Audacity

Overview

Audacity is an open source audio editing desktop application for Mac, Windows and Linux available for free download

Using Audacity

Recording Audio

To record audio, do the following:

1. Click the "Record" button
2. Click the "Pause" button to pause recording or the "Stop" button to stop
3. Click the "Play" button to hear what you have recorded
4. Chose "File > Save Project" to save your recording for future editing OR
   Chose "File > Export as WAV..." to save an uncompressed version of your recording
   Chose "File > Export as MP3..." to save a version to share with others
   

Editing Audio

To edit audio, do the following:

1. Chose File > Open...
2. Browse to an audio file, select it and click the "Open" button

Audacity displays a visual representation of the audio (known as a waveform) and has controls for zooming in and out of this representation allowing you to focus on particular portions of your audio track. Hold down your mouse button and drag across the waveform to select a portion of the audio. This selection can then be deleted or copied and pasted whereever else you put your cursor in the wave form. See screencast below for demonstration of basic editing techniques.

Export to mp3

Audacity allows you to save audio files in MP3 format (Chose File > Export as MP3).  However, you may need to download the Lame MP3 libraries.

• go here to download lame library
• go here for instructions or see below

Windows

• Go to the LAME download page.
• Under "For Audacity on Windows", left-click on the link "libmp3lame-win-3.98.2.zip" and save the zip folder to anywhere on your computer.
• When you have finished downloading the ZIP folder, unzip it and save the file lame_enc.dll that it contains to anywhere on your computer.
• The first time you use the "Export as MP3" command, Audacity will ask you where lame_enc.dll is saved.
• In case of difficulty, please view our more detailed instructions on the Audacity Wiki.

Mac OS 9 or X

• Go to the LAME download page.
• Click to download either "Lame Library v3.98.2 for Audacity on OSX.dmg" or "LameLib-Carbon.sit", according to your operating system.
• Double-click the .dmg to extract "Lame Library v3.98.2 for Audacity on OSX.pkg" to Finder, or use Stuffit to extract "LameLib" from the .sit (either of these may happen automatically).
• Double-click the .pkg to install "libmp3lame.dylib" in /usr/local/lib/audacity, or save "LameLib" anywhere on your computer.
• The first time you use the "Export as MP3" command, Audacity will ask you where libmp3lame.dylib or LameLib is saved.