One of the keys to working quickly with Audacity is shortcuts. While you can accomplish the same tasks using the menus, this approach will end up taking much longer. I think you will find that even in short projects of 30 minutes that 5-10 minutes is just navigating menus. I would like to spend that time doing other things so I have been trying to use keyboard shortcuts more often. Below you will find a way for you to assign your own shortcuts to your common tasks.

Changing a shortcut: Click on the command in the list. The command to be changed is now highlighted. Click in to the box to left of the Set button. If a shortcut was assigned to the command previously, it will be 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: Click on the command in the list. The command to be cleared is now highlighted. Click on the clear button to clear the command.

Tags: Audacity, Tools | 1 Comment »

The guys at Inside Home Recording (IHR) keep pumping out quality shows. In show #39, they provided a tutorial on how to split and join stereo files using only cross-platform, free software.

I wrote the guys to see if I could pull out their reviews from a previous show of the Samson’s Zoom H4 and M-Audio’s MicroTrack 24/96 field recorders and Derek wrote back informing me that their shows were released under a Creative Commons license that allows me to do just that. I sure do love CC licenses!

So, if you are interested in learning more about the dealing with stereo files, then give this segment a listen (it run 5:36). You may also find it helpful to take a look at the screen captures as well. They help illustrate the tutorial quite well (just scroll down through the shownotes to near the end and you will see the images).

Enjoy.

Tags: iTunes, Tutorial, Audacity, Creative Commons | No Comments »

From the podcasting section of About.com:

Note: You must first download and install Audacity before you can implement any of these instructions.

# Open Audacity.

# Click “file” and “new.”

# Make sure any external microphone is plugged into your computer and is recognized. To do this, (Windows) go to “control panel,” click on “sounds and audio devices” and look under “sound recording.” (In the “audio” folder). Your microphone should already be recognized in the drop down menu. If not, you may have to install your microphone by following the prompts listed and testing your microphone. The whole process takes about two minutes. (Mac’s follow a similar process-follow the prompts after installing your microphone).

# Click “record.” (Circular icon with red button)

# Record your audio.
When you’re finished, press the spacebar to stop recording or the square icon in the top navigation bar.

# Now edit your track(s) .

# You can import external audio (like music or sound effects) by clicking, “project” in the navigation bar.

# Add effects to your tracks by clicking on “effect” after highlighting a portion of track you want to enhance. Audacity has a number of great features here, including “Amplify” which lets you raise the volume on a quiet portion of track, “Equalization” which lets you clean up/modify your entire track once finished, and “Noise Removal” which allows you to target unwanted noise in a track and remove it universally with the push of a button.

# Mix your tracks. The easiest way to do this is to click “quick mix” under “project” in the navigation bar. However, you can also set the volume to each track by adjusting the top slider (downward arrow icon) in each track field left or right. When you click on the slider you’ll see the word “gain” come up as you adjust. Be aware if you set the volume too high it can result in “clipping” (maxing volume by going too far in the red zone). For more specifics on modifying each track, click on “Audio Track” in the Audacity Help Menu’s Table of Contents.

# Export your track as an MP3. Be aware that you’ll need something called the LAME library to do this. Go to Audacity and download the LAME library. Once downloaded, look for the LameLib file (Mac) or lame_enc.dll file (Windows) and save it in your Audacity program folder. Now go back to the file you want to convert in Audacity. Edit your ID3 Tags, and then choose your bit and sample rates. Finally, click on the “file” menu and select, “Export as MP3.”

Tags: Podcasting, Audacity, Software | No Comments »

I stumbled upon a site that has “manuals” for several open source software programs. One of them is for Audacity. The site is full of walk-throughs with screen shots (from the Apple version) and good explanations. It provides info on how to perform most basic functions.

If you have been needing some help with Audacity, this is a good place to start.

powered by performancing firefox

Tags: Tutorial, Resources, Audacity, Recording | 2 Comments »

I came across a great tutorial for Audacity. It is video and walks you through many of the essentials of working with Audacity.

The topics covered are:

-Recording Setup

-The Editing Tools

-Basic Editing and Trimming Your Audio

-Adjusting Levels

-Importing Audio and Adding Music to Your Podcast

-Saving Your Project and Exporting the MP3

The tutorial is based on v1.2 of Audacity. (as of this post, v1.3b - beta is available) Check it out and let me know if it was helpful

Tags: Tutorial, Audacity | No Comments »

Audacity Update Offers Features for Podcasting

A new version of the free audio editor Audacity has been announced. Several features will be especially interesting for podcasters, including FTP uploading, transcription tools and batch processing.

A beta version is available, but it is not considered stable yet. The software is popular with musicians and podcasters looking for a free, open source audio editing environment.

New Features:

1. Collapse/Expand Tracks - every track has an upward-pointing triangle at the bottom of the label area on the left side of the track. Click it once to collapse the track to a very small size, and click it again to expand it back to its previous size.
2. Multiple clips per track - in Audacity 1.3, you can split a single track into multiple clips. You can move these clips around between different tracks, making it easy to construct complex compositions out of hundreds of smaller audio samples.
3. Selection Bar - In Audacity 1.2, the current selection is contained in a status bar at the bottom of the window. In Audacity 1.3, this is replaced by a fully functional Selection Bar, which displays and controls the current selection (your choice of Start and End, or Start and Length), and the current audio position. The selection bar is fully editable - just click in any field and type to change the current selection precisely. In addition, many formatting options allow you to view times in different units, such as samples, CD frames, or NTSC video frames.
4. Improved Label Tracks - Label Tracks are much improved, with support for overlapping labels, and support for modifying both the left and right edge of the label region just by clicking and dragging.
5. QuickTime and Audio Units on Mac OS X - Audacity can now import any audio file supported by Apple’s QuickTime technology. This includes .MOV and .MP4 (AAC) files. Encrypted audio files (such as those from the iTunes Music Store) cannot be imported directly into Audacity - Apple does not allow this to be done easily because it would be too easy to circumvent the encryption this way.
6. Better performance with large projects - 1.3 now uses a hierarchical directory structure that results in better performance on large projects (tens of hours worth of audio across many tracks)
7. Project integrity check on open - When you open an Audacity project in version 1.3, it checks to make sure that all data files are present.
8. Transcription toolbar - A new toolbar for creating transcriptions of speech in Label Tracks. Includes features that enable you to change the playback speed, create labels automatically based on onsets, and more. To enable this feature, go to the Interface tab of the Preferences.
9. Upload via FTP - Audacity 1.3 has an experimental new dialog for uploading files to a server via FTP. Currently it is just a simple FTP client; in the future we will integrate this feature into Audacity more so you can publish a project directly to a site as a Podcast, for example.
10. Batch / CleanSpeech - Audacity has a new feature that allows you to process a bunch of files, for example normalizing and converting to MP3. The CleanSpeech mode provides a simplified interface for some standard adjustments typically made on speech recordings. You can access these features in the Batch tab of the Preferences dialog.
11. Cut lines - When this feature is enabled (in the Interface tab of the Preferences), cutting audio in the middle of a clip does not remove it permanently - at any time in the future, just click on the cut line to restore it.

The Audacity site warns that “Audacity 1.3 is an unstable, beta version of Audacity. Users who want a completely stable, finished program should be using Audacity 1.2. Audacity 1.3 has hundreds of new features, but some features may be incomplete or confusing, it is more likely to crash, and you are more likely to lose data.”

Both versions are available for download at the Audacity site.

via Synthtopia Electronic Music News

Tags: Audacity | No Comments »

There is an interesting version of Audacity called CleanSpeech. It has been optimized for speech projects as well as for batch editing.

According to the developer’s web site:

CleanSpeech is a free alternative to other audio editors that are oriented for preparation of music. It is derived from Audacity, with simplifications and enhancements aimed at improving the clarity of speech and streamlining preparation.

Here are several scenarios where CleanSpeech is appropriate:

• church has backlog of sermons they want to make available for distance listening (the original name of this freeware was SermonEditor)
• school has backlog of recorded classroom lectures they want to upload to their website for distance learnin

I have used it several times. It has some filters I have not found elsewhere. It is still in beta, but it is stable. The only filter I don’t like is the noise reduction filter. In most cases I have found that this filter introduces a tinny, hollow sound to the recording. It is a quick and easy sound editor and perfect for those of us who are fairly clueless about what all of the settings mean.

Tags: Podcast, Podcasting, Resources, Review, Audacity | 2 Comments »