Audacity Tutorial Quick Guide
Audacity Tutorial Quick Guide
2.0.3
Tutorial
Download Audacity and LAME Encoder
Audacity is an open source cross-platform (It can be used in Windows, Macs, and
Linux) audio editor. You can download at
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/. The newest version is 2.0.3 In order to
export MP3 format files, you also need to download LAME MP3 encoder at
http://manual.audacityteam.org/o/man/faq_installation_and_plug_ins.html#maclame
When you install the LAME MP3 encoder, you can see this image.
Click Choose Folder button and find a place you want to save it. After you
download, at first time when you want to export your file into MP3, you will see
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Don’t click OK, instead, click Browse and find where you save your LAME MP3
encoder.
Interface
When you open audacity, a blank project workspace looks like this.
Setting up the Preferences in Audacity
Under the Audacity on the menu, click the Preferences; a
dialog window will pop up.
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On the left side, it is a category of the setting. Click any item on the category; the
Quality of Sound
All sounds we hear with our ears are pressured wave in air. Audio pressure
waves, or waveforms, look something like this:
Each dot in the figure above represents on audio sample. The quality of digital audio
is affected by two factors, sample rate and bit rate.
Sample rate is the number of samples captured per second to make
a waveform. It is measured in Hertz (Hz). More samples, better
sound will be. An audio CD has 44.1kHz. This is also the default
sample rate that Audacity uses. Capturing a sound at a particular
frequency requires a sampling rate of at least twice that frequency.
Human can’t hear frequencies above 20,000 Hz, therefore a
sample rate of 44,100 Hz is the absolute minimum necessary to
reproduce sounds within the range of human hearing. 44, 100 Hz
is chosen as the rate for audio CDs.
Sample format is the number of computer bits used to represent each
sample. Audacity default is
32. More bits, more memory space it will take on the computer. 16-
bit can ensure a good quality
sound. If you have a long audio file, it is better to change your default
32-bit into 16-bit from the
track control panel.
Bring Audio File into Audacity
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1. Importing audio file
You can import an existing audio file from a CD or from other resources. Choose
File>Import Audio>Audio. Then navigate to the file being imported. It will
appear as a new track, displaying as the blue image, waveform,
although it also possible to display a spectrogram. Usually we use two types of
tracks, mono track and stereo track. We can set up from Preferences. On the
Devices, select Mono or Stereo from the drop down menu of
Channels.
• Audacity Mono Track
In Audacity, most voice recording will be done as a mono or single channel sound
track. The blue image on the
Audacity tracks below is the waveform, displaying of the mono track.
Delete Button: To delete the track, click on the “X” in the upper left corner.
Title Button: The title of the track appears just to the right of the “X”. Clicking on
the drop-down menu on the Title bar, you will allow to rearrange tracks and change
various track options.
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The options include naming the track, ranging tracks, changing the display, splitting
stereo track, and setting sample format and rate, etc. When you change the options,
they will display on the control panel. For example, you change the name of the
track, the name will show on the title bar. If you split the stereo track into mono
track, you won’t see the Gain and Left/Right pan.
Mute Button: The Mute Button turns off the sound playback from a track.
Solo Button: It causes only the sound from a track to be heard, and other active
tracks cannot be heard while this button is selected.
Gain Control: It affects the volume of the track. You can move it left to decrease
the volume of the track or to the right to increase it. The default is 0 dB.
Left/Right Panning Slide: It affects the balance between the left and right
speakers.
The Vertical Ruler is a guide to the level you see in the waveforms. A level of 1.0-
-- -1.0 is the maximum supported by the audio-file. Any waveform that goes
above 1.0 or below -1.0 will be clipped and will result in distortion.
When you click and held the mouse over the vertical ruler, the waveform turns
magnifying vertically. When you press the Shift key, click and hold the mouse
over the vertical ruler, the waveform turns de-magnifying vertically and zoom
back out.
The track information includes the channel of the track (in this case it is Stereo),
the sample rate (in this case it 44100Hz) and 32-bit float.
Saving your Audacity session will preserve all of these tracks for continuing to
work. It is important to save your Audacity editing work regularly. When you
first save your project, to make sure the project document saved as “.aup” is
placed in the folder your created.
1. Click File>Save Project As. A window will open
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If you click on “Copy Selected Audio Into Project.” Your audio edit document
with the extension “.aup” and a copy of all of the sound files will be saved into a
folder(_data). This is a good way to make sure that everything is kept in your
project folder.
If you click on “Do not copy any Audio”, only the Audacity Edit document (the
“.aup” doc) will be saved in your Project Folder. You can’t play this file on
another computer even you move the “.aup” and “-date” to this computer.
2. In the save navigation window, enter the name for your project such as
“YourNmeProjeTittle” and click OK. The step automatically creates
one documents and one folder:
(a) “YourNameProjectTitle. aup”, This is the
document of your audacity that contains all
editing/changes you make.
(b) “YourNameProjectTitle_date”, This folder will be created if you select
“Copy Selected
Audio Into Project.”
3. When you save an Audacity project, you save in the Audacity
Project Format (.aup) file. The file can’t be used in an MP3 player.
To keep the Audacity Project appropriated, you should be pay
attention for these
Never rename the .aup file or the _data folder. If you want to rename
your project, use the
File>Save Project As…
Always keep the .aup file and the _data folder together in the same
folder.
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If you import an audio file with the “Read uncompressed file
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