Audacity, Digital Sound Recording and Audio Editing Software

If we are fans of the musical world, it is likely that we are interested in editing, mixing and recording audio files. But perhaps, the fact of thinking of an expensive payment program to guarantee quality results may put us backwards. In that case, we should know that there is a completely free, high-quality audio recording and editing software like Audacity , which we are going to talk about today.

Audacity is a free and open source program capable of editing and recording audio . With it it will be possible to record audio through a microphone or a mixer, record the playback that is playing through the PC speakers, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs, among other functions, which is ideal for turning our computer into a home recording studio, being ideal for users who want to start in the world of audio editing.

Audacity

We are talking about powerful software that offers compatibility with formats such as WMA, AC3, M4A, M4R among others. It is also compatible with 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit systems, being able to convert frequencies through high-quality sampling and dithering. The application will allow us to copy, cut, splice or mix all kinds of sound together. We will have a wide variety of effects such as changing the speed or tone of the recording and support for LADSPA, LV2, VST, Audio Unit and Nyquist effects plugins.

In addition, we can edit our sound files in WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, MP3 or Ogg Vorbis formats , and export our recordings, including several files at the same time. It has a simple graphical interface, but at the same time complete enough to satisfy the needs of all types of users, from beginners who are taking their first steps in the world of audio editing, as well as advanced users. In addition, it has the ability to record audio from different sources, being capable of processing all kinds of files, including podcasts, as it has cutoff, normalization and fading effects.

Muse Group Announces as New Owner of Audacity

If Audacity has been characterized by something since its inception back in the year 2000, it is because it is a free and high-quality open source application. However, its trajectory as a reference within freeware programs may be truncated with the purchase of it by the Muse Group company, which owns applications such as “MuseScore” (music composition and annotation software), which will be commissioned from now to manage Audacity.

At the moment, we should not notice changes with this new direction of the popular music editing program, since its source code is and will continue to be open source and its team of developers will be kept. In fact, it is possible that we can find new changes and content for the better, such as a more modern and updated interface in future versions. However, there are rumors that after the purchase of Audacity, new telemetry functions will be incorporated, with which to track user activity. This is something that has caused great discontent within the user community and that we will see how it affects the popular application in the future.

Discover everything you can do with Audacity

Once we execute the application, its main menu appears with an interface that at first may not be too attractive, but it is characterized by being quite clean with the main elements well ordered. It has a menu bar, several buttons and a panel where we can see the waveform of any loaded element. It may take a bit of getting used to for less experienced users, especially if they have never worked with similar programs. In total we will find 17 elements such as:

  • Menu bar.
  • Transport tools.
  • Main toolbar.
  • The recording measure bar.
  • The playback measure bar.
  • Mixing tools.
  • Editing toolbar.
  • Reading speed.
  • Device toolbox.
  • Recording marking and reading head.
  • The timeline.
  • The scrub rule.
  • Track control panel.
  • Audio track.
  • Track label.
  • Selection tools.

Get started with Audacity

Getting started with Audacity is very easy. The only thing we will need is to have our microphone plugged in and click on the “Record” button, which we will easily recognize by its unmistakable round and red icon. From there we start our recording and once finished we press the “Stop” button that we will recognize by its square shape. We can check that the recording has been made correctly by listening to it using the “Play” button.

Audacity grabar

Once finished we can save the result in an audio file so that we can listen to it in other players. To do this, it will only be necessary to click on “File” and “Export”, selecting an audio format such as MP3, WAW, OGG, etc. Also, Audacity currently includes the lame_enc.dll library by default . This will allow us to export to MP3 format without the need to install any additional add-ons, as was necessary in versions prior to 2.3.2.

Audacity exportar audio

Record the sound from the speakers and create your Podcasts

One of the possibilities of Audacity is to be able to directly record the sound emitted by the speakers, which can be an idea for us to create our own Podcats. To do this, it will be necessary to activate the “Stereo Mix” from the Windows Sound Settings section.

Windows habilitar mezcla estereo

Later, from the Audacity interface within the microphone section, we can display the tab and select the “Stereo Mix” together with 2 recording channels to be able to record in stereo. We must also change the main source of MME as “Windows DirectSound” and we only need to click on the “Record” button to start. We will see that the program is correctly recording the sound because in the interface it will show us the sound wave.

Aduacity grabar podcasts

Once finished we can save the final result. This is something we can do from the “File” tab and clicking on “Export”. The program will give us the option to save the file in three different formats such as MP3, OGG and WAV. Finally, Audacity will offer us the possibility to edit the metadata label (Name, Title, Track number, Genre, etc).

Edit the audio and add different effects to any recorded audio

As you would not expect otherwise, Audacity will allow us to edit any audio element that we record. By simply selecting an audio fragment by dragging the mouse from one point to another, it will be shaded on the screen. Next, we can cut, copy or paste the selected fragment, something we can do from the Edit tab that we find in the toolbar at the top. We can also mute the area of the selected track, select a part of the audio, divide, edit metadata tags, etc.

Audacity editar archivo de audio

It will also be possible to make other more advanced settings that more experienced users will appreciate, such as the ability to add Effects , which we will find in the tab with the same name on the taskbar. When clicking on it, a menu is displayed where we can choose different effects to change the speed, reduce noise, reverse, distortion, etc. These are just a few examples of the long list of effects that will help us give our recording a special touch.

Audacity Efecto

Remove silence from MP3 files

When it comes to obtaining an audio recording that looks professional, one of the most important changes we can make is to eliminate uncomfortable noise or silences from them when there is no voice. This is something that we can do from Audacity, making the audio track clean and more pleasant to listen to.

Audacity Truncar silencio

To do this, it will be enough to enter the audio track from which we want to eliminate the silences and select the complete track or the part of the audio that we need to clean. From the “Effect” tab, we find the “Silence truncating” which will give us different possibilities to detect silences and where we must modify the threshold based on the “dB” of our audio track. It even has the possibility of truncating tracks independently in the event that we have several audio tracks in the same panel. In addition, we can check the results by means of a preview before starting the cleaning of silences and noises.

Normalize the volume of the sound of your audios

Another very interesting and useful function that we can perform with Audacity is the possibility of normalizing the sound of our audio files. Sometimes if we download music from the Internet we may find that the audio volume is too high in some moments while very low in others. In order to solve it, in the “Effect” section we find the option to “Normalize”.

Audacity normalizar volumen

Here it will show us a window where we will be able to set the volume level in dB to which we want to normalize our audio clip. Once set to our liking we can listen to a Preview to listen to the audio file and check if it has been normalized correctly before saving the changes.

Tone generator

Lovers of musical compositions can find a complete tone generator in Audacity. We will have the possibility to calibrate an audio equipment, tune instruments, carrying out tests with which to adjust the different parameters of the sound and audio frequencies. This allows us to specify the type of wave we want to generate, as well as configuration options such as channels, tone level, frequency, delay, etc.

Audacity Tonos DTMF

This function can be found in the “Generate” tab, in the “DTMF Tones” (dual-tone-multi-frequency) section. Here a new window appears where we can choose the “DTMF Sequence”, where for each tone that we are going to generate, we must enter numbers from 0 to 9 and lowercase letters from “a” to “z” and the special characters “*” Y “#”. We also establish the wave amplitude of the generated sound, the duration indicated for the tone to be generated and the corresponding silence, maintaining the proportion between them. In addition, the scroll bar will allow us to select the ratio between the length y of each tone in the series and the silence length between the tones. We can see this proportion under the “Duty cycle” field, which shows the resulting duration of each tone and silence.

Extract audio from videos

Another function that can be very useful to us and that Audacity cannot miss is the possibility of extracting the audio from our video files. For this, it will only be necessary to have the FFmpeg library installed. In the event that we do not have it installed, we must download it from the Edit tab by clicking on “Preferences”. Here in the Library section.

Adaucity biblioteca FFmpeg para exportar audio de vídeos

To extract the audio it will only be necessary to import the desired video file, from the “File” and “Open” tab. Once the video is inserted, we must access “File” again and click on “Export”. Next, we select the desired audio format (MP3, WAV, AIFF, etc.) and the program will take care of the conversion.

Add different types of plugins

Audacity allows the download and installation of plug-ins or libraries with which we can add additional functions. These add-ons will serve us to provide additional effects or more capacity for audio generation and analysis. From its official website we can download Nyquist, VST, LADSPA, LV2 and Vamp plugins.

Audacity instalador de complementos

The Nyquist plugins provide us with most of the effects that we find in the “Effect” menu and it is also used for some analysis tools and audio generators. Audacity also supports almost all VST effects plugins on Windows, including “Shell” VSTs that host multiple VST effects. Although it was originally developed for Linux, the program also supports LADSPA effects on Windows, allowing you to download more than 90 add-ons. We also find LV2 plugins, although at the moment there are not too many for Windows, as well as Vamp plugins that are used to analyze audio, being able to do interesting things like tracking rhythms, note tones, chords or frequencies.

Additional functions

This powerful audio editor also has a series of additional tools that will help us complete the experience. For example, in the “Tools” section, we find the possibility of taking screenshots , either from a window to a full screen. It also allows us to capture a part of the project window. For example, we can select to take a snapshot of all effects, Tools, the Mixer, the Track Panel, etc. In addition, we can choose the scale of one or ten seconds, one minute, five minutes or one hour, as well as short, medium or long tracks.

Audacity Área de captura de pantalla

It also incorporates a Performance Test option where we can define the disk block size, the test data size, the number of edits and the random seed. In addition, we can select if we want it to show us detailed information about each file block, as well as show detailed information about each editing operation. Once the Performance Test is run, we can save the results as a TXT file.

Audacity Test de rendimiento

Conclusions: should we bet on Audacity?

Audacity is a tool that impresses with its large number of features combined with its ease of use and accessibility. It has decent processing speed and superior audio quality results. We can modify and play with the sounds to our liking in different ways. System performance is not affected at any time, so it can be used by all types of computers. Although it does not have the functionalities and power of commercial programs such as Pro Tools or FL Studio, it can be ideal for setting up our own home studio.

Audacity free download

Audacity is an audio editing program that is characterized by being open source and completely free, and can be downloaded directly from its website . It is also a multiplatform software, so it can be used in the main operating systems such as Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 8 and Windows 10, Mac OS X, macOS 10.7 and later and Linux.

The installation is done quickly through its wizard, since it will only be necessary to choose the language of the path where we want the program to be hosted. Its latest available version is 3.0.2 corresponding to April 19, 2021 , which shows the good support that the program has on the part of the developers and their user community.

Alternatives to Audacity

If we are looking for a program to edit audio, Audacity is one of the best options that we will find for free. Even so, we are going to propose some alternatives to consider:

AVS Audio Editor

It is a program that will allow us to create and modify audio files in different formats such as MP3, FLAC, WAV, AAC, among others. With it we can create a file by recording our own voice from an external source to the PC, using a microphone, vinyl record or sound card. It allows us to cut, join, mix, delete parts, divide several files and add filters and effects. It has a free version that we can download from this link.

FL Studio

It is one of the oldest music production programs that has everything we need to compose, organize, record, edit, mix and our audio files. It has tools like a piano roll or external MIDI controllers. It has sequencers, virtual instruments and tools for mixing and composing songs. In addition, we will have more than 80 effects and plugins, so that we can compress and distort them among other functions. We can download a free version from here.

Wave Editor

This is an audio editor suitable for both inexperienced and more experienced users. It is compatible with the most popular formats such as MP3, WMA, WAV, among others. It has 8 and 16 bit samples, mono and stereo channels, allows to normalize the audio and the possibility of editing audio files of up to 2 Gigabytes. We can download this free audio editor from the following link .