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Please note this Manual is still a work in progress and relates to the Beta 1.3.4 program, not 1.2.5/6! 1.3.4 is the essential basis for our upcoming new 1.4.0 stable version, but first we have to complete the Manual so we can get it translated.
If you would like a Wiki account so that you can help us to complete it, please e-mail James (James_AT_audacityteam_DOT_org)

For ideas on what needs to be done to move the manual forward, please see: essential changes to "Audacity for the Impatient" and essential changes to other Manual pages

Download the manual as a PDF file

Alternate: Download the manual as an RTF file (works great in Microsoft Word)

Audacity 1.3.3 User Manual

Welcome, Audacity manual editors!

This is both the front page of the online manual, and the road map for the printed manual. The printed manual is assembled by concatenating all of the articles found on this page, in this order. Anything which is not directly linked from this page will not go in the printed manual.

Links to another page, like [[File Menu]], become page references in the PDF, e.g. File Menu (Page 73).

External hyperlinks, like [http://example.com Example Website], appear in the text as Example Website¹ with a footnote containing the URL.

Please read Editing Help to learn about wiki text formatting.

To update the PDF file, see the Export page.

This manual has two main parts to it:

• A step by step guide. Organised by tasks.
• A reference section. Organised by GUI structure.

The reference section should be naming the parts of the GUI and saying in outline what they do.

There are remnants of an older reference manual on this wiki. Its pages are often two-column and show on this wiki with spurious tags. This is gradually being cannibalised for the reference section.

• Audacity for the Impatient (all you need to know in one page)
• What's New in Audacity 1.3.2

• How to get help

Tutorials

• Tutorial - Editing an Existing File
• Tutorial - Your First Recording
• Tutorial - Mixing a Narration With Background Music
• Tutorial - Copying tapes, LPs or minidiscs to CD (including noise removal and splitting into multiple tracks)

Foundations

• Digital Audio
• Audacity Projects
• Audacity Tracks and Clips
• Audacity Selection
• Audacity Setup and Configuration

Using Audacity

• Playing and Recording
• Zooming
• Selecting
• Editing: Cut, Paste, and More
• Undo, Redo, and History
• Importing and Exporting
• Applying Effects
• Smooth Volume Changes with the Envelope Tool
• Tracks and Clips
• Mixing
• Splitting Stereo Tracks
• Label Tracks

Advanced Concepts

• Working With Multi-Track Audio
• Editing Individual Samples
• Recording Quality
• Noise Removal
• Cross Platform Issues
• Spectrogram Analysis
• Batch Processing (converting multiple files at once)
• Customization (themes and keyboard shortcuts)
• Accessibility (Audacity for the visually impaired)
• Recovery (if Audacity crashes or if you lose part of an Audacity project)

Reference

Menu Bar:

• File
  • File Export Dialogue
• Edit
• View
• Tracks
• Generate
• Effects
  • Built-in Effects
  • VST Plug-in Effects
  • Nyquist Effects
  • LADSPA Effects
• Analyze

Tool Bars:

• Tools
• Control
• Edit
• Mixer
• Meter
• Transcription

Project Window:

• Ruler
• Tracks
  • Wave Tracks
  • Label Tracks
  • Time Tracks
• Selection Bar

Preferences:

• Audio I/O : To select Audio devices and their properties.
• Quality : To select data rates and other trade offs between speed, size and quality.
• File Formats : How and when files are copied, how audio is mixed and preferred audio formats.
• Spectrograms : Presentation of spectrogram.
• Directories : Where temporary files are stored and how often to autosave.
• Interface : Interface behaviour, hiding and showing of additional information, language and preferred dB display range.
• Theme : Used to customise colors and images in Audacity.
• Batch : Used for a chain of commands applied to a number of audio files.
• Keyboard : Keyboard shortcuts for commands.
• Mouse : Mouse shortcuts for commands.
• Preference File : Where are your preferences stored?

File Formats

• Audacity Project Format
• WAV, AIFF and uncompressed formats
• MP3 format
• Ogg Vorbis format
• FLAC format
• MP2 format
• Command line export to other formats

Other

Frequently Asked Questions

Credits

License

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Need help? Visit http://audacityteam.org/forum - please do not email or post personal information as it will be displayed publicly. Many tips, tricks and useful articles can also be found on our user-editable Wiki - http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php?title=Audacity_Wiki_Home_Page

Unless otherwise noted, all pages on this site are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.