Main Page

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.

Audacity Logo

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
• Transcription Toolbar disabled
• How to get help
• Sample rates (may be a candidate for a technical appendix or similar later)

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

One potentially valuable "foundation" we actually don't have is "Audacity Projects" (dealing with the Saving and Exporting confusion). It's partly there in Importing and Exporting (which looks dispensible as currently written) and mainly in Audacity Project Format in the Reference. Isn't there a case for moving the latter out of the Reference and discussing it in "Foundations"? This would leave File Formats to discuss audio files, and make the distinction between audio and project files clearer. It would not prevent us having "Audacity Project format (.aup)" in the Glossary/Index. - Gale
Maybe About Audio Files as a title? As I see it the user wants to record something and then put it on their iPod. Why can't I just use the file that Audacity creates? So we explain that Audacity project 'files' are uncompressed audio, multi-channel, with clips, hold labels and tags and actually made of many smaller files, and why, whilst mp3 are..... I'm just thinking aloud. I agree that we want to tackle that confusion between .aup and .mp3 Save/export more 'head on', and a renaming of Importing and Exporting could help.
I think we can agree to rewrite Importing and Exporting to address the audio file/project file dichotomy, and to rename it. I don't think About Audio Files is quite there and I don't think we want a tutorial-lite about it in more than one place, so I'd envisage Importing and Exporting disappears, we work anything useful into it into Audacity Project Format and move that out of the reference into "Foundations". It only (possibly) hangs on there as it's a "file format", but IMO it is central to using Audacity and not like other items we've been attaching to the related parts of the GUI in the Reference. File Formats in the reference (renamed to Audio File Formats) can then merely div note a reference to the Foundations article (so again, it's in their face that audio files are *not* the same as Project files). Should we be more attention-grabbing so people read that article? "What is an Audacity Project"? Otherwise I do think the title should include both phrases "Audio Files" and "Project Files" so (again) we make clear they are not the same thing. - Gale

• Digital Audio
• Audacity Tracks and Clips
• Audacity Selection
• Audacity Setup and Configuration
• What is an Audacity Project?
• Playing and Recording
• Zooming
• Undo, Redo and History

Unused section now:

Modifying Audio

Other Features of Audacity

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

• Recovery is a must and there should be advice on what to do if recovery fails (given it really isn't 100% reliable).
• Accessibility - Should include the JAWS guide (ready now). Shortcuts must be described (a major job, or are you suggesting not doing that for release?). We can write a short paragraph linking to Audacity Tracks and Clips, the Selection Bar etc. What else is needed that should hold this up in your opinion? - Thanks, Gale

Wanted Topics

The Wanted Topics are in a 'noexport' section. Suggest we don't start writing them yet. They're not essential for 1.4.0.

• Spectrogram Analysis (or one or more better titles, cover tracking down clicks, square wave as-a-spectrum, beat frequencies).

Reference

Menu Bar:

• File
  • File Export Dialog
  • Advanced Mixing Options
• Edit
  • Editing: Cut, Paste and More
• 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
  • Amplitude Envelopes

I wonder if this is the best place for the envelope lite tutorial taken as a whole? I understand why you chose under Audio Tracks perfectly, and if this link stops here we should certainly link to it there. And I know we have been thinking of the name but if it stops here, isn't the answer simply "Envelope Tool? - Gale
Could be made to work here with that name but isn't it also a feature of 'Multi Tool'? If you prefer it here and are willing to do the work to integrate it, that's fine by me. I'd still think it's tutorial-lite material, and that in a reference section we could get away with saying much much less about envelopes, and link to a (possibly expanded) optional tutorial with before and afters, that even compares and contrasts using envelopes and fade-in / fade-out. - James.
Multi-Tool is too deep inside the page structure I think to put it there. Yes I will "integrate" the link here if it stays. This is a close call and the content of Audio Tracks is a long way from settled which does not make it easy to decide - you wanted some kind of sketch map of the track elements but that will be quite hard to do well. But I still feel the route to access envelope tool is not from the audio track like the way to change to spectrum view is, but from the Tools toolbar (even if you get to it via multi-tool). For me that clinches it. We're not (I presume) going to discuss the other tools in detail in the context of audio tracks, although they also operate within them.
You know my views that tutorial-lltes as they have been written are not really "one thing or the other" and I think you are saying the same thing. When I am talking of possibly "integrating" tutorial lites into the Reference, I mean using more "reference" style with considerable shortening. In some cases I might grab a key phrase that's useful and work it into existing text somewhere. I doubt we have time to expand the Envelope article to a full blown before and after tutorial. So we may have to live with it pretty much "as is" as part of the Reference where (currently) it makes more sense. I still think play things by ear, and see what I might do with these tutorial lites that attach naturally into the reference. - Gale

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

Project Window:

• Timeline
• Tracks
  • Audio Tracks
    • Track Drop-Down Menu
    • Mixing Audio Tracks
  • 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.
• Index
• Credits
• License

---

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.