User talk:PeterSampson/Audacity Tour Guide - Strawman-2

Previous, fuller, openeing section - archived here

RECORD, PLAY, EDIT - these are the basics of Audacity

James 07Sep16 I'm in agreement with Gale. This section is becoming a repetition of how to do the basics rather than here are some things Audacity can do, and the terminology we use. I needed something like it in my Tour Guide for completeness. Here we can be much briefer. Even just say: "Audacity can record, edit and modify audio" and point users to the manual. The bits of interest are the SHIFT-RECORD and SHIFT-PLAY and the word LAME that users might not discover

suggested section image: Loop-Play button and Record-Append button

RECORD: - Open Audacity. Look in the second box in DEVICE TOOLBAR to choose the device you want to record from, then click the Record button in TRANSPORT TOOLBAR near the top left. With a working microphone or input device selected, Audacity should start drawing a squiggly up and down waveform showing the recording in progress, with taller waves for louder sounds. If recording is a flat line or shows an error, there is a detailed guide in the FAQs that can help you find out why. If you hold SHIFT while clicking Record, this records at the end of the selected track(s) rather than creating a new track as you would for a mix.

MONITORING: It is good to test how loud your recording will be before recording for real, so click in the RECORDING METER then use the microphone slider in MIXER TOOLBAR to make the loudest audio reach a safe -6 dB on the meter. Monitoring does not stay on after you stop recording or playback so just click monitoring back on again next time you need it.

PLAY: - Get some sound to play in Audacity first, possibly by recording (or in the menus click GENERATE then CHIRP, and then click the OK button). A track with a waveform should appear. Now click near the start of the waveform and a thin vertical line will be positioned on it. That is where playback will start from. Now click the Play button , also in the Transport Toolbar to start playback and you should hear something on the speakers or headphones. To stop playing before the end, click the Stop button , that’s the button just to the right of Play. To quickly play audio just by clicking or by clicking and dragging a region, use the QUICK-PLAY feature in the TIMELINE (the horizontal ruler above the tracks).

LOOP PLAY: Hold SHIFT down before clicking play, and you will get Loop Play where the audio plays over and over until you stop.

EDIT:- If you want to select part of the audio for editing, click and drag the mouse in either direction across the piece of audio you want to change. You can apply EFFECTS from the Effect menu, and you can cut the selection (the button with the scissors icon) or paste it (the button with the clipboard icon). Instead of buttons, you could use keyboard shortcuts, Ctrl + X or Ctrl + V for cut or paste (Command + X or Command + Y on a Mac).

SAVE: - Audacity makes a distinction between saving audio in AUDACITY PROJECT FORMAT which only Audacity can open, and exporting audio in formats like WAV and MP3 for use in other applications. Audacity project format is made up of multiple small files which are stored in the _data folder for the project and alongside that, an AUP file which says what order the files are in. To reopen a saved project, open the AUP file.

Don’t edit the AUP file or _data folder in any way, or move, delete or rename them. You’ll lose your work if you do.

EXPORT Use Export if you want to create a file in an audio format for playing outside of Audacity.

LAME: Do you want to convert a recording to compressed MP3 format? Audacity can, but it needs an add-on to do so. The add-on is a library called ‘LAME’. A free copy of LAME that is compatible with Audacity is available from the lame.buanzo.org site, as per these instructions (Buanzo is a technology and security consultant from Argentina).