Introduction

This page is the introduction for the printed manual only.

For the time being, this page is copyright by Dominic Mazzoni and is not available under a Creative Commons License.

Why Audacity?

Audacity is one of the most popular and fastest growing digital audio editors in the world. Tens of millions of people have used it to record a podcast, create a demo CD of their garage band, transfer old vinyl records to CD, or just have fun with audio. But there are dozens of other software programs with similar capabilities...why should you choose Audacity?

The simplest reason? Because it's free.

Audacity is developed by a team of volunteers and released under and open-source license (more on this below), and what that means for you is that you don't have to pay for Audacity - you can download it for free from the Internet with no limitations or restrictions. Since Audacity is totally free, no strings attached, what have you got to lose by giving it a try? At worst, a few hours of your time. But we suspect that you'll find Audacity to be an enormously useful and fun tool that will put you in control of digital audio files. Furthermore, even if you find Audacity too limiting for your own advanced needs, there's nothing to stop you from using other software alongside Audacity - perhaps even expensive commercial software. As long as Audacity is free and has some unique capabilities, there's no reason it shouldn't be part of your toolbox.

Another reason to choose Audacity is because it is the only audio editing software that runs on Windows, Mac, and Linux computers. Every other piece of software you will find only works on one, or maybe two, of these platforms. Why should this matter to you? Most of us only have one type of computer; perhaps like the majority of people you have a typical PC running Microsoft Windows. Or maybe you have a Macintosh and you've used nothing but Macs for years. But what about your friends, do they all use the same operating system? If you work at a company, school, or other organization, aren't there several people there using all sorts of different computers? Many people love Audacity because all of their friends and coworkers can use the same audio editing software, rather than searching for different solutions for different types of computers, which would prevent you from being able to share tips and resources with one another.

It's also true that Audacity has been translated into more than 30 languages and has large user communities in countries all around the world. If you have business partners, friends, or family in another part of the world, you can be sure that they can use Audacity too.

Finally, many people simply find Audacity the easiest to use. That's not to say that everything will be obvious or easy at first - editing audio is not usually as easy as editing en email. But Audacity was written with the average user in mind. Audacity doesn't assume that you've been in a recording studio and that you know what a "mixer bus" or an "edit decision list" is. Whenever possible, Audacity lets you do what you want to do without worrying about how it works internally. You still may have to learn some new terminology along the way where it really is necessary, but that's what this user manual is for.

You may be wondering why Audacity is given away for free like this. First of all, it's certainly not the only such software program. If you've ever used the Firefox, BitTorrent, or OpenOffice, you've used open-source software. And more than half of the websites on the Internet are powered by Apache, another open-source software program, and many of these run on Linux, an entirely open-source operating system. Sometimes open-source developers are paid by major corporations who benefit from the software; in other case they survive on donations or consulting. Audacity is a case of the latter.

Audacity is developed by a team of around a dozen developers around the world, mostly in their spare time. Audacity developers make a little money from donations, advertising, and Audacity-related consulting. If you purchased a copy of this manual, you are helping to support Audacity developers. But for the most part, Audacity developers are volunteers; they develop Audacity because they love it. Besides more computer programmers, of course, more people are needed to beta-test new versions, answer user emails, and translate Audacity into new languages. If you would like to contribute, send an email to [email protected]

Open-Source Software

Open-source software means that all of the source code - the blueprints that computer programmers use to develop a software program - is distributed free along with the software. Usually, source code is kept secret, meaning that the person or organization that created the software is the only one with the power to change it. So they can charge whatever price they want, raise the price at any time, or possibly worse, throw away the source code and discontinue the software altogether. With open-source software, the source code is licensed to the world so that anyone can see how the program works, and even modify it if they so choose. In the case of Audacity, the source code is provided under the terms of the GNU General Public License (GPL). The GPL allows you to do whatever you want with Audacity, including modify it and redistribute it. The main restriction is that if you do choose to modify and redistribute even a small part of Audacity, you have to do so under the same license; you can't modify it and then sell your new program without also offering the modified source code. For more details, see the full text of the License.

Why should you care that you can modify Audacity? You're probably not a programmer yourself. But the fact that anyone can download the Audacity source code and modify it means that Audacity is not likely to die. Even if the original developers move on to something else, it's always possible for another developer to come along and continue where they left off. In fact, it's almost certain to happen if enough people want Audacity to continue and are willing to chip in a little.

About This Book

This book is divided into several sections. The first part contains Audacity tutorials; these walk you through various common tasks and provide a really quick way to get started. The tutorials are very specific and clear, with the goal of getting you up and running as soon as possible. It's best to try to follow along with Audacity while you read these tutorials, but of course feel free to skip any tutorials that don't sound interesting or useful to you. Many people may find that after going through a couple of these tutorials, they're ready to explore the rest of Audacity on their own, and they may use this manual only as a reference when they get stuck.

If you want to understand Audacity in greater detail, though, the next sections of the book start you from the beginning, introducing you to the fundamentals of digital audio and then explaining all of the concepts you need in order to work with Audacity. This part of the book is best read linearly, since each concept builds on the previous.

Finally, the last part of the book is a complete reference to Audacity, with an explanation of every button, tool, menu item, and dialog box in the whole program. This is the place to turn when you need to know exactly what something in the program does.