Audacity: Free, general-purpose sound-editing tool

CNET has written several times over the years about Audacity, a free, general-purpose sound-editing tool. I've known people who have used it to manipulate sound for podcasts and the like. But I'd completely forgotten about it until today.

One of my colleagues been looking for a tool to split recorded audio presentations into portions to go with the corresponding individual PowerPoint slides. I thought Apple's GarageBand might work, but he found it too opaque, and our office (like most) is PC-heavy, which would have complicated efforts to train other folks on how to do this job.

Then he downloaded Audacity, and it fit the bill perfectly. It let him see audio waveforms to figure out where the speaker stopped talking between slides, easily split the recording at those points, and clean up other extraneous noise from the track. At the same time, it didn't burden him with features more geared toward budding musicians such as built-in instrument sounds or an on-screen keyboard.

Reading through the documentation, I realized Audacity might be the perfect solution to a problem I've been facing myself. Today, I use Microsoft's Digital Media Plus Pack to record my LP records to digital format. But Microsoft discontinued that XP-only product when it released Vista and doesn't support it anymore. Worse, it records only to Windows Media Audio, which means I have to convert the files to AAC or MP3 before I can play them on my iPod.

But Audacity lets me record directly to MP3 using the LAME encoder, which I've already got installed for another audio-conversion program. Although MP3 offers sound at the same bitrate as AAC and WMA, hard drive space is now plentiful enough to encode everything at 320kbps, which is perfectly adequate for on-the-go sound.

Screenshot of Audacity running on Windows

(Credit: Audacity)

[philoking]

I agree completely, although Audacity is totally spartan, it's not unusual for me to finish a podcast or something in Garageband and then pop it into Audacity for a quick normalize, fade out and clip to fit the audio. It's a great free program, but it's definitely limited.

[john55440]

Hmmm. On music CDs, I have some live songs that are preceeded by annoying introductions. It would be nice if I could cut off the introductions. I will have to take a look at Audacity.

[DrBenway]

john55440 --

I use Audacity to do something very similar with radio programs that I record from FM. Once I've ripped the recording to disk, I use Audacity to trim any extraneous material from before the start of the actual program, and any extraneous material after the end of the program. This way I don't have to worry about starting/stopping the recording at the precise moment that the show starts/ends. Very quick and easy to do.

[DrBenway]

I record FM radio programs using an audio CD recorder, then rip the CD to .wav. Once I've got the file onto my disk, I use Audacity to edit and/or compress it to flac format.

I've also used it for simple beat-making using the looping feature and processing options.

This is one of my favorite audio applications, and I have barely sratched the surface of its capabilities. I pinch myself every time I use it; how can software this good be free?

[steve84116]

I have used Audacity for years. It seems to pack a lot of punch for a free program. It's something everyone needs sooner or later. Again...kudos to open source software.

[Notewriter]

I've heard lots of great things about Audacity. How do I access it?