Audacity Manual Contents

Peter 05Apr15: New layout for the front page that give's precedence to Bill's Amazing-Image-Map. The AMI is the key reference point of entry enabling access to a wealth of information through the drill-down, the "Using Audacity" is really a reference section that newbies should be turning to, exploring and reading.

• Peter 05Apr15: ToDo-2 Consider moving the Tutorials being in their own horizontal section (pane), perhaps above "Using Audacity" - as suggested by Gale.

This online Manual is only for the latest 2.1.1-alpha development code. The online Manual for the current 2.1.0 release is here. Click here for legacy 1.2 documentation.

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Welcome, Audacity Manual editors!

There are some important editor notes on the discussion page. Also see the extensive welcome message for new editors.

All images throughout the manual should be set as "link=" to kill the links - to avoid relocating the user into the alpha Manual. See Consistency for the required syntax.

Audacity 2.1.1-alpha Manual

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) - most common questions are answered in the FAQ

• Search the Wiki for extra tips and tutorials
• Visit the Forum for technical help
• Using Help Resources

Guide to the Audacity Project Window

1 Menu Bar   2 Transport Toolbar   3 Tools Toolbar   4 Recording Meter Toolbar   5 Playback Meter Toolbar   6 Mixer Toolbar  
7 Edit Toolbar   8 Transcription Toolbar   9 Device Toolbar   10 Timeline   11 Track Control Panel  
12 Audio Track   13 Label Track   14 Selection Toolbar   15 Status Bar  

Hover over and click on the image to learn more. Skip the image

Peter 19Feb15: I added a target rectangle to the imagemap for the Audacity Project Name. For now the text on the image just says "Audacity" as the project had not been saved.

ToDo-2 Placeholder to update the image to show "Audacity project name", no time for this prior to 2.1.0 - unless Bill can fake it, I tried but the color tones in the blue did not match.

Additional Menus on Mac

• Audacity
• Window

Additional Track types

• Time Tracks
• Note Tracks

Using Audacity

Quick Help

• Getting Started - Recording, Importing, Editing, Exporting...

Understanding Audacity Foundations

• Managing Audacity Projects - Audacity's internal workspace
• Audacity Setup and Configuration
  • Preferences - changing your settings and reset to default
• Toolbars Overview - including how to arrange Toolbars
• Audio Tracks, Waveform view and Spectrogram view
• Label Tracks
• Playing and Recording
• Importing audio and Exporting audio files - For use in other programs
  • LAME MP3 export and FFmpeg import/export libraries for more formats
  • On-Demand Loading of uncompressed files
  • Metadata Editor
• Navigation Tips, Playback Tips and Audio Alignment Tips
• Keyboard shortcuts

• Editing
  • Selecting audio and Spectral Selection
  • Clips - individual sections within an audio track
  • Splitting and Joining Stereo Tracks
  • Zooming
  • Effects, Generators and Analyzers
  • Creating a Crossfade
  • Mixing Audio Tracks
  • Undo, Redo and History

Tutorials

• Editing an Audio File - Import the file, edit and export it
• Your First Recording - Record microphone, guitar, keyboard
• Mixing Voice with Background Music - For podcasts
• Recording Multi-track Overdubs - Record over other tracks
• Copying tapes, LPs and other media to CD or computer
• Recording streaming audio playing on the computer
• Splitting a recording into separate tracks
• Vocal Removal and Isolation
• Looping - make an audio loop with Audacity
• Making Ringtones - For your cellphone
• Burning Audio CDs and How to import CDs
• Exporting to iTunes and Importing from iTunes
• Example Workflows

Help with Advanced Topics

• Sync-Locked Track Groups
• Accessibility - Audacity for the visually impaired
• Latency when recording overdubs
• Chains - for batch processing and effects automation
• Crash Recovery
• Customizing Audacity, Scripting and Simplifying Menus

Index, Glossary and More

• Subject Index
• Glossary of Terms
• Credits

• Audacity License
• Information for Developers - join our developer community

• Information for the Media - Audacity and free, open software

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Links: Most links are to other pages in this Manual. Bold italicized  links are to a description in our Glossary. Other italicised  links are to pages external to this Manual, mostly to our main website or Wiki. We are not responsible for the content of any other external sites.

Screenshots: Unless otherwise stated, screenshots in this Manual are of Audacity running under its default settings on the Microsoft Windows 7® operating system. Representative images of Audacity running on Mac OS X and Linux are also included.

Copyright: Unless otherwise noted, all pages in this Manual are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. In essence, you are free to (1) copy, distribute and transmit the work (2) to adapt the work, under condition you must attribute the work to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from us.