Audacity: Final Thoughts

Additional resources

Here are some additional resources you can use to become more proficient with Audacity:

• Audacity’s tutorial page: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/help/tutorials
  This page contains various tutorials for the program, including those developed by the company and some created by individuals who use the program.

• Audacity’s Help section: In the program, click Help / Contents… for a searchable help guide with illustrations.

• Audacity download page: http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
  Go to this page to download Audacity on your home computer.  It works with Windows, Mac OS X and Linux.
• Click here for one of my sources for the presentation.
• Click here for another source.
• Click here for a third source.

Also, click Audacity intro and tutorial for a word file with all of these Audacity instructions.

Audacity: Saving and Exporting Projects

Saving and exporting projects

Now that you know how to create unique audio files, it is important to save the file in a format that you can open at a later point.  Audacity files are saved as projects by default, with the file extension .aup.  This means that Audacity is the only program that can open this file at a later time.  If you plan on finishing a file on the same computer, use the Save or Save as… options located in the File menu.  However, if you have a finished project and want to play it on another computer or mp3 player, you will need to export the file to a different format.

Audacity lets you export your file into three different formats- waveform audio (.wav), MPEG audio layer 3 (.mp3) and Vorbis / Ogg Vorbis (.ogg).  It is recommended that you export your project as a .wav file or .mp3 file.  These two common formats are compatible with Windows Media Player, QuickTime and WinAmp, which are three common multimedia players.  NOTE: to save a file as an .mp3, you need to download a LAME encoder.  LAME encoders are free downloads found on the Internet (with links on Audacity’s site) but Audacity does not want to package this file with the program to make sure that it does not infringe upon the rights of any patent holders.

Depending on the length of your recording, you may need to convert it to an .mp3 file.  A 60 second .mp3 file will be about 1 megabyte in size, while a .wav file the same length will be about 5 megabytes in size.  Another benefit to .mp3 files is that you can encode them- which means you can add the artist’s name, genre and other data about the file.

Activity: Try to export a file as a .wav and .mp3 file.  Click File / Export as WAV… and then File / Export as MP3….  Follow the prompts and save each file to your desktop.  If you have multiple tracks, you will get a warning message saying that your tracks will be compressed.  Click OK.  Then, attempt to open each file with Windows Media Player to see if it will work.

Audacity: Recording a Simple File

Recording a simple file

Audacity makes recording simple.  Plug in your headset to the computer so we can practice creating a voice recording.  If using this program with students, it is recommended that students have a headset and microphone so that they won’t receive audio interference from others in the class.

During regular use, it is recommended that you type a transcript of what you plan on saying.  If you are like most people, it is much easier to read from a transcript than to speak off the top of your head.  This method will also allow you to pass out the transcript to any audience members with hearing difficulties.

Activity: Think about an unforgettable experience from a fun vacation.  Click the record button and speak clearly and slowly into the microphone.  Hit the stop button, and listen to your voice by clicking the play button.  The circled buttons shown below in are what you will use for this step.

 
(Audacity’s basic controls)

How did you sound?  And what were those strange blue marks that appeared in the program?  Let’s look below to help us understand what is happening:

( Waveform view and description)

The default view (with the blue bars) is known as the Waveform view.  While you speak you can see the sound waves as they are processed by the computer and converted to a digital audio file.  This is helpful for editing purposes- you can usually find the “break” in a conversation after someone asks a question in case you need to edit or cut that person’s response.

Pretend that you need to add some additional information to your recording.  Let’s say that you wanted to finish your funny vacation story.  This is one instance where Audacity is really different from a tape recorder.  On a tape recorder, you would simply press “Record” and the new recording would be directly after the first recording.  In Audacity, if you click the stop button and then press record, your voice recording will now be saved on a separate track in the same project.

A track is a recorded line, and the project can contain many tracks.  A music producer would add the single tracks (drums, vocals, and guitar) together to produce a song.  While this is a good idea for the music industry, having multiple people speak at the same time (multiple tracks) would be hard to distinguish.  To avoid working with multiple tracks, click the pause button after a recording if you plan on recording more data very soon.

Activity: Practice creating multiple programs within the same audio project (file).  Try both methods- hit the pause button in the middle of the story, and then try to click stop and hit the record button again.  Look at the differences illustrated below:

(recording dual tracks by stopping the original recording)

(recording single tracks by pausing a recording)