Effect Menu
To apply an effect, select part or all of the track(s) you want to modify, and select the effect from the menu. Titles which end in an ellipsis (...) will bring up a dialog asking you for more parameters.
All effects that have a dialog let you hear the audio as modified by the effect before you apply the effect to the waveform.
- Built-in effects, Nyquist plug-ins included in Audacity and other Nyquist plug-ins have a Preview button - press this to listen if the current effect settings produce what you want, and if not, change the settings then Preview again. Press to apply the effect to the waveform.
- All other effect types supported in Audacity (LADSPA, LV2, VST and Audio Units for Mac) support real-time preview - you can change the effect settings while listening then press to apply the effect to the waveform.
- Gale you were looking at an old version. You needed to do SHIFT-F5 to force a refresh.
- Gale: I looked at the latest copy in "List of Images" with dates, which I thought avoided the need for refresh. Apparently not. CTRL + SHIFT + R did not update the image on this page in any case. Varnish again I suppose?
- Then you'd then have got the short version. I assumed though you prefer the fuller version on this page, so updated the image map.
- Peter 19Apr17: I strongly think that all we need here is the short left hand bit of the image - there is no need to string this out with the Audacity built-in effects listed. That would save a lot more "page length" - plus we already have this image on Effect Menu: Audacity so to have it here too is unnecessarily repetitious.
- Gale 19Apr17: I agree - I looked for an image without the fly out but could not find it. Changed back to EffectMenu.png. Sorry for any extra pasting in James did.
- Click, or hover, on any menu item in the image to read about that command. Skip the image
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When playing, recording or paused, effects in the Effect menu that do not support real-time preview will appear grayed out. Press the yellow Stop  button to access these types of effect.
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Contents
- Nyquist effect plug-ins
- LADSPA effect plug-ins
- LV2 effect plug-ins
- VST effect plug-ins
- Audio Unit plug-ins (Mac only)
Add / Remove Plug-ins...
Selecting this option from the Effect Menu (or the Generate Menu or Analyze Menu) takes you to a dialog which enables you to load and unload Effects (and Generators and Analyzers) from Audacity. This enables you to customize your Effect Menu making it shorter or longer as required. For details see Add / Remove Effects, Generators and Analyzers.
By default all the Built-in effects, with the exception of Classic Filters, are loaded in Audacity.
- Installing Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins on Windows
- Installing Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins on Mac
- Installing Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins on Linux
See also this list of available Nyquist effect plug-ins on the Audacity Wiki, that you can easily download and add to Audacity.
Repeat Last Effect Ctrl+R
Find out more about the 'Audacity' submenu for built-in effects here.
Find out more about the 'Nyquist' submenu for plug-in effects here.
Find out more about the 'LADSPA' submenu for plug-in effects here.
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Effects of the following LV2, VST and Audio Unit (Mac only) classes are always third-party plug-ins added by the user (and also by the operating system in case of Audio Units). |
LV2 effects
LV2 is a more advanced evolution of the LADSPA plug-in architecture. Note that LV2 effects in Audacity cannot yet display a full graphical interface.
VST effects
Virtual Studio Technology (VST) is a software interface that integrates software audio synthesizer and effect plug-ins with audio editors and recording systems, such as Audacity.
VST and similar technologies use digital signal processing to simulate traditional recording studio hardware in software. Thousands of plug-ins exist, both commercial and freeware.
Audio Unit effects
Audio Units (AU) are a system-level plug-in architecture provided on Mac computers.
Audio Unit effects support real-time preview.
Audio Unit effects support import/export of presets (see the description below of how it works) and support saving presets for use in Audacity only.
Adding Audio Unit effects
For detailed instructions on installing Audio Unit plug-ins for Audacity see: Installing Effect, Generator and Analyzer plug-ins on Mac OS X/macOS.
Saving, Exporting and Importing Audio Unit Effect Presets
Save As...
To save the current effect settings as a User Preset, select from the Manage menu 
in the effect dialog which brings up the following dialog:
Type a name for the preset then click after which the saved preset will appear in the "User Presets" list in the Manage menu.
Export...
Before you can export a preset you must already have saved it as a User Preset.
Each preset for Audio Unit effects is exported to a separate ".aupreset " file at /Users/<yourUserName>/Library/Audio/Presets/Apple/<effectName>/. A presets file lets you move settings for a particular effect between computers.
To export a saved User Preset, select from the Manage menu
in the effect dialog which brings up the following dialog:
Select the user preset(s) you want to export then click to export each selected preset to a file. If there is only one preset in the list you must still select it, or nothing will be exported.
Import...
Select from the Manage menu in the effect dialog which brings up the following dialog:
Select the preset(s) you want to import then click to import each preset file as a User Preset.
Importing one or more presets does not load new settings into the effect. You must select one of the imported presets from in the Manage menu
to load its settings into the effect.
Audio Unit Effect Options
In the effect's dialog, click the Manage button then choose Options... 
to bring up the dialog illustrated below. When you change the options in this dialog, the changes apply only to the current effect that's open. All other Audio Unit effects will remain at the default options shown below until you change their options.
- Latency Compensation: This setting (enabled by default) compensates for waveform delay caused by Audio Unit effects which preload audio data to a buffer. Compensation may not work in all cases, and for it to work, any compensation or latency reporting settings in the effect itself must be enabled. If compensation fails or if this Audacity setting is unchecked, effects that buffer audio will insert silence at the start of the processed selection and remove a corresponding amount of audio from the end of the selection. Enabling or disabling compensation is effective immediately.
- User Interface: The "Full" setting, enabled by default, allows most Audio Unit effects to display a graphical (instead of a plain text) interface. If you change this setting you must close the settings dialog, then close and reopen the effect to see the change.
