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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.

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.

Images: Please ensure all images have appropriate ALT-text. This should be something that describes the contents of the image in the context of its surrounding text for someone who cannot see it.

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This manual is a work in progress. It relates to the Beta 1.3.5 program, not 1.2.5/6! Audacity 1.3.5 is the basis for our upcoming 1.4.0 stable release of Audacity.
If you would like a Wiki account so that you can help us to complete it, e-mail James (James_AT_audacityteam_DOT_org)

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

None of these 'Download The Manual' links yet work properly. For now use this wiki. We'll get these other links working later.

Download the manual as a zip file

Alternate: Download the manual as a PDF file

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

I've given the zip the most prominence, since this is what most people will need to access help from within Audacity.

Audacity 1.3.5 User Manual

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

This manual has two main parts to it:

• A step by step guide. Organised by tasks (the Tutorials and the Using Audacity sections).
• 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.

Follow links from Special:Lonelypages and Old Pages to find remnants of the old manual.

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

Using Audacity

Foundations

• Digital Audio
• Audacity Tracks and Clips
• Audacity Selection
• Audacity Setup and Configuration
• Playing and Recording
• Zooming

Modifying Audio

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

Not sure if we should have removed the "Advanced Concepts" section? I've wanted to remove it, but hadn't as without it there is a very long run of articles to take in. Maybe some can be merged or there can be some categorization? - Gale

Suggest we change Smooth Volume Changes with the Envelope Tool to 'Volume Envelopes' ??

Other Features of Audacity

• Working With Multi-Track Audio
• Label Tracks
• Recording Quality
• Batch Processing (converting multiple files at once)
• Customization (keyboard shortcuts, adding plug-ins and more)
• Simplifying Audacity

Wanted Topics

Suggest we don't start writing these yet. Only topics in the reference section are must-haves for release. The Wanted Topics are in a 'noexport' section.

• Editing Individual Samples
• Cross Platform Issues
• Spectrogram Analysis
• 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 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
• Help

Toolbars:

• 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
• Import / Export
• Interface
• Spectrograms
• Directories
• /// Batch ///
• Keyboard
• Mouse

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
• Glossary - with links to Wikipedia.
• Credits
• License

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