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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. Also visit the ToDo page.

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. Follow links from Special:Lonelypages and Old Pages to find some of these pages.

We should try to be consistent in terms of wording and page layout. Layout issues for some page families are still being discussed. See Consistency for current suggested guidelines.

• 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 full description of noise removal more briefly described in Effect Menu or only a link to it Effect Menu ??? and including splitting into multiple tracks)

Using Audacity

• Foundations
  • Digital Audio
  • Audacity Tracks and Clips
  • Audacity Selection
  • Audacity Setup and Configuration
• Playing and Recording
• Zooming
• Editing: Cut, Paste, and More
• Undo, Redo, and History
• Importing and Exporting
• Applying Effects
• Smooth Volume Changes with the Envelope Tool
• Mixing
• Splitting Stereo Tracks
• Label Tracks

Advanced Concepts

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

Reference

The reference section needs to be complete for 1.4.0. I think it's OK if we don't finish all the tutorials, and drop the ones which are incomplete from the html help. JC

Menu Bar:

• File
  • File Export Dialog
  • Advanced Mixing Options
• Edit
• View
• Tracks
• Generate
• Effects
  • Built-in Effects including detailed help for some of the more complex effects:
    • Auto Duck
    • Compressor
    • Equalization
    • Noise Removal
  • VST Plug-in Effects
  • Nyquist Effects
  • LADSPA Effects
• Analyze
  • Spectrum

Tool Bars:

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

Project Window:

• ToDo: Rulers
• Tracks
  • Audio Tracks
    • Track Drop-Down Menu
  • Label Tracks
  • Time Tracks

Preferences:

• Audio I/O
• Quality
• Audio Files
• Spectrograms
• Directories
• Interface
• Batch
• Keyboard
• Mouse
• Location of Preference file

File Formats

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

Other

Frequently Asked Questions

Information for Developers - how to join our developer community

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.