Audacity Manual Contents

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Audacity 2.1.2 Manual

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - most common questions are answered in the FAQ

• Search the Wiki for extra tips and tutorials
• Visit the Forum for technical help
• Using Help Resources

Guide to the Audacity Project Window

1 Menu Bar   2 Transport Toolbar   3 Tools Toolbar   4 Recording Meter Toolbar   5 Playback Meter Toolbar   6 Mixer Toolbar  
7 Edit Toolbar   8 Transcription Toolbar   9 Device Toolbar   10 Timeline   11 Track Control Panel  
12 Audio Track   13 Label Track   14 Selection Toolbar   15 Status Bar  

Hover over and click on the image to learn more. Skip the image

Additional Menus on Mac

• Audacity
• Window

Additional Track types

• Time Tracks
• Note Tracks

Tutorials

• Editing an Audio File - Import the file, edit and export it
• Your First Recording - Record microphone, guitar, keyboard
• Mixing Voice with Background Music - For podcasts
• Recording Multi-track Overdubs - Record over other tracks
• Vocal Removal and Isolation
• Looping - make an audio loop with Audacity
• Making Ringtones and IVR messages - For your cellphone or IVR system
• Recording streaming audio playing on the computer

• Copying tapes, LPs and other media to CD or computer
• Click and pop removal techniques
• Splitting a recording into separate tracks
• Burning Audio CDs and How to import CDs
• Exporting to iTunes and Importing from iTunes
• Sample workflow for LP digitization and Sample workflow for tape digitization

• Sample workflow for exporting to iTunes
• Recording 78 rpm records

Using Audacity

Quick Help

• Getting Started - Recording, Importing, Editing, Exporting...

Audacity Foundations

• Managing Audacity Projects - Audacity's internal workspace
• Audacity Setup and Configuration
  • Preferences - changing your settings and reset to default
• Toolbars Overview - including how to arrange Toolbars
• Audio Tracks, Waveform view and Spectrogram view
• Label Tracks
• Playing and Recording, Quick-Play and Scrubbing
• Importing audio and Exporting audio files - For use in other programs
  • LAME MP3 export and FFmpeg import/export libraries for more formats
  • On-Demand Loading of uncompressed files
  • Metadata Editor
• Navigation Tips, Playback Tips and Audio Alignment Tips
• Keyboard shortcuts

Editing with Audacity

• Selecting audio and Spectral Selection
• Clips - individual sections within an audio track
• Splitting and Joining Stereo Tracks
• Zooming
• Effects, Generators and Analyzers
• Creating a Crossfade
• Mixing Audio Tracks
• Undo, Redo and History

Help with Advanced Topics

• Accessibility - Audacity for the visually impaired
• Latency when recording overdubs
• Adding plug-ins & other customization, Scripting and Simplifying Menus
• Chains - for batch processing and effects automation
• Sync-Locked Track Groups
• Crash Recovery

Index, Glossary and More

• Subject Index
• Glossary of Terms
• Credits

• Audacity License
• Information for Developers - join our developer community

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Links: Most links are to other pages in this Manual. Bold italicized  links are to a description in our Glossary. Other italicised  links are to pages external to this Manual, mostly to our main website or Wiki. We are not responsible for the content of any other external sites.

Screenshots: Unless otherwise stated, screenshots in this Manual are of Audacity running under its default settings on the Microsoft Windows 7® operating system. Representative images of Audacity running on Mac OS X and Linux are also included.

Copyright: Unless otherwise noted, all pages in this Manual are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. In essence, you are free to (1) copy, distribute and transmit the work (2) to adapt the work, under condition you must attribute the work to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from us.