectively convey the exclusion of warranty and each file should have at least the copyright line and a pointer to where the full notice is found Copyright C 19yy This program is free software you can redistribute it and or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation 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 of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE See the GNU General Public License for more details E You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program if n
41. Pop Down Menu Solo Mute Gain and Panning Controls Vertical Track Resizing Track Mute Button Mute Clicking on this button will mute this track i e this track is switched off without deleting it This action is not reversible with the Undo function however you can un mute a track just by clicking the mute button again MEY Muted tracks are easy to spot because their Mute buttons are green To unmute the track click on the button again button turns grey again The state of the mute buttons is NOT saved in the project file and it does not affect mixing i e muted tracks are still mixed when you export or Quick Mix Back to the Track page 116 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Track page Delete Pop Down Menu Solo Mute Gain and Panning Controls Vertical Track Resizing Gain and Panning Controls Q Gain Volume This slider controls the track volume or rather the overall gain of that particular track It s default position is in the middle as shown in the picture to the left This setting represents 0 dB Tip Normally the control moves in increments of 3 dB Hold down Shift to adjust by 1 dB at a time gk Pan This slider set the panning position of the track in the stereo field It s default position is in the middle as shown in the picture to the left Back to the Track page 117 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference p
42. You might get lucky settings on your soundcard There you can switch though so give it a quick slide Usually certain sources on and off such as the Line Input however the distortion comes from the mix of the Microphone Input or the CD Audio your project clipping You actually need to reduce the level of your tracks It is suggested After selecting the corresponding input source with you reduce every track by the same amount the Input Selector you can control the level of the recording with this slider Use the VU Meters on the Meter Toolbar to get the correct recording level 98 Audacity Manual Title Page Should your input sound distorted you should lower this slider until no distortion can be heard and the VU Meters do not hit the end of their travel Input Selector Pick the input source you wish to Line In x Here is an example of an ESS record from All these items are MIDI 1969 soundcard with the Line In 3 CD Audio exposed by the soundcard driver so the ipipeeyy input selected this of options will vary with different ee UX soundcards ZV Audio Record Mixer Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 99 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Main Toolbar Edit Toolbar Input Output Edit Toolbar All these tools perform the exact same function as those accessible through the Edit menu View menu and keyboard shortcuts a Cut Removes the selecte
43. acity for MacOS and Windows comes with Gverb a free LASPA Reverb plug in Note that if you set the decay value to 1 0 you 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 can use Echo to create loops that repeat as long as loud when the noise is variable or when the you want any never change volume Fade In signal is not much louder than the noise then the result is often too distorted Future versions of Audacity may include Applies a linear fade in to the selected audio For improved versions of this effect a logarithmic fade use the envelope tool Fade Out Applies a linear fade out to the selected audio For a logarithmic fade use the envelope tool FFT Filter This is the most general type of filter You define a curve that shows how much louder or quieter each frequency in the signal should be made If you re careful you can use it to highlight exactly the frequencies you want However doing an FFT filter is more likely to result in artifacts especially if the filter you draw is not smooth 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 Reverse This effe
44. age Keyboard Shortcuts Apple MacOS X users CTRL Command File Commands New Project CTRL N Open Project CTRL O Close Project CTRL W Save Project CTRL S Preferences CTRL P Editing Tools Selection Tool F1 Envelope Tool F2 Editing Tool F3 Zoom Tool F4 Timeshift Tool F5 Multi Tool F6 cycle tool forward D Navigation Playback amp Recording Play Stop Loop Pause Record Preview 1 second Play From Cursor To Selection Zoom In Zoom Normal Zoom Out Fit In Window SPACE SHIFT SPACE L CTRL 1 CTRL 2 CTRL 3 CTRL F 118 Audacity Manual Title Page cycle tool backward A Edit Commands Undo Redo Windows Redo Mac Unix Cut Copy Paste Delete Silence Duplicate Select All Find Zero Crossings Back to the main page CTRL Z CTRL Y CTRL SHIFT Z CTRL X CTRL C CTRL V CTRL K DELETE CTRL L CTRL D CTRL A Fit Vertically Zoom to Selection Import Audio Create Label Repeat Last Effect Back to the Reference page CTRL SHIFT F CTRL E CTRL I CTRL B CTRL R 119 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Edit or Create Keyboard Shortcuts Where In the preferences dialog go to the keyboard section or edit the keyboard configuration file directly with a text editor You will find this file in the directory where you installed Audacity Its filename is Audacity keys xml Audacity w
45. any other extraction program 2 Windows How do I uninstall Audacity Audacity can be uninstalled b opening Add Remove Programs in the Control Panel Select Audacity from the list and click the button Add Remove This launches the Audacity uninstall program 3 Mac What do I do with the sit file You need a recent version of StuffIt Expander StuffIt Expander comes with all Macintoshes and is usually configured by default with all Mac web browsers If Audacity does not decompress automatically drag audac ty sit to StuffIt Expander to decompress it There is no need to install Audacity Just drag the Audacity folder to your Applications folder or wherever else you would like to put it To uninstall just drag the entire folder to the trash 4 Unix Why do I get failed dependencies when installing from the RPM First ensure that the wxGTK is installed a link can be found from our Linux page http audacity sourceforg of wxGTK Audacity 1 2 x requires wxGTK 2 4 x and it will not work with any other version 5 Unix Why do I get an error while loading the shared library libwx_gtk 2 4 so This could be one of two problems If you installed the wxWidgets RPM be sure to run Idconfig as root so your system knows about the new library If you installed wxWidgets from source it may have been installed in usr local but usr local lib may not be in your library path Add usr local lib to the file etc Id
46. ard to shrink the selection expand shrink my selection Hold the SHIFT key then click and hold the mouse button If you clicked to the left of the center of the current selection you will now be able to move the left selection boundary with your mouse The same goes for the right hand side of the selection center Release the mouse button when you are satisfied You can use the cursor keys as well It works the same way as described in the previous item select from the cursor to the start of the track Use the Start to Cursor function in the Edit menu select from the cursor to the end of the track Use the Cursor to End function in the Edit menu select from the cursor to the start of the project Hold the SHIFT key and click on the Skip to Start button select from the cursor to the end of the project It cannot be done precisely right now if one track isn t within the range of the other It actually doesn t have to be because of the group functions in the Align menu but more of that later If the start and end of one track is within the start and end of the other simply select the longer track then SHIFT click the second track panel If the start and end of one track is not within the start and end of the other select the one track then expand the selection by SHIFT clicking in to the second track until the selection encompasses all the desired material select all the audio of the project Use th
47. are tool undoable Undo s are instantaneous Editing functions include Cut Copy Almost anything is undoable including importing Paste Duplicate to new track at same timecode and deleting tracks Split to new track at same timecode and Silence There are no inserts auxes or buses yet A grid can be activated for each track and All versions can use LADSPA plugins and the snapping can be switched on as well Windows and Mac versions can use VST plugins using the VST Enabler a separate download What makes Audacity unique e Audacity is free and the source code is available under the GNU General Public License e Audacity is cross platform it runs on Windows 98 through XP Mac OS X and many Unix platforms including Linux Previous versions worked with Mac OS 9 e No limits on the number of tracks or the length of any track except the size of your hard disk Audacity Manual Title Page e Import almost anything WAV AIFF Next AU IRCAM MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files are supported natively but Audacity will also open just about any uncompressed sound file and automatically deduce the format using the Import Raw Data feature e Audacity not only includes many high quality effects built in but also lets you use LADSPA and VST plug in effects There are dozens of free shareware and commercial plug ins online that do everything from Reverb to Noise Reduction e Audacity supports plug ins written in the Nyquist programm
48. art 1 Selecting Part 1 Basic rules Selecting can be done with the keyboard the mouse or by combining the keyboard and mouse You need to have the Selection Tool Ji activated for making a selection The exception is selecting the entire track by clicking on the track panel The align functions all still work the same way no matter which tool is activated However making selections and placing the cursor still requires the Selection Tool The selection modifier key is SHIFT In a word processor or text editor the SHIFT key is the modifier to turn any character that you enter via the keyboard in to an UPPERCASE character In Audacity and most audio editing applications holding down the SHIFT key means that any cursor movement or placement will result in a selection What follows are ways of making selections How do I select audio on one track select all the audio of a track Place the cursor on the waveform of a track hold Click on the track panel The resulting selection down the mouse button drag the mouse and will be confined to the contents of that track release the mouse button You can select audio with the keyboard as well select all the audio of two or more tracks 57 Audacity Manual Title Page but may need to place the cursor with the mouse first You need to hold down the SHIFT key and use the left right cursor keys to expand the selection Combine the former with the CTRL key STRG on the German keybo
49. by clicking where you want this audio to be inserted and select Paste in the Edit menu or press CTRL V Thus pasting is the opposite of cutting You can also copy material make another selection with the mouse and then paste This will replace the selected material with the contents of the clipboard no matter how short or long either of them are during all operations of this kind the bottom row of the screen will display two things namely the start time and the end time of your selection The display to the left if that called Project rate and its value defaulting to 44100 can be changed by clicking on that number and selecting another from the drop down menu This sets the sample rate of everything you produce in audacity All files no matter which will be played at the project rate and exported at that rate Should the sample rate of a track be different from the Project Rate these tracks will be resampled to the Project Rate as the project is played back or exported 35 Audacity Manual Title Page Audacity will not change the sample rate of any imported audio If you want to change the rate of an imported track for any reason this can be done using the Rate option on the track pop down menu proceed to Part 3 Silence Duplicate and Split Back to the main page 36 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Introduction Cut Copy amp Paste Silence Duplicate and Split Splittin
50. cations with the library If this is what you want to do use the GNU Library General Public License instead of this License 153 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Index of Terms ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPORSTUVWXYZ A B C Align functions Copy how to Cut how to D E F Duplicate Exporting FAQ tutorial File Formats Draw Tool AUP AIFF AU IRCAM MP3 OGG WAV G H e e ID3 Tags Editing Import Audio Labels Midi Raw Data 154 _J M Menu File Menu Edit Menu View Menu Project Menu Generate Menu Effects Menu Analyze Mute button P Preferences Audio I O Quality File Format Spectograms Directories Interface Keyboard z Selection Tool selecting expand or contract Silence tutorial Solo button Split tutorial 2 Audacity Manual Title Page K N ae 0 Q R Quickmix Reverb early reflections parameters Virtual Room with T U Toolbar Envelope Tool Selection Tool Timeshift Tool Zoom Tool Tracks New remove 155 V Y Audacity Manual Title Page delete button W sZ Zooming Back to the main page 156
51. city can read and write this format including ADPCM on all platforms AIFF Audio Interchange File Format This is the default uncompressed audio format on the Macintosh and it is supported by most computer systems but it is not quite as common as the WAV format Audacity can read and write this format Back to the main page audio by a factor of 10 1 with little degradation in quality Audacity can both import and export this format For more information on how to export MP3 files from within Audacity see Exporting MP3 Files Ogg Vorbis This is a new compressed audio format that was designed to be a free alternative to MP3 files Ogg Vorbis files are not as common but they are about the same size as MP3 with better quality and no patent restrictions Audacity can import and export this format Back to the Reference page 91 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Exporting MP3 OGG Files Audacity has OGG export and import functionality built in You can set the quality of the exported OGG files in the preferences OGG is vastly superior to MP3 especially at lower bitrates OGG should be preferred to MP3 except in situations in which MP3 is required This can be the case for external players which do not support OGG Audacity cannot encode MP3 files by itself because the MP3 encoding algorithm is patented and cannot legally be used in free programs However Audacity has been
52. ck as a separate file Export As MP3 Exports the current Audacity project as an MP3 file Audacity does not encode MP3 files directly but instead requires that you download a separate MP3 encoder See Exporting MP3 Files for details To export only a single track or part of track use Export Selection as MP3 Export Selection As MP3 This is the same as Export MP3 but it only exports the part of the project that is selected This is very useful if you want to save a small clip from part of a track as a separate file See 62 Audacity Manual Title Page Closes the current project window Exporting MP3 Files Save Project Export As OGG Saves the current Audacity project AUP file Exports the current Audacity project as an Ogg Audacity projects are not intended to be read by Vorbis file other programs but they are extremely fast to load and save within Audacity When you are To export only a single track or part of track use finished working on a project and you want to be Export Selection as Ogg able to use it in another program select one of the Export commands instead Export Selection As OGG Note that most of the audio data for an Audacity project is not stored in the AUP file but in a This is the same as Export As OGG but it only directory folder with the same name as the exports the part of the project that is selected project For example if you save a project as This is very useful if you wa
53. configure Exports the current Audacity project as a standard Audacity For more information on the different audio file format such as WAV or AIFF preferences see the section on Audacity Preferences You can change the format of exported files in the Preferences dialog Exit Quit If there are multiple tracks in your project they will be automatically mixed in the exported data Closes all project windows and exits Audacity It For more information about mixing see Quick will ask you if you want to save changes to your Mix project It is not necessary for you to save changes if you just exported your file as WAV or To export only a single track or part of a track MP3 and you are finished working with it On the use Export Selection other hand if you are working on a mix and plan to continue where you left off saving an Audacity Project will let you restore everything as it is later Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 64 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Analyze Edit Menu Undo Copy This will undo the last editing operation you Copies the selected audio data to the clipboard performed to your project Audacity currently without removing it from the project supports full unlimited undo meaning you can undo every editing operation back to when you opened the window Paste Inserts whatever is on the clipboard at the Redo pos
54. contact information for Tony Dominic and other contributors please visit our website at http audacity sourceforge net Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the front page What s New in Audacity 1 2 History of Audacity New features in Audacity 1 2 User Interface e New Mixer toolbar allows you to control the output volume input volume and input source directly from Audacity e Every track now has its own gain and pan controls e Uses improved project file format e Block files stored in Audacity project directories now use the standard AU format Though some Audacity meta information is in these files they can now be read by many other popular audio programs as well e Import RAW has a simpler GUI but support for far more file formats The autodetection algorithms are much more accurate than in 1 0 e Using high quality resampling algorithms with the option of better Effects e Repeat Last Effect command e Support for LADSPA plug ins on all platforms e VST support now comes through an optional LADSPA plug in called the VST Enabler e Most effects now have a Preview button e Compressor Dynamic Range Compressor e Change Pitch without changing tempo e Change Tempo without changing pitch e Change Speed changing both pitch and tempo e Repeat useful for creating loops e Normalize adjust volume and DC bias quality for mixing than for real time Audio I O playback
55. ct 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 portions 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 Wahwah 79 Audacity Manual Title Page Just 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 frequency spectrum The WahWah effect automatically adjusts the phase of the left and right channels when given a stereo recording so that the effect seems to travel across the speakers VST Plug ins To use a VST plug in effect put the effect in the directory folder called Plug Ins which should be in the same directory where Audacity resides If there is no directory create one You will also need to download and unzip the VST Enabler to the same directory The next time you launch Audacity any plug ins you added will appear in the Effect menu Freeverb 2 Audacity for Mac OS and Windows comes with a If you set the dry level to 0 and the wet level to VST plug in called Freeverb which is in version infinity it s like standing right in front of the 2 hence Freeverb
56. ctories Interface Keyboard New Ctrl N r open Crito Playback Device Close Ctrl Ww Device SEER Save Project Gtr 5 Save Project As Recording Device Export as Windows Wave Export Selection as Windows Wave Device DIGISE In 1 v Export as OGG r j Export Selection as OGG Record in Stereo 7 Play other tracks while recording new one Export Labels Preferences Ctrl P Exit set the sample rate of your choice 44 1 kHz is the default Audiol 0 Quality File Formats Spectrograms Directorie 44100 Hz aan 00 Default Sample Format 32 bit float Default Sample Rate and here s a crucial screen Audio 1 0 Quality File Formats Spectrograms Directories Interface Keyboard gt When importing uncompressed audio files Make a copy of the file to edit Edit the original in place r Uncompressed Export Format Microsoft 32 bit float a Windows Wave 32 bit floating point r OGG Export Setup OGG Quality 6 9 JV Use OGG instead of MP3 MP3 Export Setup MP3 Library Version MP3 exporting plugin not found Find Libr Bit Rate The File Formats settings need discussing at this point 22 Audacity Manual Title Page When importing uncompressed audio there are two ways to do it Make a copy of the original before editing means that Audacity actually copies the entire audio file
57. d and Audacity would not be is one tenth the size of the original WAV or AIFF able to include an MP3 exporting algorithm file but it sounds very similar MP3 encoders without either charging a fee or violating the law make use of psychoacoustic models to in effect im many countries throw away the parts of the sound that are very hard to hear while leaving the loudest and most important parts alone Unfortunately no MP3 encoder is perfect and so an MP3 file will never sound quite as good as the original Still most people find that the quality of an MP3 file is virtually indistinguishable from a CD when played on headphones or on small computer speakers which is why the format is so popular Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 93 Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the Reference page Toolbars Main Toolbar wi e eed ed deed ered ee eel ce I O Sliders and Input Selector o Pd Teen Edit Toolbar epe ole pje 94 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Main Toolbar Edit Toolbar Input Output Main Toolbar eee p m Selection Tool This is the main tool you use to select audio Click in a track to position the cursor or click and drag to select a range of audio If you drag from one track to another you can select multiple tracks Extend a selection by shift clicking a new point in the track Playback will al
58. d audio data and places it on the clipboard Only one thing can be on the clipboard at a time but it may contain multiple tracks Copy Copies the selected audio data to the clipboard without removing it from the project Paste Inserts whatever is on the clipboard at the position of the selection cursor in the project replacing whatever audio data is currently selected if any wH Trim A Undo This will undo the last editing operation you performed to your project Audacity currently supports full unlimited undo meaning you can undo every editing operation back to the last time the document was saved a Redo This will redo any editing operations that were just undone After you perform a new editing operation including simply resizing a track you can no longer redo the operations that were undone l Zoom In A Zoom Out R Zoom to Selection 100 Audacity Manual Title Page Deletes everything but the selection Zoom to entire Project wa Silence Erases the audio data currently selected replacing it with silence instead of removing it completely Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 101 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Tracks Audio Tracks Audio Track Controls Label Tracks Track Pop Down Menu Time Tracks Solo Solo Button Note Tracks Mute Mute Button El Track Delete Button ene eel ae L R Gain and Panning Control
59. d is used a lot so choose a disk with plenty of free space to put it on Never put it on a network drive Interface e Autoscroll while playing page flips to the right when the cursor travels to the right hand end of the wave display either during playback or recording Always keeps the cursor on screen but may cause breaks in recording or playback if you have a slow machine e Always Allow Pausing e Update spectrogram while playing Tries to keep the spectrogram updated while playing This requires a lot of cpu power and really isn t a good idea unless you re playing a really small piece or have a powerful CPU and plenty of RAM In combination with Autoscroll while playing this can cause pauses during playback or recording e Enable Edit Toolbar Gives you a toolbar of a few useful functions Check out the page on the Edit Toolbar for more information e Enable Mixer Toolbar Turns on display of the Mixer Toolbar used to control soundcard mixer settings e Enable Mixer Toolbar Turns on display of the Meter Toolbar with VU meters you can use to monitor the recording and playback levels of your project e Quit Audacity upon closing last window Sets Audacity to shut down when the last project window you are working is closed If you turn this off then audacity will keep re spawning new blank project windows until you do File gt Quit e Enable dragging left and right selection edges Lets you manipulate selections by clicking on the edges a
60. didn t like better if you re cutting a breather and bad noises away e use only the good parts of takes 3 Use the envelope tool to create volume e construct sequences from parts of automation to pull down those parts so different takes they won t sound as loud in the end When do I use what The first option is a tool but is rarely used by Continuous sound is the key in those cases and itself having the ambience even if it s just a bit of quiet dark noise drop away in many parts by silencing In audio books radio interviews and sometimes them isn t going to sound as good as keeping a in dialog for a film the vocal tracks will stand steady sound texture alone in many parts of your project Therefore filling those holes with material on Therefore the second option is general practice another track and fading the edges to make it all Many times the third option is used as sound continuous is the preferred way to do it well envelope tool The holes you create with it are easier to control and change at later times but There are situations such as vocals in a song that still need to be filled up with replacement you d like to sound as clean as possible 47 Audacity Manual Title Page material When using the envelope tool replacement material is usually overlayed by placing the filler material on another track right at the area in the timeline as the hole is For this reason only silence unwanted audio if it s too obtrusive
61. displayed in this box Hit the key or key combination you wish to assign to this command Then processed to the next step Click on the Set button to assign the chosen key or key combination to the chosen command Clearing a shortcut 121 Audacity Manual Title Page 1 Click on the command in the list The command to be cleared is now highlighted 2 Click on the clear button to clear the command Editing and Creating Shortcuts with a text editor The keyboard shortcuts you were editing with the dialog are stored in a simple XML file Thus you can edit it with any text editor Each keyboard map starts with lt audacitykeyboard audacityversion 1 2 gt and ends with lt audacitykeyboard gt Each command is defined with the command tag An example lt command name Undo label Undo key Ctrl 2Z gt name The actual command as Audacity understands it label 122 Audacity Manual Title Page Command description as seen in the Preferences keyboard map editor key This is the actual shortcut Check out what the format is in the Preferences dialog Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 123 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Effects page How do effects work in Audacity 1 Select some audio Use the mouse or keyboard shortcuts to select some audio You can listen to that selection as many times as you like and adjust the boundaries of
62. e Generate Menu Silence Inserts silence The length is determined by the length of your selection and the position by the left boundary of your selection If no selection is made the default length inserted at the cursor position is 30 seconds For example to insert a two seconds of silence at a certain point place the cursor at your chosen spot hold the SHIFT key down click and drag your mouse to the right to mark roughly two seconds release the mouse button and activate the Silence function in the Generate menu Silence the length of your selection will be inserted at the left boundary of your selection White Noise Inserts white noise The length is determined by the length of your selection and the position by the left boundary of your selection Tone Inserts a wave of chosen type frequency and amplitude The length is determined by the length of your selection and the position by the left boundary of your selection If no selection is made the default length inserted at the cursor position is 30 seconds Parameters Waveform Sine Square Sawtooth Frequency Hz 1 20000 value below 1 0 and above 20000 will be corrected to 1 0 and 20000 0 1 This is the volume of the generated wave Amplitude Pluck Inserts a synthesized pluck tone The length is determined by the length of your selection and the position by the left boundary of your selection 75 Audacity Manual Title Page I
63. e Select All function in the Edit menu or hit CTRL A 58 Audacity Manual Title Page Hold the SHIFT key and click on the Skip to End button Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page 59 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the Main page Reference Menus Toolbars Tracks Keyboard Shortcuts Shortcuts o Effects Preferences Sound File Formats Exporting MP3 OGG Files 60 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Menus File Edit View Project Generate Effects Analyze Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Analyze File Menu New Creates a new empty project window Open Selecting Open presents you with a dialog where you can choose a file to open If the current project window is empty the new file will take over the current window otherwise a new project window will be opened The file formats recognized by Audacity are Ogg Vorbis MIDI and the Audacity Project file format AUP In addition Audacity can also attempt to open an audio file in a different format as long as it is uncompressed to do this use the Import Raw Data command Close Export Selection As WAV This is the same as Export but it only exports the part of the project that is selected This is very useful if you want to save a small clip from part of a tra
64. e left side and dragging it to the location you want Sets the format in which selections are measured in at the bottom of the application window Once they are floating these options change to Combined with setting Set Snap To Mode to docking the toolbars back into the main window ON this is ideal to cut stuff up in to exact measures Float or Dock Menu Toolbar Set Snap To Mode Float or Dock Mixer Toolbar Float or Dock Meter Toolbar Do the same thing for the other toolbars Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 69 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Analyze Project Menu Import Audio This command is used to import audio from a standard audio format into your project Use this command if you already have a couple of tracks and you want to add another track to the same project maybe to mix them together Use this command to import anything except MIDI files You cannot yet use this option to import Audacity Projects Import Labels This command takes a text file which contains time codes and labels and turns them into a Label Track Import MIDI This menu command imports MIDI files and puts them into a Note Track Audacity can display MIDI files but cannot play edit or save them yet Quick Mix This command mixes all of the selected tracks down to one or two tracks The channel of a track being
65. e only attenuate sound from the outside A silent room kills it completely This room is horrible to listen to because it basically features no room reverberation i e it doesn t reflect anything at all It doesn t reveal any information about its size or surface composition You may be surprised to know that many vocals are actually recorded in similar environments Vocal booths are little rooms in which the walls reflect sound as little as possible During mixing digital reverbs are used to create a virtual space Digital Reverbs Audacity for Windows and MacOS8 amp X includes the VST plugin Freeverb which is one fine reverb and ideally suited to take your first steps with digital reverbs It features simple controls that require little explanation For details about Freeverb check out the effects menu page For information on how digital reverbs work and what reverb is check out this page of this manual Keeping effects on seperate tracks You shouldn t use reverbs on original audio tracks First duplicate the audio and use the reverb on that duplicate The reverb should be set to output 100 WET i e 100 effect signal and 0 of the original signal That way you can control how much reverb should make it in to the final mix right up until the last minute Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page 56 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Selecting V Selecting and aligning P
66. e plugin Supertap by Waves for example comes in two flavours on Protools TDM systems One allows for delays of up to two seconds but another version accommodates delay times of up to six seconds This is due to the availability of RAM on the DSP hardware of a TDM system The native gt CPU version of this plugin for Windows for example only allows for delays of up to four seconds in length but there are delay plugins that allow for delays of several minutes Today s delay units and plugins will feature one of several different types of feedback parameters a Percentage Range 0 to 99 or 100 This is used by most hardware units and some software plugins It determines the amount of a delayed signal to be sent back to the RAM buffer The same delay time is applied This is the most common parameter type for feedback 134 EQs amp Filters PANNING Audacity Manual Title Page b Decay Time 0 1 to xx seconds A slightly different approach The plugin or hardware unit determines the amount of delayed signal that it sends back in to its RAM buffer itself Some may find this more intuitive It isn t widely used however c Feedback Delay Time 0 000 to xxx xxx seconds This is like an additional delay line that takes the already delayed signal as input This kind of parameter also requires a level setting which is usually a percentage parameter like a Many delay plugins feature highshelf and or lowshelf EQs or they f
67. eature highpass and or lowpass filters These EQs or filters usually process each delay The idea behind this is usually to simulate distance because with increasing distance the lower and higher frequencies are dampened Hi amp Lowshelf EQs Low amp Highpass Filters e Gain xx to xx e Frequency 20 Hz 20 kHz dB e Filter Strength 6 12 18 or e Frequency 20 Hz 24 dB Octave 20 kHz These are the most common types of stereo panning parameters you ll find LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT LEFT RIGHT 63 64 0 100 100 100 135 Audacity Manual Title Page Simply a panning control for the delay The feedback parameter may also have its own panning control 136 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Effects page Chorus What is a Chorus A chorus is a Delay for which the delay time is modulated by an LFO Low Frequency Oscillator The most used LFO waveforms are sine and triangle Most modern chorus effect unit be they plugins or hardware based also spread the effect signal across the stereo field Sometimes a parameter to control the depth and other behaviours may be encountered The effect can produce interesting sounds one of which is to produce the illusion of more than one instance of the instrument vocalist being present What you get out of this effect largely depends on your desire to experiment Play with the parameters one at a time and experiment 40ms RANGE 50
68. elect New Label To add a new label click or select where you Track from the Project Menu Alternatively want the new label to appear then select Add simply click or select where you would like to Label at Selection from the Project Menu then place a label and choose Add Label at Selection type the name of the label and finally press from the Project Menu and a Label Track will Enter or click outside of the label be created automatically if one doesn t already exist asin Sourne Sprasme Senora When editing the name of a label you are limited to using just the backspace key for To edit the name of a label click anywhere in editing There is no way to move the insertion it Zoom in first if there are too many labels point to append a letter to the beginning of a crowded together and you are unable to click on label the one you want When a label is selected for editing it looks like the first label below Once a label is selected you can move to the next label by pressing Tab and move to the previous label by pressing Shift Tab 105 Audacity Manual Title Page pias Yee Yutareners rams eer Soos To delete a label or multiple labels select the area containing the label flags you wish to delete and choose Silence from the Edit Menu Alternatively you can delete an individual label by clicking on it and pressing Backspace until you have deleted all of the characters in the label then pressing Enter To move lab
69. els use the normal editing commands like Cut Copy Paste Delete and Silence You can save a selection in a label When you create a new label the left selection edge determines the position of the label s flag However the right selection edge is also stored in the label and when you click on it the full original selection will be restored If you wish to apply this selection to only a subset of the tracks shift click in the label area to the left of each track s waveform to change whether each track is part of the selection or not Exporting and Importing label tracks Label Tracks are saved when you save an Audacity Project so if you just want to continue and also provides a way to mass edit the labels using the labels along with the same file just if necessary save a project But you can also export the labels to a simple text file and import them This allows you to save information about the locations of events in an audio file for use in another program 1 217995 3 921073 7 584454 To export a Label Track choose Export Labels from the File Menu The exported file will contain one line per label starting with the time offset in seconds then a tab and then the name of the label for example Bass intro Guitar enters Drums enter 106 Audacity Manual Title Page 11 070002 Chorus To import a Label Track choose Import Labels from the File Menu Back to the main page Back to the Trac
70. ereo input will result in the two channels being mixed but on other systems it could give you just the left channel for example Play other tracks while recording new one Check this box if you want to record multiple tracks over top of one another Record the first track as usual Then with this box checked click record again The first track you recorded will play but Audacity will also record a new track at the same time maybe allowing you to sing harmony with yourself or add real time sound effects to a recording You may notice that when you play the two tracks you recorded together they aren t synchronized This is normal and is not the fault of Audacity To fix it you will need to grab the Time Shift tool and slide one of the tracks around until it sounds right Hardware Playthrough Mac Only This sets up your computer to send the sound coming in to be recorded straight back out of the speakers so you can hear what you are recording Hardware playthrough has no latency and takes no CPU but is only possible if your input and output are on the same audio device and that device supports it Windows and Linux users can enable this using your operating system s Mixer by simply turning up the level for the input you are using and unmuting it Software Playthrough This enables you to hear what you are recording by taking the data about to be recorded by audacity and playing it back out of the sound card This works with 84 Audac
71. erwise what are you doing here There are techniques easily achievable with Audacity to cover almost any kind shifting you d want to do In our example we have a small sentence of speech where the speaker made a pause after the first word We d like to eliminate that pause The part after the pause is selected Select Then the split function is used to pop the selected audio to a new track 40 Audacity Manual Title Page Split The Time Shift Tool l is selected and the audio on the lower track is moved left Move Audio and select for fading 41 Audacity Manual Title Page Now it s a good idea to listen to the two tracks individually for breathing sounds for example Use the solo button of the tracks for this Then listen them both in the mix Again you can use the solo buttons for this If you have a lot of other tracks playing at the same time press the solo buttons on both tracks There should be no over lapping or cut off breathing sounds When you re satisfied fade out the last two thirds of the overlapping upper part of the track and fade in the first two thirds of the lower overlapping audio Mixing it back together again Remember Two thirds and not the whole overlapping audio are chosen to keep the level of audio constant If the whole overlapping parts were faded you would get a level drop of 3dB in the middle of those fades You can check this out by taking a piece of
72. f no selection is made the default length inserted If no selection is made the default length inserted at the cursor position is 30 seconds at the cursor position is one second Pitch 0 127 The number corresponds to the value of a midi note which is assigned to a pitch The higher the number the higher the note Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 76 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Analyze Effects Menu 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 at our Website Loads of information is also available at http www kvr vst com To apply an effect simply 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 There are four classes of effects and they are all applied the same way These are Internal Effects VST Effect Plugins Windows Mac only Nyquist Effects and LADSPA Effects Internal Effects Amplify Invert This effect increases or decreases the volume of a This effect flips the audio samples upside down track or set of tracks When you open the dialog This normally does not affect the sound of the Audacity automatically calculates the maximum audio at all It is occasionally useful for
73. first energy peak happens at 1 4 of wavelength Check it for yourself and get smart the next time you buy those gotta get buried with under in them speakers This all happens in plain fresh air The speed of sound is 343 meters per second at 20 degrees Celsius 0 6 m s for every degree Celsius more less gt 340 m s at 15 degrees Celcius c lambda i f speed of sound wave length frequency x 1000 e i y distance re eg M time milliseconds time ms for one meter liniers Examples at 20 degrees Celsius gt c 343 m s 125 Audacity Manual Title Page time distance meters milliseconds 0 34 1 3 43 10 6 18 10 29 50 188 126 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Effects page Reverb What is Reverb A Reverb simulates the component of sound that results from reflections from surrounding walls or objects It is in effect a room simulator Some people think it s just a delay effect with some filters but it s way more complex than that Reverb effects software plugins or external hardware units provide an interface to their changeable parameters that need some explaining Let s look at a simple room first Basic Simulation of a Room Our model is a simple room with four straight walls a sound source and a listener In Figure 1 the arrows stand for the path of traveling sound The listener hears the DIRECT signal first The DIRECT signal is also referred
74. g and Submixes ll Editing for Beginners Part 3 Silence Duplicate and Split Part 3 Silencing unwanted sources This operation flattens the selection It essentially is a cut operation without deleting the selection completely After all if you cut a second away nothing remains Using the Silence operation will still leave you with a flatlined area When silencing parts between vocal lines please keep in mind that a sudden drop in background ambiance can have an bad effect so at the very least fade the area around the silenced part to minimize that effect Rules to start with are fade in quickly and fade out slowly Alternately use the envelope tool to lower the volume in that area That way you can comfortably change it later Keyboard Shortcut CTRL L Duplicate The selected area gets copied a new track is created and the copied material is pasted in to that new track at the same point in the timeline To illustrate here s the image from the menu reference SS a PAd aeons 37 Audacity Manual Title Page The benefits of a duplicate are many One of these is experimentation with effects Some of you may say J can do that with the original track too But you can t change the volume of your effect and original audio separately If you put some Reverb on to your audio you can only lower that processed audio in volume later on If you duplicate the audio first and use the reverb on that with 100 reverb and 0
75. ge net 51 Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the Tutorial Page 52 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page A Virtual Room with Reverbs IV Effect for Beginners Part 1 A Virtual Room with Reverbs Part 1 An example by the numbers As an example I d like to show you how to create a reverb for small club with a band Let s see what we have to do with parameters in the reverb fx in sample editors First we determine some basics about the room we want to simulate Our room the club is about eight meters on all sides for simplicity and three meters high The band will be playing no more than four meters away from us The room volume will be about 200 cubic meters This means that the DIRECT SOUND will get to you within about 11 ms milliseconds This is the amount of time we ll need to take off the other values The first EARLY REFLECTIONS off the left and right walls travel around nine meters before reaching you so they ll get to your ears about 15 ms later 9 meters at 343 meters sec gt 26 ms minus the 11 ms the DIRECT SOUND takes to travel to your ears I m not taking the floor into account because of the obstacles such as your own legs and a table that prevent reflections of sound from the band from reaching you It is also probable that your sitting close to a wall and EARLY REFLECTION time may drop considerably Experiment and listen very carefully
76. he complexity budget size and time almost everything you hear except for the dialogue and some body sounds are added later during Post Production This is where most of the stuff we ll be describing for Audacity will happen You ve got the recording Now what After the visual part of the show is cut the first of which usually isn t the final one it is handed to the sound editor In TV shows you ll usually have one or two people for this for major film productions a whole bunch more for which tasks will be subdivided on a finer level Raw sound Cleanup time No shows do without film edits and many have plenty of them Scenes may be shot with with one or more cameras and mics Actors might have flunked their lines and picking up shooting prior to the mistake might be chosen or the entire sequence reshot The film editor may have chosen parts from different takes for the cut of the scene The action might be moving along at the wrong pace and the film editor shortened or stretched parts of a scene The sound editor makes sure transitions between cuts are smooth He or she removes undesired sounds such as breathers of the same person that overlap from one film edit to the next Material is cut away that contains unwanted sounds such as creaking chair legs and sharp impacts of objects on tables and floors Some of these may require looping of dialogue in the studio because the noise may have been intolerable Also material may s
77. he edges around the silenced material Then come back here 48 Audacity Manual Title Page Now that you ve silenced all unwanted create a new audio track Now find a piece of audio that ll work as a substitute for those deleted parts This is usually a piece of ambience somewhere else in the audio track The speaker might have made a longer pause so look in those areas first Select that bit and duplicate it Using the time shift tool move the duplicated ambience directly beneath the first silenced part in your vocal track Now select the entire track by clicking on track panel just beneath the Solo buttons and duplicate it Mute that new track This will be our filler for the next gap in the original track Turn your attention back to the first bit of ambience that is now right underneath the bit that we silenced in our vocal track Using the Envelope Tool e Switch to the envelope tool e Left Click in to an area to create a new automation point or left click on an existing automation point and drag to change the location of the point e The automation you have written remains bolted to the audio so it will move along with the audio when you use the timeshift tool e An example an example Using the envelope tool Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page 49 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Quickies Editing Vocal Tracks Cutting up long Tracks Tutorial
78. he sound that hits them Back to the main page Back to the Effects page 132 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Effects page Delay What is a Delay This effect uses a RAM buffer to store the audio for a certain amount of time after which it outputs this audio The RAM buffer will not always be just large enough to store the amount of audio set by the current delay time but will actually be considerably larger sometimes because many delay effects allow for their delay parameter to automated Feedback in DELAY by x xxx seconds DRY DELAYS WET this would be 100 feedback Feedback 50 0 200 400 600 800 1000 TIME ms Multi Tap Delays This effect simply incorporates several discrete delay lines each with its own delay time level amplitude and panning The feedback parameter is usually shared by all delays in a multi tap delay Some multi tap delays feature a modulation section that modulates the delay times which can 133 be used to create chorus effects Audacity Manual Title Page Common parameters of a digital Delay Delay Time Feedback Parameter Range 0 000 to xxx xxx seconds The upper boundary of this parameter xxx xxx depends on the amount of RAM in the hardware unit or the amount of RAM reserved by the software plugin For software plugins the programmers or designers of the plugin set this upper boundary The delay softwar
79. ill NOT load this keymap upon startup but save them in the registry Windows Should you make changes to the Audacity xml file with a text editor you ll need to load that shortcut file with the Load button to make Audacity use them Thus you can save your keymaps under any filename with an XML extension and keep different keymaps around for different purposes Audacity will NOT store the current keymap in the file Audacity xml Should you want to make changes to the current keymap with a text editor you ll have to use the Save button to save that keymap to an XML file first After editing it you ll have to Load it again Editing and Creating Shortcuts with the Preferences Dialog Changing a shortcut 1 Click on the command in the list The command to be changed is now highlighted 120 Audacity Manual Title Page Audio 1 0 Quality File Formats Spectrograms Directories Interface Keyboard Mouse Key Combination Al New Ctri N Open Ctrl O Close Ctrl Save Project Ctrl S Save Project As Export As Export Selection As Export 4s MP3 Export Selection As MP3 Export As Ogg Vorbis Export Selection 4s Ogg Yorbis Export Labels Preferences Ctrl P Exit Undo Ctrl Z Redo Ctri Shift Z x poo Set Cea Defaults Save Load 2 Click in to the box to left of the Set button If a shortcut was assigned to the command previously it will be
80. ill store your audio in several files inside a directory called chanson_data The Audacity Project format is not compatible with any other audio programs so when you are finished working on a project and you want to be able to edit the audio in another program select Export WAV Windows Wave format This is the default uncompressed audio format on Windows and is supported on almost all computer systems It can also be lightly compressed about 4 1 using the ADPCM codec Sun Au NeXT This is the default audio format on Sun and NeXT computers and it is usually u law compressed so not very high quality U law compression is a very simple fast but low quality way to reduce the size of the audio by about 50 It is widely used in American telephone systems This format was one of the first audio formats supported by Web browsers and it is still often used for short sound effects where quality is not as important Audacity can read this format and write files either in 8 bit u law compressed or 16 bit uncompressed variants IRCAM Institut de Recherce et Coordination Acoustique Musique This is a very general file format that is commonly used by computer music researchers Audacity can read this format MP3 MPEG I layer 3 This is a compressed audio format that is a very but this is less widely supported on non windows popular way to store music It can compress 90 Audacity Manual Title Page platforms Auda
81. ime To use this tool simply click in a track and drag it to the left or right To align two tracks together or reset their time shift back to zero use the Align Tracks Together or Align with Zero commands EJ Zoom Tool This tool allows you to zoom in or out of a specific part of the audio To zoom in click anywhere in the audio To zoom out right click or shift click If you have a middle button you can middle click to do the same thing as Zoom Normal In addition you can zoom into a region by clicking and dragging the mouse to highlight the region you want to see then releasing the mouse button 2 Record Button Press the record button to record a new track from your computer s sound input device Use the Preferences to configure the recording options In particular there is an option to record stereo or mono and there is an option to play the other tracks while recording Recording always happens at the project s sample rate g Pause Button Z Will pause during playback or during recording Press again to unpause Stop Button ri Press the stop button or hit the spacebar to stop playback immediately D Cursor to End S 96 Audacity Manual Title Page Draw Tool Places the cursor at the end of the project SHIFT click expands the selection to the end of the project Enables the user to draw in to the actual PFO waveforms This is especially useful to eliminate small pops and clicks
82. information in to the SIZE parameter The PRE DELAY can be set to 30 ms or more Larger rooms will develop REVERB later since the reflecting sound will travel a while before the reflections become hard to identify but it also depends on the reflecting materials Freeverb once again doesn t know any Predelays but since you re reading this to learn how things work it s still worth spelling out Both Cool Edit and Soundforge have parameters referring to the DENSITY of the REVERB part of the sound Materials such as polished marble will reflect the sound very well and disperse the sound very little Wood disperses the sound a lot and a carpet practically swallows a large chunk of it For our Club we need to set the density high since our material disperses the sound a lot humans wood and obstacles No parameter like that in Freeverb and yet it sounds great It s easy to use as well so I don t really mind when using it Higher frequencies are swallowed a lot faster than low frequencies Many reverb algorithms refer to this in some form or another Cool Edit has the High Frequency Absorption Time as a parameter for this Sound Forge gives you a choice whether to do this at all for both low and high frequencies and even lets you set them but doesn t provide any time parameters Professional Reverb hardware such 54 Audacity Manual Title Page as Lexicon PCM 70 80 amp 90 let you you control frequency and time of this for low and high frequencies
83. ing language a high level language designed specifically for working with audio e Audacity acts like a non destructive editor providing multiple levels of undo but it also writes changes made to the audio to disk eliminating the need for complicated real time processing e Label tracks allow you to annotate waveforms for example transcribing speech and later export the waveforms to a text file e Powerful spectral features allow you to view waveforms as spectrograms or plot the power spectrum of any region of audio and even export this data to a spreadsheet e Pitch changing and tempo changing effects Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Credits The Audacity manual was written by Anthony Oetzmann with major contributions by Dominic Mazzoni Anthony Oetzmann is the primary documentation writer for Audacity He wrote most of the manual you are reading now and has also influenced the program design significantly He is a professional audio engineer who lives and works in Germany Dominic Mazzoni is the Audacity project leader and Audacity s primary programmer He began the project while a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh PA He is currently a research programmer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena CA The Audacity logo was designed by Harvey Lubin of Agrapha For a list of all of the people who contributed to Audacity and for up to date
84. into Audacity Edit the original in place selecting this operation means that Audacity depends on your original audio files being there and only stores changes you make to these files If you move change or throw away one of the files you imported into Audacity your project may become unusable However because Audacity doesn t need to make copies of everything it can import files much more quickly this way If you want to send projects to other people or archive them then select this option 85 Audacity Manual Title Page e Uncompressed Export Format This lets you select the format that Audacity will use when you export uncompressed files i e anything other than lossy formats such as OGG and MP3 Audacity can output a huge amount of different formats with the Other option which lets you define any aspect of the multitude of different formats For most users 16 bit WAV Microsoft or AIFF Mac files will be the most compatible e Ogg Export Setup Use this control to set the quality of Ogg Vorbis exporting Ogg Vorbis is a compressed audio format similar to MP3 but free of patents and licensing fees A normal quality Ogg Vorbis file is encoded with a quality setting of 5 Note that unlike MP3 encoding Ogg Vorbis does not let you set a bitrate because some audio clips are easier to compress than others Increasing the quality will always increase the file size however e MP3 Export Setup Use these controls to locate your MP3 e
85. ition of the selection cursor in the project replacing whatever audio data is currently This will redo any editing operations that were selected if any just undone After you perform a new editing operation you can no longer redo the operations that were undone Trim Deletes everything but the selection Cut Removes the selected audio data and places it on the clipboard Only one thing can be on the clipboard at a time but it may contain multiple tracks 65 Audacity Manual Title Page Delete Removes the audio data that is currently selected without copying it to the clipboard Silence Erases the audio data currently selected replacing it with silence instead of removing it completely Select gt All Selects all of the audio in all of the tracks Select gt Start to Cursor Selects all the audio from the start of the timeline to the current cursor Split Moves the selected region into its own track or tracks replacing the affected portion of the original track with silence See the figure below Duplicate Makes a copy of all or part of a track or set of tracks into new tracks See the figure below Selection Save Saves the current selection and position This function only saves the selection boundaries but not the actual audio data Selection Restore Restores the selection to the project You need to O 6 Audacity Manual Title Page Select gt Cursor to End
86. ity Manual Title Page any duplex sound card or combination of sound devices so you can record in through an external USB device and play back through the computer s built in sound device or vice versa Because of the delays in processing the audio on the computer there will be some delay or latency in the sound that you hear It also needs some CPU power so if you have an old machine and are getting breaks in your recordings try turning it off Quality This panel sets the default sample rate and bit depth for new projects It does not affect any existing project to change the sample rate of an existing project just click on the rate at the bottom of the window and select a new rate from the pop up menu The bit depth affects imported material if it s copied as well as newly recorded material The advantage of the 32 bit float resolution is that effects return material at a this resolution which improves the final mix because the computer has more precise material to work with If you aren t doing any processing then you may want to save some space by setting this to 16 bit if your hardware supports this File Formats e When importing uncompressed audio files Make a copy of the file to edit selecting this means that Audacity will run a little bit slower but it will always have its own copy of any audio you are using in a project You can move change or throw away your files immediately after you open or import them
87. ks page 107 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tracks page Audio Label Time Note Note Tracks Note tracks display data loaded from a MIDI file They are currently not editable or playable It s best to ignore the note tracks for now until further notice Back to the main page Back to the Tracks page 108 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tracks page Audio Label Time Note Time Tracks X Time Track Y This track consists of a single envelope It controls the playback speed within a given range i e it facilitates x Time Track w envelope based resampling The Name envelope handing is exactly the same as Teena for the volume envelope Move Track Down Set Range Clicking on the track panel reveals a few options similar to the ones of the track panel of an audio track Set Range lets you set the minimum and maximum pitch change It is expressed in percentage values relative to 100 Start by choosing New Time Track from To edit the time warping choose the envelope tool the Project Menu Then change the range from the Control Toolbar the same tool you use to of time warping by clicking on the Track edit amplitude envelopes in Audio Tracks Click to Pop Down Menu and choosing Set Range create and edit control points Drag points off the track an option which only appears for Time to delete them Tracks The Time Track ha
88. l also record a new track at button the same time allowing you to sing e While this part is selected choose Export harmony with yourself Selection as MP3 from the File menu e When you play the two tracks you e Now select the part you want to be the recorded together they probably won t be other song and Export again synchronized This is normal and is not the fault of Audacity To fix it you will need to grab the Time Shift tool and slide Mixing background music with a voiceover one of the tracks around until it sounds 45 Audacity Manual Title Page Audacity makes it very easy to mix two different right sounds together e Open one sound for example the Recording two sound sources on separate tracks Back to the main page background music e Select Import Audio from the Project menu and open the other sound for example the voiceover e Listen to your sound using the Play button Audacity automatically mixes them together e Choose the Time Shift tool and adjust the position of one track or the other until they re synchronized the way you want them You can even move tracks around while they re playing e If you hear clipping which wasn t present in either of the original files it means that the combined volume of the two tracks is too loud Use the gain controls on the tracks to reduce the volumes until you don t hear clipping anymore e Export as a WAV or MP3 file e Open the Preferences click on the
89. lt is something like standing outside of a concert hall you can only hear the reverberated sound The room size parameter is self explanatory The smallest room size setting creates a quick bright reverb while the largest setting creates a long drawn out and dark reverb The damping parameter controls how the sound bounces off the walls i e if it is mostly reflected or absorbed The predelay controls the delay between the dry signal unreverberated and the wet signal reverberated usually there is some predelay because of the time it takes sound waves to travel from the sound source to the nearest wall and to the microphone Larger predelays are suitable for creating an effect of a larger room Finally the lowpass and highpass filters can be used to make the reverberated sound lower or higher Increasing the lowpass filter filters out the high frequencies and similarly increasing the highpass filter filters out the low frequencies Nyquist Plugins To use a Nyquist effect put the effect in the directory folder called Plug Ins which should be in the same directory where Audacity resides Upon installation some nyquist scripts are included so 81 Audacity Manual Title Page you needn t worry about creating this directory The next time you launch Audacity any plug ins you added will appear in the Effect Generate or Analyse menus LADSPA Plugins These started out a a plugin format for Linux but can n
90. m with the major components compiler kernel and so on of the operating system on which the executable runs unless that component itself accompanies the executable 148 If distribution of executable or object Audacity Manual Title Page access to copy from a designated plac access to copy the source code from the distribution of the source code compelled to copy the source along with void However 4 You may not copy except as expressly provided under this License otherwise to copy and will automatically terminate your rights under this License parties who have received copies modify modify even sublicense this License will not have their lice parties remain in full Ds Signed it compliance You are no distribute the prohibited by law if you do not accep Y i conditions therwise excuse you distribute O may not distribu license would no Program all i the Program or works based on it 6 Program nal licensor to copy hese terms and conditions estrictions on th responsible for enforcing this License origi ou are now Tis you i ts terms a Each If from However Program or its derivative works t required nothi modifying or distributing as a co SO as nd conditio to accept t ng else gra ns for copy time you redistribute the Program the recipient automatically receives a license fro
91. m the distribute or modify the Program subject to You may not impose any further of the rights granted herein nts x code is made by offering sublicense the Program ndicate your acceptance of this License to do so then offering equivalent same place counts as though third parties are not the object code or distribute the Program Any attempt or distribute the Program is or rights from you under nses terminated so long as such his License since you have not nts you permission to modify or These actions are t this Licens Therefore by or any work based on the and reis ing distributing or modifying or any work based on the recipi nsequence of a court nfringement or for any other reason are imposed on you whether by court order that contradict the conditions of this License the conditions of thi to satisfy simulta License and any other pertinent obligations te the Program at all t permit royalty free redistribution of the Program by compliance by third parties to judgment or allegation of patent not limited to patent issues agreement or s License If you cannot neously your obligations under this For example if a patent they do not then as a consequence you 149 all thos refrain Audacity Manual Title Page e who receive copies directly or indirectly through you then the only way you could satisfy both it and this
92. med in reverse with the magnetic signal transforming into an electrical signal and the electrical signal causing a speaker to vibrate usually using an electromagnet How is sound recorded digitally Recording onto a tape is an example of analog recording Audacity deals with digital recordings recordings that have been sampled so that they can be used by a digital computer like the one you re using now Digital recording has a lot of benefits over analog recording Digital files can be copied 15 Audacity Manual Title Page as many times as you want with no loss in quality and they can be burned to an audio CD or shared via the Internet Digital audio files can also be edited much more easily than analog tapes The main device used in digital recording is a Analog to Digital Converter ADC The ADC captures a snapshot of the electric voltage on an audio line and represents it as a digital number that can be sent to a computer By capturing the voltage thousands of times per second you can get a very good approximation to the original audio signal Each dot in the figure above represents one audio sample There are two factors that determine the quality of a digital recording e Sample rate The rate at which the samples are captured or played back measured in Hertz Hz or samples per second An audio CD has a sample rate of 44 100 Hz often written as 44 KHz for short This is also the default sample rate that Audacity uses
93. mple and sets a certain voltage on the analog outputs to recreate the signal that the Analog to Digital Converter originally took to create the sample The DAC does this as faithfully as possible and the first CD players did only that which didn t sound good at all Nowadays DACs use Oversampling to smooth out the audio signal The quality of the filters in the DAC also contribute to the quality of the recreated analog audio signal The filter is part of a multitude of stages that make up a DAC How does audio get digitized on your computer Your computer has a soundcard it could be a separate card like a SoundBlaster or it could be built in to your computer Either way your soundcard comes with an Analog to Digital Converter ADC for recording and a Digital to Analog Converter DAC for playing audio Your operating system Windows Mac OS X Linux etc talks to the sound card to actually handle the recording and playback and Audacity talks to your operating system so that you can capture sounds to a file edit them and mix multiple tracks while playing Standard file formats for PCM audio There are two main types of audio files on a computer e PCM stands for Pulse Code Modulation This is just a fancy name for the technique described above where each number in the digital audio file represents exactly one sample in the waveform Common examples of PCM files are WAV files AIFF files and Sound Designer II files Audacit
94. n untries so that distribution is permitted only s not thus excluded In such case this License tation as if written in the body of this License excluding in or among incorporates Free Software Foundation may publish revised and or new versions eneral Public License from time to time Such new versions will address Each ver specifie later ve Software ar in spirit to the present version but may dif new problems or concerns sion is given a distinguishing version number s a version number of this License which applies fer in detail to If the Program to it and any rsion you have the option of following the terms and conditions either of that version or of any later version published by the Free Foundation If the Program does not specify a version number of 150 Audacity Manual Title Page this License you may choose any version ever published by the Free Software Foundation 10 If you wish to incorporate parts of the Program into other free programs whose distribution conditions are different write to the author to ask for permission For software which is copyrighted by the Free Software Foundation write to the Free Software Foundation we sometimes make exceptions for this Our decision will be guided by the two goals of preserving the free status of all derivatives of our free software and of promoting the sharing and reuse of software generally NO WARRANTY
95. ncoder and set the quality of MP3 encoding Higher quality files take up more space so you will need to find the level of quality you feel is the best compromise For more information see Exporting MP3 Files Spectrograms You can view any audio track as a Spectrogram instead of a Waveform by selecting one of the Spectral views from the track s pop up menu This dialog lets you adjust some of the settings for these spectrograms e FFT Size The size of the Fast Fourier Transform FFT affects how much vertical frequency detail you see Larger FFT sizes give you more low frequency resolution and less temporal resolution and they are slower e Grayscale Select this for gray spectrograms instead of colored ones e Maximum Frequency Set this value anywhere from a couple of hundred hertz to half the sample rate i e 22050 Hz if the sample rate is 44100 Hz For some applications such as speech recognition or pitch extraction very high frequencies are not important visually so this allows you to hide these and only focus on the ones you care about Directories 86 Audacity Manual Title Page Use this panel to set the location of Audacity s temporary directory Audacity uses this directory whenever you work on a project that you haven t saved as an Audacity Project AUP file yet You have to restart Audacity close and open it again for changes to the temporary directory to take effect This directory can contain a lot of files an
96. nd dragging them along the 87 Audacity Manual Title Page timeline e Enable dragging left and right selection edges Sets the transport control button order as Pause Play Stop Home End Record Rather than Home Play Record Pause Stop End e Language Lets you change the language of the menus and other onscreen text to the language of your choice Simply choose the correct option from the drop down list Note that for languages with unusual character sets you need the correct fonts installed If your menus come up all that s what s wrong e Minimum of dB mode display range This sets up the scale used for logarithmic waveform displays Because Decibels are logarithmic it is impossible to have a 0 point on the scale so some very quiet sounds will display as silence If you you reduce this effect by increasing the range then the louder part of the scale gets squashed so there is a choice of settings for different uses 48dB is a good compromise for general work Keyboard e Commands Key Combination List All commands in Audacity that can be triggered by a keyboard shortcut are listed here Click on the shortcut and the assigned keystroke is highlighted in the command shortcut list Click on the Clear button to erase the keystroke assigned to the function selected in the Commands column e Adding new shortcuts changing shortcuts Click on the command in the list Click in to the field next to the Set button and press any
97. nd telling the user how to view a copy of this License Exception if the Program itself is interactive but does not normally print such an announcement your work based on the Program is not required to print an announcement These requirements apply to the modified work as a whole If identifiable sections of that work are not derived from the Program and can be reasonably considered independent and separate works in themselves then this License and its terms do not apply to those sections when you distribute them as separate works But when you distribute the same sections as part of a whole which is a work based on the Program the distribution of the whole must be on the terms of this License whose permissions for other licensees extend to the entire whole and thus to each and every part regardless of who wrote it 147 Audacity Manual Title Page Thus it is not the intent of this section to claim rights or contest your rights to work written entirely by you rather the intent is to exercise the right to control the distribution of derivative or collective works based on the Program In addition mere aggregation of another work not based on the Program with the Program or with a work based on the Program on a volume of a storage or distribution medium does not bring the other work under the 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
98. ndow 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 HD space your operations used You can jump back and forth between editing steps quite easily by simply clicking on the entries in the window The history window can be kept open at all times It doesn t interfere with any other operations Plot Spectrum To use this feature first select a region of audio from a single track then select Plot Spectrum It opens up a window which displays the Power Spectrum of the audio over that region calculated using the Fast Fourier Transform The graph represents how much energy is in each frequency This window can also display other common functions that are calculated using the Fast 68 Audacity Manual Title Page Fit Vertically Fourier Transform including three versions of the Autocorrelation function Adjusts the height of all the tracks until they fit in the project window The Enhanced Autocorrelation function is very good at identifying the pitch of a note Zoom to Selection Float or Dock Control Toolbar Zooms in until the selected audio fills the width of the screen to show the selection in more detail Toggles between displaying the tool docked at the top of each project window or in a separate floating window You can also float any toolbar Set Selection Format by grabbing the handle on th
99. nt to save a small chanson aup there will be a directory called clip from part of a track as a separate file chanson_data created to store the actual audio tracks of the project For more information Export Labels on the project file format see the file formats page If you have any Label Tracks this command will export them as a text file This feature is commonly used in Speech Recognition research Save Project As to annotate a speech utterance and export the annotation to be later processed by another Saves the current Audacity project AUP file program allowing you to give it a different name or move it to a new location if you have already saved it in To import these labels into a different project one location later use the Import Labels command Audacity projects are not intended to be read by other programs but they are extremely fast to Export Multiple load and save within Audacity When you are 63 Audacity Manual Title Page finished working on a project and you want to be This allows you to do multiple exports from able to use it in another program select one of the audacity with one command based either on Export commands instead multiple tracks in the project or labels in a single audio track It s great for splitting up long For more information on the project file format recordings into CD tracks see the file formats page Preferences Export As WAV Opens a dialog window that lets you
100. nt with it Audacity is distributed under the terms of the General Public License GPL You are free to use this program for personal or commercial purposes You are also free to give it away or sell it The source code to this program is freely available on the web and you are free to modify it for out own use however any changes you make must also be distributed under the GPL Audacity was build using wxWidgets a software library which is released under the less restrictive LGPL For more information please visit http www wxwidgets org The authors of Audacity decided to release it under the GPL for many reasons Some of us do it out of generosity Some of us do it for moral reasons because we feel that all software should be free while others of us believe that there is a need for both free and commercial software in the world One reason Audacity is free is so that it will be more popular Many of us would rather see a million people Kappily using Audacity for free than have a thousand people pay us Most users are more friendly when they get something for free i Yet another reason is that it encourages collaboration If Audacity was shareware it is unlikely that dozens of people around the world would have contributed code bug fixes documentation and graphics 2 Who Developed Audacity Audacity was started in the fall of 1999 by Dominic Mazzoni while he was a graduate student at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsb
101. o so with part you d like to the plugin to output Reverb and Delay signals A processor doesn t have this option by nature Processors are usually placed in an INSERT The Equalizer and the Compressor are which means they sit in the channel The EQs on processors To mix the original signal and the your stereo or soundcard mixer work like this processed signal doesn t make sense for these The signal passes through them processors Their output is always 100 WET 140 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Frequently Asked Questions General 1 Is Audacity really free Why 2 Who developed Audacity 3 How can I help to improve Audacity 4 I found a bug Now what 5 Can I include or sell Audacity on a CDROM Installation 1 Windows What do I do with the exe file 2 Windows How do I uninstall Audacity 3 Mac What do I do with the sit file _ 4 Unix Why do I get failed dependencies when installing from the RPM 5 Unix Why do I get an error while loading the shared library libwx_gtk so Using Audacity 1 How do I mix two tracks together 2 Can I remove the vocals from a recording 3 When I try to record harmonies with myself why are the two tracks out of sync 4 Why doesn t Audacity ship with an MP3 encoder 141 GENERAL 1 Is Audacity really free Why Yes in almost all senses Audacity is not only distributed free of charge but oe are also free to do almost anything you wa
102. om all kinds of places A lot of effects are created by layering sounds on top of each other changing their pitch and loudness editing bits out and adding others Many effects you ll hear are phone and door bells ringing mobile phone beeps doors of houses and cars opening and closing weapon shots slaps car skids machines of any kind space ships flying around explosions to name a few For example a friend of mine and I created the sound of a small wooden rowing boat hitting a larger wooden sailing ship and scraping along its side by pitching down a knock on a large wooden door for the impact of the rowing boat and ship and pitching down the sound of a skateboard rolling and 30 Audacity Manual Title Page scraping along a halfpipe The techniques required to properly handle sounds like these are used in all kinds of productions Audio books music production sound effects creation you name it For more on this subject read the Audio Post FAQ at www filmsound org So let s jump in to the fray and look at how you can handle your sounds in Audacity proceed to Part 2 Cut Copy amp Paste Back to the main page 31 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Introduction Cut Copy amp Paste Silence Duplicate and Split Splitting and Submixes ll Editing for Beginners Part 2 Cut Copy and Paste Part 2 From here on you may encounter funny letter combinations in boxes like this
103. ometimes be de noised The most sophisticated methods remove the whirring of the camera motors from takes It is used as sparingly 29 Audacity Manual Title Page as possible though It s always desirable to get the best possible sound from the start which is the recording stage Adding stuff the really big deal After this cleanup is complete sounds are added The first is ambiance Just close your eyes and listen the sound around you That s ambiance Sophistication of ambiances rises with budgets From premixed to over a dozen tracks you ll find it all in TV shows and feature films In any indoor scene with a lot of people in the background nobody except for the actors being filmed will actually talk That flurry of conversation is added later on Next comes foley These are clothes rustling body sounds foot steps and objects being handled People that have the ultimate edition of Terminator 2 will know that all of Arnold Schwarzenegger s footsteps and rustle of his leather clothing were created by a five foot woman These people are usually called foley walkers or foley artists The foley editor then cleans those sound chooses the most fitting takes and makes sure they all sync to the picture properly The foley mixer then does his her thing Next come effects Foley are effects too but they are a special category and can best be described as live created studio effects Effects are usually more heavily edited and recorded fr
104. ond value is the decay factor which is a number between 0 and 1 A decay factor of 0 means no echo and a decay factor of 1 means that each echo is just as loud as the original A value of 0 5 means that its amplitude is cut in half each time so it dies out slowly Smaller values will make it die out even more quickly The Echo effect is very simple and is not intended to be used in place of a Reverb effect which simulates the sound of a room concert hall stage or other natural environment step you select a portion of your sound which contains all noise and no signal in other words select the part that s silent except for the noise Then 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 Then select all of the audio where you want the noise removed from and choose Noise Removal again This time click the Remove Noise button It may take a few seconds or longer depending on how much you selected 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 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 78 Audacity Manual Title Page Aud
105. or and other information in MP3 files When you import an MP3 file Audacity remembers this information and stores it with your project When you export an MP3 file Audacity will prompt you for the ID3 tags showing you any tags it collected from an original MP3 file or that you typed by selecting Edit ID3 Tags from the Project menu Note that if you try to mix two very loud tracks together you may get clipping it will sound like pops clicks and noise To avoid this you should use the track gain controls to reduce the amplitude of all of your tracks New Audio Track This creates a new empty audio track This command is rarely needed since importing recording and mixing automatically create new tracks as needed But you can use this to cut or copy data from an existing track and paste it into a blank track New Stereo Track Creates a stereo version of the new audio track above You may need this if you start with a load of mono tracks and want to export a stereo mix New Label Track This creates a new Label track which can be very useful for textual annotation See the discussion on Label tracks for more information on how to use label tracks New Time Track 71 Audacity Manual Title Page Audacity allows you to store ID3 tags in either the ID3v1 or the ID3v2 format In general you should use the ID3v2 format because ID3v2 tags go at the beginning of an MP3 file whereas ID3v1 tags go at the end Having the
106. ot write to the Free Software Foundation Inc 59 Temple Place Suite 330 Boston MA 02111 1307 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 this when it starts in an interactive mode Gnomovision version 69 Copyright C 19yy name of author Gnomovision comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY for details type show w This is free software and you are welcome to redistribute it under certain conditions type show c for details The hypothetical commands show w and show c should show the appropriate parts of the General Public License Of course the commands you use may be called something other than show w and show c they could even be mouse clicks or menu items whatever suits your program You should also get your employer if you work as a programmer or your school if any to sign a copyright disclaimer for the program if necessary Here is a sample alter the names 152 Audacity Manual Title Page Yoyodyne Inc hereby disclaims all copyright interest in the program Gnomovision which makes passes at compilers written by James Hacker 1 April 1989 Ty Coon President of Vice This General Public License does not permit incorporating your program into proprietary programs If your program is a subroutine library you may consider it more useful to permit linking proprietary appli
107. our project Since we already saved our project this setting is of no importance to us though you may want to set it properly later on Initially this is set to a folder called audacity_temp_1 2 in the system temporary directory 3 Import an audio file There are three ways to do this 23 Audacity Manual Title Page 1 Simply drag and drop the audio file in to the Audacity window If you re using Mac OS 9 or X drag the audio file to the Audacity icon instead 2 Select Import Audio in the Project menu 3 Use the keyboard shortcut CTRL I Audacity can import WAV AIFF AU IRCAM MP3 and OGG files Please refer to the fileformats page for further reference on these audio formats 4 Playback The imported file should now be displayed in an audio track The track will look a little like this depending on what you imported X suitcase_m vY Stereo 44100Hz 32 bit float Mute Solo Trackpanel and Waveform Overview of the imported Track If you re not sure where to find audio material simply rip some off a CD or in Windows check the Media folder in the directory of your Windows installation Now click on the green Play button b at the top and you should hear the file you have just imported Next part Recording with Audacity 24 Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page 25 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Digital Audio Rules of
108. ow be used on Windows and OS X as well There are lots of free plugins available and no enabler is needed More information can be found on the web Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 82 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Analyze Analyze Menu Note plugins that accept input but produce no output will be placed in the Analyze menu By default this menu is often empty Beat Finder Sample Analyze Nyquist Plugin no documentation available yet Will place labels that mark the beginning and end of a selection Back to the main page Back to the Reference page 83 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Reference page Preferences Audio I O The two drop down list controls in this pane is where you configure which device Audacity should use for sound input and output This basically means which sound card USB sound device etc you want to use If your sound card support multiple sound inputs e g has a microphone input and a line in then you select these on the mixer toolbar No need to adjust this if Audacity is already playing to and recording from the correct place Record in Stereo If this is checked recordings you make in Audacity will be stereo otherwise they will be monaural Note that the interpretation of mono recordings depends on your system on most systems making a mono recording of a st
109. programmed to recognize other existing MP3 encoders that you can download separately All you have to do is obtain the appropriate MP3 encoder for your computer and then show Audacity where it is located If you use You need to Download LAME and look for the file called lame_enc dll You can find binary Windows distribution on the net by Google searching for lame compile download binary or visiting this list of mirrors Download LAME from it s home page and compile it as a shared object then look Eanes Jal for the file called libmp3lame so usually in usr local lib Macintosh Download the appropriate LAMELIib from here For links to these MP3 encoders go to the Audacity web page http audacity sourceforge net and click on the link for your operating system The first time you try to export an MP3 file Audacity will ask you to locate your MP3 encoder Locate the file indicated above From then on Audacity will not need to ask you again and you will be able to export MP3 files easily 92 Audacity Manual Title Page Support for more MP3 encoders may be coming in the future Let us know if there is a particular MP3 encoder you want supported What is an MP3 file and how does it differ from Why doesn t Audacity ship with an MP3 WAV and AIFF files encoder MP3 MPEG II layer 3 is a popular format for Unfortunately the algorithm to encode or create storing music and other audio A typical MP3 file MP3 files is patente
110. r though that we did this for convenience of not having to organize a large number or tracks If you still want to shift bits around later on you should make sure that the parts being mixed to a track do not overlap so you can split it away and edit it again later 43 Back to the main page Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the Tutorial Page 44 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Quickies Editing Vocal Tracks Cutting up long Tracks Tutorial Ill Common Editing Tasks Part 1 Quickies Part 1 This page will give you an idea of some of the possible things you can do with Audacity and walk you through the process 1 Splitting an MP3 into two separate files 2 Mixing background music with a voiceover 3 Recording harmonies with yourself 4 Recording two sound sources on separate tracks Splitting an MP3 into two separate files Recording harmonies with yourself Before you try to export MP3 files read the e Open the Preferences click on the Audio section on Exporting MP3 Files for some I O tab and check the box marked Play important information on steps you need to do other tracks while recording new one first e Click the Record button Record yourself singing Click Stop e Open the MP3 file e Click the Record button again The first e Select the part of it that you want to be the track you recorded will play but first file Listen to it by clicking the Play Audacity wil
111. rack It only writes changed data to disk Since Audacity works with chunk of audio data of around one megabyte in size this happens quite fast Rest assured that the only big waiting period might be the importing of large audio files To further explain how Audacity works flip to the next page Next Part Setup Audio Import and Playback Back to the main page 20 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Digital Audio Rules of Audacity Setup Audio Import and Playback Recording with Audacity Tutorial Basics Part 3 Setup Audio Import and Playback Part 3 1 Create a new project This is very important Audacity writes all the changed and recorded audio to a directory called Projectname_data which is located right where you saved the project file itself File Edit wiew Project Effect Help New Ctrl M Open Cctrl o Close Ctrl Save Project Thus select 5ave Project As and choose a location and filename for your project Please note that when you startup Audacity fresh only the Save As menu option is available To save your project later on you can also use the keyboard shortcut CTRL S 2 Check the Preferences Again this is very important Press CTRL P or go to then check if the right output is selected 21 Audacity Manual Title Page File Edit View Project Generate Effect Anal Audio 1 0 Quality File Formats Spectrograms Dire
112. ram or o neral Public License The and a or work aft translation is nguag e term trOdtskHE w 1 a h Ac ru Program Whether that is true depe 1 tivities o covered by t nning the is covered o n modifica ther his Li Progra nly if independe You may copy and dis source code as you receive it conspicuously and appropriately publis copyright notice and disclaimer of warranty cna r tion Each lice n copying distr cens they are outside its scope m is not restricted ts contents cons nt of having been made by running nds on what t r alt ti tribute verbatim copies of in any medium h on each copy keep in ibution and modificatio and the output tute a work based on Program mit you na ck the the the Progra The a from he Program does the Progra provided that you an approp tact all t in effect making the we have made it clear that any or not licensed at all distribution and R COPYING DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION ther work which contains holder saying it may be distributed below r work based on the Program Program or any derivative work under copyright law taining the Program or a portion of it tim or with modifications and or translated into another included without li nsee is addressed as ation in re not of Program m m s riate he
113. rial underneath the cursor Let s say we want to cut out that bit in the middle then First we ve got to select it Making a selection 33 Audacity Manual Title Page To select the part you wish to cut copy or paste to use the selection tool 1 If it s not activated do so now by clicking on it in the toolbar Now press and hold the left mouse button while you drag the mouse to mark an area This area is darker than the surrounding area of the clip Note that even though you can mark an area larger than or extending beyond the actual audio clip in the track the operations will only work on the actual clip Playback however will work outside the clip Press the space bar to listen to the audio in the marked area Mute Solo ER Project rate 44100 Selection 0 01 462857 0 03 111474 0 01 64 To extend or contract your selection hold down the SHIFT button and click on the area you wish your selection to extend or contract to If you click at a spot that is on the right hand side from the middle of the current selection you will set the right hand boundary of your new selection Cutting the selection 34 Audacity Manual Title Page Cut the selection by selecting Cut from the Edit menu or press CTRL X Before the cut After the cut To undo this operation select Undo in the Edit menu or press CTRL Z Copy will copy the selection to the clipboard You can then paste that data back in to any track
114. s Vertical Track Resizing 102 Back to the main page Audio tracks contain digitally sampled sounds In Audacity a channels of sound is represented by one mono audio track a two channel sound by one stereo audio track Each audio track has a sample rate common values include 8000 telephone 16000 speech 22050 many games of recent years 44100 CD Audio and 48000 DAT From Audacity 1 2 on you can specify a different sample rate for each track You can import audio of any sample rate or bit depth and Audacity will resample and convert it to the project rate and bit depth on the fly as well as upon Export You can choose different sample rate conversion qualities for playback and Exporting Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the Tracks page Audio Label Time Note Audio Tracks X suitcase_m vY Stereo 44100Hz 32 bit float Mute Solo 103 Audacity Manual Title Page Note that in Audacity 1 0 all tracks must be at the same sample rate as the project Back to the main page Back to the Tracks page 104 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tracks page Audio Label Time Note Label Tracks x Label Track Y Name Label Tracks can be used to annotate an audio Some label file They can be used for lyrics markers or notes and they can even be used to save Move Track Up selections Moye Track Down To create a Label Track s
115. s a ruler As you edit the The converter used will be the one s set warping the ruler will warp to show you at what time up on the Quality tab of the Preferences playback will reach each place in the audio You can make separate choices for 109 Audacity Manual Title Page 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 Back to the main page Back to the Tracks page 110 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Track page Delete Pop Down Menu Solo Mute Gain and Panning Controls Vertical Track Resizing Track Delete Button Clicking on this button deletes the track This action is undoable Back to the Track page 111 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Track page Delete Pop Down Menu Solo Mute Gain and Panning Controls Vertical Track Resizing Vertical Track Resizing For horizontal resizing which is called zooming visit the View Menu page Vertically resizing a track is fairly simple e Click and hold the mouse button on the enna resizing handle see figure e move mouse up or down until the track has the wanted vertical size e release mouse button Note Stereo tracks have two resize handles The one beneath the upper track lets you resize
116. s license document but changing it is not allowed Preamble The licenses for most software are designed to take away your freedom to share and change it By contrast the GNU General Public License is intended to guarantee your freedom to share and change free software to make sure the software is free for all its users This General Public License applies to most of the Free Software Foundation s software and to any other program whose authors commit to using it Some other Free Software Foundation software is covered by the GNU Library General Public License instead You can apply it to your programs too When we speak of free software we are referring to freedom not price Our General Public Licenses are designed to make sure that you have the freedom to distribute copies of free software and charge for this service if you wish that you receive source code or can get it if you want it that you can change the software or use pieces of it in new free programs and that you know you can do these things To protect your rights we need to make restrictions that forbid anyone to deny you these rights or to ask you to surrender the rights These restrictions translate to certain responsibilities for you if you distribute copies of the software or if you modify it For example if you distribute copies of such a program whether gratis or for a fee you must give the recipients all the rights that you have
117. so conf and then run ldconfig You may also want to add usr local bin to your path so that programs can find the wx config utility 143 USING AUDACITY 1 How do I mix two tracks together Audacity mixes automatically All you have to do is import two tracks into the same project which you can do using the Import Audio command in the Project menu or simply by dragging the two audio files to Audacity When you press the record button Audacity generates a new track automatically also In order to save your mix you can either Export the project which will automatically mix all of your tracks together or you can select your tracks and use the Quick Mix command in the Project menu 2 Can I remove the vocals from a recording With some stereo recordings it is possible to remove the vocals because of the way in which the recording was mixed at the studio Often the vocals are placed in the exact center of the recording while all other instruments are slightly off center If you subtract the ot channel from the left channel the vocals get completely canceled out leaving only the other instruments This only works on some recordings To attempt this in Audacity import a stereo recording then click on the track pop up menu the little down arrow next to the name of the track and select Split Stereo Track Now select the lower track the right channel and use the Invert effect from the Effect menu Finally
118. ted http audacity sourceforge net What can you do with Audacity What can t Audacity do Audacity is a program that manipulates digital Although Audacity is a very powerful audio editor audio waveforms In addition to recording that works with an unlimited number tracks of sounds directly from within the program it virtually unlimited size it cannot do everything It imports many sound file formats including cannot WAV AIFF MP3 and Ogg Vorbis PCM formats of 8 16 24 and 32 bits can be imported e Audacity cannot record more than two and exported channels at once on many systems Some support for multitrack recording is included e Cut Copy Paste Delete Silence in version 1 2 3 but it does not support very Duplicate Split many systems yet Audacity Manual Title Page e apply plug in effects to any part of a e Audacity opens MIDI files but it is not a sound MIDI editor and its MIDI features are e built in volume envelope editor extremely limited e customizable spectrogram track view mode e frequency analysis window for audio analysis applications e custom playback rate for every track which is live resampled to the project sample rate e simple to complex align operations for tracks and groups of tracks How does it work a quick intro for experienced users Audacity works with tracks that contain one There is volume automation via the envelope audio file This file is editable and all actions
119. that you imported in to its project data directory and in the process sets up the little overview graphics whose descriptions get stored in the project data directory too The second way is to use the original imported audio You may think we re actually editing this file but no we aren t In fact Audacity will now read the imported file once and simply create the graphics overviews for them in the data directory and subsequently write to disk all the audio data that you change The original file is only used for playback All audio that remains unchanged will be played from the original file The advantage of choosing to make a copy of the original is that you avoid trouble should anything in the original file change For example should you accidentally delete the original file you re lost You have to make up your mind before you start a project Choose to make a copy of all imported files and you ll use more space on your hard disk s but it will be easier to back up the project too because all files that have anything to do with your project will be in the project data directory The Uncompressed Export Format can be set to WAV or AIFF for now Please check the fileformats page for further information on export formats We ll ignore the Spectrogram settings for now The Directories setting can be ignored as well for now because all it sets is the directory to use for recordings undo data and other stuff if you haven t yet saved y
120. the selection 2 Select an effect You can pick any of the internal effects ora LADSPA or Nyquist plugin loaded by audacity Windows amp Mac users can also use VST plugins via the VST Enabler from www audacityteam org vst 3 Tweak the parameters to your liking Play around go wild honk your horn Make those tough decisions without telling anyone why 4 Let the software work Hit the OK button Or hit the Cancel button if you re unsure about something like what time you were supposed to take the pizza out of the oven 5 Not happy UNDO That effect didn t cut it Did that delay show up too late and you wondered where the summer went No problem Hit UNDO in the Edit menu or press CTRL Z Then go back to 3 In fact you can hit undo so many times YOU might disappear Or perhaps just all your edits Who knows 124 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Effects page Basic Calculus of Acoustics This is so terribly useful for so many things You can use this stuff to calculate just how bad parallel walls are for sound because of Standing Waves What s that Coming attractions include exciting info on how to improve the acoustics of your room and what standing waves bass traps and reflecting will do for your listening karma You may enjoy finding out that a 1000 subwoofer won t work in a small 3x3 meter room cause the big energy bass action will happen beyond your walls After all the
121. ty Manual Title Page tracks Set Sample Format Pick the sample format for this track The result is that all newly written data is written in this format no matter what format the original material was in Newly written data can be produced by effects and generator plugins for example Set Rate Set the sample rate of this track Upon import the track sample rate is set to that of the imported material On playback or exporting the audio will be re sampled to the project rate on the fly This option can be useful to change the speed and pitch of audio or if the sample rate of the source was wrong Back to the Stuff On Screen page 114 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Track page Delete Pop Down Menu Solo Mute Gain and Panning Controls Vertical Track Resizing Track Solo Button Solo Clicking on this button will switch this track to solo mode This action is not reversible with the Undo function but you can un solo a track simply by clicking it again Q Ss alo In solo mode only tracks that have the solo button activated turning the button red will be played To deactivate the solo mode for that track click on the button again button turns grey again The state of the solo buttons is NOT saved in the project file and it does not affect Exporting or Mixing Back to the Track page 115 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Track page Delete
122. uency range The more less reflective surfaces the sound bounces around from the more the reverb is dampened the higher frequencies Freeverb features a Damping parameter that dampens the upper frequencies 130 Audacity Manual Title Page Reverb EQ Usually a Highshelf and or Lowshelf EQ with variable Frequency These EQs are only applied to the output of the reverb or perhaps even just the reverb portion of the Reverb effect Some reverbs have Highshelf and Lowshelf EQs for the Early Reflections as well Freeverb has both a Hicut and Lowcut parameter Here s a screenshot taken from the reverb plugin Renaissance Reverberator by Waves Reverb type Decorrelation Diffusion reproduced with permission Here we have the Highshelf and Lowshelf EQs for Damping left and for the final output right The upper middle display depicts the Early Reflections placement and level as well as the Reverb portion start and fading Above this display is the Reverb Type selector This changes the placement and level of the Early Reflections The Size slider has influence on the Early Reflections as well Blank concrete will reflect sound quite well across the frequency spectrum A large thick curtain or padded walls will reflect sound poorly A large club filled with people sounds completely different 131 Audacity Manual Title Page from an empty one People comfy chairs curtains carpets beds and many more objects reflect only part of t
123. urgh PA USA He was working on a research Proin with his advisor Professor Roger Dannenberg and they needed a tool that would let them visualize audio analysis algorithms Over time this program developed into a general audio editor and other people started helping out Today Audacity is developed using Sourceforge an online site that allows people around the world to collaborate on free software projects See http www sourceforge net for more information Dozens of people have contributed to Audacity and progress is continually accelerating 3 How can I help to improve Audacity There are many ways you can help If you are a porria and you know C we can always use more developers 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 language If you are good at writing you can help us write documentation and tutorials 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 e mail the developers at auae AEV fs oe Orea You may also want to go to the Sourceforge web site and join the mailing list yourself 4 I found a bug Now what The most inport thing when reporting a bug is to be as specific as possible Give us enough a a that we can reproduce the bug ourselves otherwise it s unlikely that we ll be able to fix it
124. ust make sure they work before yelling at your screen that nothing works 3 Hit Record 26 Audacity Manual Title Page Click on the red Record button y to begin recording Click on the blue Pause button i J to pause the recording Press it again to continue to cease recording The cursor will return to its previous Click on the yellow Stop bu position before the recording was started That s it You can now play around with your recording and explore the editing capabilities of Audacity Remember that you can use the Undo function almost without limits Proceed to the Editing for Beginners section for a detailed overview of editing functions Back to the main page 27 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Introduction Cut Copy amp Paste Silence Duplicate and Split Splitting and Submixes ll Editing for Beginners Part 1 Introduction Part 1 Sound Editing in the real world Sound editors clean up dialogue tracks cut layers of special effects place sounds at certain times create ambiance tracks by cutting out unwanted stuff and mixing in interesting or necessary sounds Music production engineers may cut pieces of vocals away or shift them to a another spot in a song Editing is about cutting placing fading cross fading shifting duplicating and adjusting the volume also referred to as level of audio material Mixing is a form of editing too of course Here is an
125. ways begin at the position of the selection cursor If a range of audio is selected only the selected range will play Envelope Tool The envelope tool gives you detailed control over how tracks fade in and out right in the main track window When the envelope tool is selected the amplitude envelope of each track is highlighted in a green line with control points at the beginning and end of each track To change a control point click it and drag it toa new position To add a new point click a FP tt Bo DP E at Sn cf Sn ad Cursor to Start r Places the cursor at the start of the project SHIFT click expands the selection to the start of the project b gt Play Button A Press the play button to listen to the audio in your project You can also hit the spacebar to start or stop playback Playback begins at the current cursor position If a region of audio is selected only the selected region will play To quickly play the entire project execute Select All before playing If there are multiple tracks going to the same channel in your project they will be mixed automatically for playback 95 Audacity Manual Title Page anywhere in the track where there is not already a control point To remove a point click on it and drag it outside of the track until it disappears then release el Time Shift Tool This tool allows you to change the relative positioning of tracks relative to one another in t
126. y supports WAV AIFF and many other PCM files e The other type is compressed files Earlier formats used logarithmic encodings to squeeze more dynamic range out of fewer bits for each sample like the u law or a law encoding in the Sun AU format Modern compressed audio files use sophisticated psychoacoustics 17 Audacity Manual Title Page algorithms to represent the essential frequencies of the audio signal in far less space Examples include MP3 MPEG I layer 3 Ogg Vorbis and WMA Windows Media Audio Audacity supports MP3 and Ogg Vorbis but not the proprietary WMA format or the MPEG4 format AAC used by Apple s iTunes For details on the audio formats Audacity can import from and export to please check out the Fileformats page of this documentation Please remember that MP3 does not store uncompressed PCM audio data When you create an MP3 file you are deliberately losing some quality in order to use less disk space Next part Rules of Audacity Back to the main page 18 Audacity Manual Title Page Back to the main page Back to the Tutorial Page Digital Audio Rules of Audacity Setup Audio Import and Playback Recording with Audacity Tutorial 1 Basics Part 2 Rules of Audacity Part 2 If you d like to get straight playing an imported file or recording something you can skip this section and come back later Whenever you work with Audacity there are some rules you should remember 1 One clip per track

the Audacity 1.2 manual in PDF format.

Contents

Download Pdf Manuals

Related Search

Related Contents