Here's an easy-to-follow step-by-step tutorial that covers the very basic editing steps.
Here are some online resources to help you get started (or become a bit more proficient) at editing audio using Audacity:įor a short, simple overview of the main tools you’ll be using to edit a sound file, you can download the following Microsoft Word document here:
Its easy-to-learn-and-use interface, its wide array of powerful features, and of course its price (free) make it an ideal choice for amateur and professional podcasters alike. Once again, though, check the archives first:Įditing audio files is the heart and soul, if you will, of Audacity. You must join this list before you can post this helps keep the Spam level down. However, this is a high-volume list, and the only people who should be subscribed to this list are Audacity developers or expert users who want to help provide technical support. Before you join, however, search through the archives to see if your question has already been answered:Īudacity E-mail Distribution Lists – Advanced - Anyone can send a message to this list to contact the Audacity team with questions, comments, and feedback. If you don't want to receive that many messages, you may subscribe in "digest" mode, which combines each day's messages into one large e-mail. Please note that this list sometimes receives as many as 200 messages per week. Also, try entering the information you’re seeking in the search field first it’s quite possible you’re the answer to your question may already have been provided in an earlier post, thus saving the developers, who aren’t reimbursed for their time or efforts, some time:Īudacity E-Mail Distribution List – General – This list is a place for Audacity users to post questions for other Audacity users to answer. Please be sure to read the different categories, and post your question to the right forum for most of us, that category will be Audacity 1.3.x (the latest stable version), either General or Windows. The Audacity Team forum is where you can post questions that will be (relatively) promptly answered by one of Audacity’s developers. (Even better, since it’s a WIKI, they can post their own answers!) You’ll find information here on subjects as wide-ranging as an Audacity interface for the sight-impaired and links to Audacity help in Swedish, Czech, and Brazilian Portuguese. The Audacity WIKI is a wonderful resource, where the complete novice and the hard-core audio techie can both find answers to their different questions.
Does an excellent job of breaking down Audacity into its component parts and explaining them, but not so good a job in helping you understand how to use it actually to assemble a podcast: There’s also a link to the Audacity WIKI, a FAQ, several online tutorials of varying usefulness, and, for the more adventurous, a link to a page describing how you can create some of your own Audacity plug-ins.Īudacity’s online help, in its own discrete HTML file. Here you’ll find HTML versions of the online help (which on this page is called the Audacity reference) and the more comprehensive users manual, as well as downloadable/printable versions of both. What follows is a breakdown of the links and resources available via Audacity’s main site. But help in a variety of forms does exist.
Since Audacity isn’t a commercially-released product you won’t find books about it on Amazon or the shelves of your local bookstore, and online documentation is a bit thin as well.
Here’s one good free plug-in for reverb effects:Īnd if you really want to trick out your Audacity, here’s a site that describes itself as “…the Internet's number one news and information resource for open standard audio plugins.” (I haven't yet downloaded any plug-ins from this site, however, and can't vouch for their quality or utility): If there is one effect that should come with Audacity but doesn't (aside from the mp3 LAME encoder, of course), it's a plug-in to create a reverb effect.
You can start with Audacity’s own plug-in page: Here's a short list of resources for more plug-ins you can experiment with (or incorporate): While it seems (at least to me) that Audacity comes with more than enough built-in effects to satisfy the most particular podcaster, you can add even more audio effects by downloading and installing plug-ins.