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Knight Digital Media Center Multimedia Training
Tutorial: Audacity
By Jeremy Rue
For updates and discussion on this tutorial, visit:
http://kdmc.berkeley.edu/tutorials/audacity/
Introduction
Audacity is a piece of sound-editing software that is widely
known for being open-source (free of charge) and offering cross-platform compatibility.
Because it is free, however, there are some drawbacks. Generally, Audacity is not as robust andpolished as some other professional sound-editing programs, and there are some bugs in the
software that can cause it to crash unexpectedly.
Some of the advantages of Audacity:
Free of charge
Compatible with Mac OSX, Windows, Linux and other operating systems
Lightweight and a relatively small program size
Open source with community support working to continually improve it
Some of the drawbacks of Audacity are:
Several known (and unknown) bugs exist that can cause the program to become unstable
The program is limited in its mixing capabilities
Some aspects are more complex, and not as user-friendly
The program is not as complete, as you will have to install plug-ins/encoders separately
Audacity can be downloaded at the following location:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
(This tutorial was written using Audacity for Mac OSX version 1.3.6 in November 2008. While the
screenshots and some menu items are Mac specific, it is written to cater to all platforms. Due to
Audacity's open-source nature, the program tends to update regularly, and some information
may become outdated. We will try to keep it updated when possible.)
Downloading, installing and setup
Download and install Audacity
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/download/
While the software makers allow users to download the latest "beta" versions of the program,
doing so may have some unexpected consequences. Generally "beta" software is still in a testing
mode and could be unstable. If working on production material, it is suggested that users
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Use the Browse... button to find the location of the LAME package file, either libmp3lame.dylib
(Mac) or lame_enc.dll (PC).
Click OK.
Workspace
Let's take a look at the Audacity workspace.
At the top are several buttons that allow you to play, stop, pause, fast-forward, rewind or
record a track.
To the right of that are some playback and record meters which show you the sound levels.
Since the volume at which you listen to your sound can vary depending on how load your
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speakers or headphones are, these meters are important as a visual way in determining theoverall levels of your sound.
Below (or to the right, depending on how wide your window is) are some playback speed
adjustment sliders. This is generally not used in most sound editing, but could be helpful in
transcribing dictation. Be careful that this adjustment is not changed before you export youraudio file.
Audacity also comes with an UNDO button. This feature is critical to undoing mistakes.
Everytime this button is pressed, the last previous actions are reversed in the order they
occurred. So pressing the undo button five times will undo the previous five actions.
Respectively, there is a redo button that will redo an action if you have already undone several
steps. As with most software these days, the shortcut key to undo is Ctrl-Z (PC) or Command-Z
(Mac).
Tools in Audacity
Audacity has six tools to choose from. The tool that is selected will determine how your cursor
interacts with the audio track. Always be aware of which tool is currently selected, as it will
affect each click on the audio track.
This is the primary selection tool which allows you to highlight portions of a track to copy or
paste.
This is the envelope tool, which allows you to change the volume of certain portions of your
audio track by visually shrinking it. You can use the tool to place anchor points around the track
to guide the sound level.
The drawing tool in Audacity is probably one of the least used tools. You have to be zoomed in
extremely close to the audio file-- so much so that you can view each individual sample of the
file (typically 44,100 per second). The drawing tool allows you to edit each of these samples,
which will appear as anchor points on the file. This can be a tedious process, but possibly useful
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when trying to edit out a spurious noise like a click.
The zoom tool simply zooms the view in or out of the track. To zoom out, right-click (PC) or
control-click (Mac) on the track. You can also click the vertical ruler at the front of the track to
zoom in vertically on the track. Where you click on the ruler will determine what part of the
track it will zoom in.
The time shift tool is used to move segments of audio within a track. In order to split a track,
you must first use the selection tool, then choose Split from the edit menu (new versions of
Audacity only).
The multi-tool in Audacity can either be one of the most useful, or one of the most confusing
tools in the program. Essentially the tool is a combination of the selection, envelope and time
shift tools, and its functionality is determined by what part of the track you click, and the
motions used to drag portions of the track.
Basic Audio Editing
Importing Audio
As a general rule of thumb, you should only import uncompressed audio into any sound editing
program. This means you should import .wav, .aiffor another lossless file type. While it is
technically possible to import compressed audio like mp3 files, you would likely see a decrease
in quality as you recompress it on export.
Every time a file is compressed, it loses some quality -- similar to that of making a copy on acopy machine. Recompressing is analogous to making a copy of a copy.
To import audio, click on the File menu and select import--> Audio.
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Once imported, you can use the space bar to play your audio file, or press the green play
button at the top.
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Using the Selection tool to edit audio
Use the selection tool to jump to various points in your track, or click and drag to select a
portion of the track. If you move the cursor to the very edge of a selection, a small hand with a
finger appears. This allows you to change the size of the current selection.
You can press the delete key on your keyboard to remove a highlighted portion of a track. Oryou can use the standard copy, cut and paste key combination to move around segments of
audio.
Whenever you remove a portion of the track, Audacity automatically slides the audio
immediately after the selection to fi ll in the gap left. If you do not want this to happen, use Split
Delete from the Edit menu instead.
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When using Split Delete, a gap is left in the audio track which will be heard as silence.
Split Delete only works with highlighted portions of audio. If you wish to simply split a track in
half without selecting it first, then use the Split option under the Edit menu.
You can use the time shift tool to move each piece throughout the track independently. Movingone block of audio to the other side of another segment is technically possible, but can be
difficult to do. The first option is to simply drag it to the other side, but in order for it to work
you must have enough room to accommodate the block on the other side. Also, you must be
able to see the other side from the view. If you can't, you may need to zoom out.
The other option is to copy and paste the block using the selection tool.
Zooming in and out
Audacity offers several different methods for manipulating the viewable workspace. We'll start
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with the zoom tool.
Horizontal Zoom
Using the zoom tool, simply click on the track to expand it horizontally.
To zoom out, simply right-click on the track with the zoom tool, or hold down the shift key to
change the zoom tool to a zoom out tool.
Vertical Zoom
To zoom on the track vertically, you should click the front of the track where the amplitude
measurements are displayed. But here's the trick: where you click on the ruler will determine
which portion of the track will be magnified.
Clicking on the top of the ruler will zoom vertically on the top portion of the track.
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If you click on the bottom of the ruler, you would zoom in on the bottom of the track.
To zoom out, follow the same steps as the horizontal zoom: either right-click on the ruler, or
hold the shift key and click on the ruler.
(Note: Audacity makes it easy to zoom in vertically by allowing you to click on the ruler with
any tool. The same effect will occur. You don't need to be on the zoom tool to cause it.)
Stretching the size of the track
You can easily change the size of the track itself by moving the mouse over the bottom edge of
the track and dragging down.
Using the Envelope Tool
The envelope tool is used to lower the volume at a particular point in the audio track. This is
useful for creating effects like fade-in and fade-outs.
Select the envelope tool from your toolbar, and you will see a blue line appear around your
track.
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The cursor will change into two small white arrows pointing up and down. This specifies the
region in which you can place an anchor point on the edge of your track. Click and drag the
edge of the waveform toward the middle.
Click other areas of the waveform to place white anchor points. Parts of the waveform that are
smaller, will play the sound quieter than parts that are larger. The waveform will shrink in
certain areas giving a visual representation of how the sound is being adjusted.
Adjusting the sound levels of the audio this way does not affect the quality, only the volume.
While it might seem that you are affecting the quality of the waveform, rest assured that this
visual representation is only affecting the loudness.
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To make a fade, drag the white anchor points all the way to the middle. A curve will form
allowing you to create fades.
To remove the anchor points, drag them to the left or right until they either combine with
another set, or are dragged completely off the track.
Selecting another tool will turn off the envelope function. A light gray color will still appear in the
background as a visual cue to how the track was affected.
Adding Labels to Identify Audio Segments
When working with any audio program, you should mark areas of your audio to help you identify
different segments of your track. Editing audio visually using an ambiguous waveform can be
difficult, especially with longer audio tracks.
Audacity, like many audio programs, includes a mechanism for labeling different areas of your
audio track and using those markers to help you edit.
To label a particular area of your audio track, first click on the part of your track that you want
to label with the selection tool, then select the Tracks menu and select Add Label At
Selection, or CTRL-B (PC) Command-B (Mac).
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A new special labels track will be created if you did not already have a labels track. Type in a
name for the label you just created.
Labels should describe that portion of the track. Keep it short, so you can add multiple labels.
Adding multiple labels also helps you in the editing process by marking particular segments, and
allowing you to select them.
Labels don't just have to mark a single spot, they can mark a span of audio with markers called
boundaries. To expand a label to include a span of audio, roll the mouse over the label to
highlight it first, then click and drag the boundary to the left.
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Dragging to the left will open the label to include a span of audio, but dragging the boundary to
the right will close the span or move the boundary to the right.
This span can be used to help you edit audio. Click on one of the boundaries with the selection
tool, then drag the selection to the other boundary. You can do this in either the audio track, or
the labels layer. If you highlight the audio track, then essentially you will be using the
boundaries as guides to selecting your audio. If you highlight the portion that is in the labelslayer (as seen below) you can use some special labels features to modify your audio.
Under the Edit menu, you will find the option for Labeled Regions. These pertain to regions of
the labels layer that are highlighted. These options will only appear if you have a section of your
labels layer highlighted.
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There are lots of other features you can do with labels, such as exporting segments of your track
to separate files using File --> Export Multiple. But those techniques are beyond the scope of
this tutorial. Check out the Official Audacity Wiki for more information on labels.
Filters and Cleaning up Audio
Audacity comes pre-packaged with a few third party f ilters to help you manipulate your audio
track. One of these tools is a noise remover filter that can remove sounds like hisses and
hums from your audio track.
The noise remover filter cannot remove distinct sounds, like a voice or interruption rather it ismeant to reduce constant sounds that affect large portions of your track.
To use the noise removal filter, you must first sample a portion of your audio track that has
only the noise you wish to reduce.
Step 1) Highlight a portion of your track that only has the noise. This is important, or else the
noise removal will sample your entire track.
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Step 2) Under the Effect menu select Utility --> Noise Removal --> Noise Removal...
(location may vary depending on the version of Audacity you are using)
Step 3) The noise removal dialogue will describe the two-step process. In this first step, click
Get Noise Profile, which will store a sample of the noise in the system.
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After you click Get Noise Profile, the filter will analyze the highlighted portion of your track and
learn what the "unwanted" noise sounds like.
Step 4) You should highlight the portions of your track that you want to remove the noise from.
Most of the time, this will be your entire track. You can select your entire track by clicking Ctrl-A
(pc) or Command-A (mac).
Step 5) Re-open the noise removal tool by clicking Effect --> Utility --> Noise Removal -->
Noise Removal...
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Play with the sliders at the bottom portion of the dialogue. Remember, despite its name, the
noise removal tool only reduces the unwanted noise. Adjust the top slider, Noise Reduction, to
specify the amount of reduction you want. The middle slider, Frequency smoothing, will
attempt to recover the audio you want at the risk of adding a metalic or hollow sound. The
attack/decay setting will also help recover some of the desired audio the noise reduction might
remove.
The process is not perfect. Play with the sliders and click the Preview button to sample a few
seconds of your audio to see how it is being affected. Once you are happy with the results, click
OK to process the track.
Workflow and Saving
For journalistic audio pieces, the typical workflow is to listen to each track first, and then "clean
it up" based on either a script or preferences of a producer. This could include removing clicks,
pops, smacks, or even portions of the audio track that you know wil l not become a part of the
final product.
After you clean up each track, it is good practice to export each "cleaned up file" as an
uncompressed .wav or .aifffile to your project folder. The reason for this is so you have a copy
of each edited track that is a part of your project.
Once you have exported each individual piece of audio, start a new Audacity project and import
these uncompressed files as various tracks to begin the second phase of audio editing which is
mixing your different tracks together.
Organization plays a big part in complex audio productions, and building good practices will
make the task of editing much easier.
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Exporting audio tracks
Exporting audio in Audacity is a pretty straight-forward process. From the File menu, you have
two options for exporting; you can either Export or Export Selection.
If you choose Export Selection, you will only export highlighted regions of your audio tracks.
This allows you to export only a certain segment of your audio. If no segments are highlighted,
then Audacity wil l automatically highlight your entire project.
The Export option will always export the entire project.
In the export dialogue box, you will be given the option to choose the audio format. If you are
exporting single tracks that have been cleaned up, it is highly recommended that you export in
either .WAV or .AIFF. Both are similar, the difference being that .WAV was made by IBM and is
now a standard on Windows PCs, and .AIFF was made specifically by Apple.
To ensure compatibility, it is recommended to choose .wav if you are on a PC or .aiff if you are
on a Mac.
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Saving your Audio Files
Once you have cleaned up and exported each audio track to your main project folder, you can
start your final Audacity audio project.
Import each track, and along the way, you should save your project to prevent losing any hard
work. Audacity only saves in its own proprietary format called Audacity Project (.AUP)
From the File menu click Save As... The first time you save, a warning message may come up
letting you know that the Audacity file format is not a audio file standard, but a file type that isonly for Audacity projects.
You can disable this warning from appearing in the future by checking the box.
A second dialogue box may also appear asking you about any connected media (this warning will
only appear if you have audio tracks imported into your project).
What this dialogue is asking is whether you want to copy the audio files that are a part of your
project into a special data folder that is near your Audacity (.AUP) project file. You can either
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Copy Selected Audio Into Project or Copy All Audio into Project, but either way it is highlyrecommended that you copy all connected media into your project. and keep it self-contained.
Audacity will create a special data folder named after the project name. For example, if your
project is named "test" the folder would appear as "test_data". This data folder contains
information about your project, and should always be in the same location as your audacity
(.AUP) project file. If you wish to transfer your project to another computer, you will have to
copy both the .aup project file and this data folder.
Remember to save often. Crashes do happen!
Mixing Tracks
One of the foundations of audio editing is the mixing phase. This is where you take several
edited individual tracks and mix them together to form a complete audio piece.
To begin mixing, import two or more audio tracks into your project. You can use the time shift
tool to move the tracks left or right to adjust the timing.
Generally, you would stack the audio tracks by level of importance or prominence. This means
narration or interviews would be on top; music or ambient sounds would be underneath; and
finally sound effects or room tone would be at the very bottom. You can adjust the order by
clicking on the drop down menu at the top of each track.
Once you have imported multiple tracks of audio, it is important to name each track to help
identify what is on them.
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Click on the drop-down menu just to the right of the close "X" button, and select name.
Identifying tracks is also important for times you want to come back to an old project.
You can use the envelope tool to create fades and adjust the volume of each track in relation to
the others.
It is good practice to bring in music and ambient sounds gradually. The goal of mixing is to keep
sound effects inconspicuous so as to not distract the listener from the primary narrative. Rather,
ambient sounds should support the narrative by adding dimension to the piece, not overpowering
it.
If you need to listen to only one track temporarily without the the distraction of the others, you
can use the mute and solo buttons which will temporarily shut off other tracks.
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Mute will turn off the current track, and solo will turn off all other track except the one that is
soloed. These are especially useful when mixing large projects with lots of tracks. (Remember to
turn all of your tracks back on before the final export. It is easy to forget about a track that was
muted)
Demystifying Stereo and Mono
Because of the way Audacity treats individual tracks, it is easy to get confused about the
difference between stereo and mono projects. First, a quick review on nomenclature in Audacity.
Tracks - Tracks are individual pieces of audio. They can be either stereo or mono.
Channel - Channels refer to either the right (R) or left (L) speaker.
Stereo - Stereo refers to a trackwhere there are two channels that are distinctly
different. It will appear as one track, but with two waveforms in it.
Mono - Where a single track is distributed to both channels.
The confusion comes in realizing that, in Audacity, each track can be specified to either the left
channel, right channel, mono or placed in a stereo-pair.
The next few sections will take you through a few different scenarios.
Changing mono tracks to output audio in mono
To change these settings, click the drop-down menu at the top of each track (where the track
name is).
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Most interviews are done with a single mono microphone. In these cases, you almost always
want to use the mono setting for each track. Setting the mono option on each track will ensurethat the audio is distributed evenly to both channels. If the track is set to either the right or left
channel, you will hear it come out of only one side during playback. If you notice this, set the
track to mono.
Changing stereo tracks to mono tracks
Some digital audio recorders have stereo microphones and will record two tracks of audio as a
stereo-pair. You will know you have this situation if you import your audio and you see a single
track, but with two waveforms, as in the image below.
Notice that the above image is one track of audio, despite the track having two distinct
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waveforms. This is called a stereo pair, and each of the waveforms is on a different channel
(the top waveform is the left channel). You cannot edit these channels individually. Any
adjustments you make will be done to both channels equally, including when you adjust the
sound envelope or cut the track during editing.
You first have to decide if you want your project to be a stereo project or mono project. A
stereo project might sound a little more realistic because it mimics how sound is interpreted in
real-life. However, the sound file will be twice as large and that can cause slow loading speeds
on the Internet.
Most serious journalistic radio organizations only use mono tracks. Stereo can interfere with the
way the story is perceived or be a distraction. Although, in some cases, it can also add
dimension to a project that puts the listener "right there." This choice is a subjective one,
sometimes even an ethical one. For general purposes, we recommend doing journalistic audio
pieces in mono.
There are two methods to convert a stereo track to a mono track.
Method 1) Splitting the stereo track and deleting one of the channels
To split the stereo track, click on the drop-down menu above the track and select split stereo
track.
This will split the channels into individual tracks. Once you have two tracks, you can simply
delete the track you do not want by clicking the close "X" button.
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Method 2) Merging the two channels of a stereo track into one track(preferred)
If you feel that you might need audio from both channels, then you can merge both channels into
one. This could occur if you recorded an interview in stereo, and one person might have been
closer to one side of the recorder and might sound louder on one channel.
Combining the channels ensures that sounds in both channels will be equally represented in the
track.
To convert, click on the track you want to combine, and from the track menu, select Stereo
Track to Mono.
There might be some slight quality loss in combining the channels, although if there is, it would
only be very slight.
Exporting Audio
The last step in audio production with Audacity is exporting your file.
To export, click on the File menu and select either Export or Export Selection. The export
selection choice will export only highlighted portions of your audio.
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In the save dialogue, you will have the option to pick the audio format and set additional options
based on that format.
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For the Format, we recommend you choose .mp3 if your intention is to put this audio up on the
Web. If you need an uncompressed copy, say for a presentation, and the size of the audio file
doesn't matter, then we recommend exporting in .wav (PC) or .aiff (mac). Unless there is a
specific need, you shouldn't have to select the other formats.
This tutorial will show the options for selecting .mp3, exporting for the Web. After choosing
.mp3, click the Options... button to view additional options regarding the file format. (Options
will only be clickable if you select a format that has additional options).
For the Bit Rate mode, we recommend choosing Constant, which wil l produce the best quality.
You can think of Bit Rate as the resolution of the audio. The higher it is, the crisper and cleaner
the sound will be.
Bit rates that are too low will have a metallic or garbled sound to them. The standard CD quality
is 128 kbps, which is what we generally recommend. If you are a stickler about sound quality,
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you can select 192 kbps for exceptional quality, but the end-user could expect slower loadingtimes if you have really long audio tracks. Expect an hour-long mono audio mp3 file to end up
around 30 megabytes if exported at 192 kbps.
For the Channel Mode, you will have the option to choosejoint stereo, or simply stereo. Joint
stereo combines certain frequencies from both channels to create a slightly smaller file. If you
have a mono project, you should choose joint stereo since it won't affect anything. If you
have a stereo project, it is also recommended you choose joint stereo, unless you specifically
need both channels to be separate.
The next dialogue box will ask you to type in some metadata in what is called an id3 tag.
Filling in this information is completely optional, but highly recommended. Most audio software,
such as iTunes and Window Media Player use this metadata to categorize audio files. While id3
tags are generally built to support music files, they can be useful even for journalistic pieces.
Longer files can take a while to export, an important fact to note when on deadline. Most of the
time you can expect the export to take anywhere from half to the full length of audio to process.
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Audacity Tutorial
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