Anybody who’s worked with Audacity would vouch for the fact that it is one of the best audio editing software’s around. But if you are a newbie and confounded with the number of options it offers and wondering if it is too much of a good thing, here is how you can get acquainted with your friend in easy to follow steps.

How does audacity work?

Audacity accommodates one clip per track. Your audio clipping can be a small portion of another track or a copy of an existing track. You can make modifications or insertions to your audio clipping. View your track at the bottom and zoom in to view the recording stored. One start editing you could use the undo button any number of times to change the edit you’ve made, another big plus to anybody new to the software.

How to import an audio file?

Audacity is a democratic space and you could import the most commonly used digital audio formats such as wav, aiff, Mp3, ogg. There are three ways of importing your audio file and you could drag and drop your file, use the shortcut key for importing files “I” or select the import audio option from the project menu.

Get going

Create and save your new project using the “save project” option in the menu bar. Press control P for “Preference” and mention the sample rate (number of hertz) you want the edited audio to be in, and, if you are importing an uncompressed audio file into audacity, opt for the “Read from the original track” option to save on time. But if it is the source file you are working on choose the “Make a copy of the file while editing” option to be on the safer side.

How to record using Audacity?

It certainly cannot get simpler than this. Have a quick run-through of your sound card, check if the microphone is plugged in and if you’re using a device such as a digital dictation device or even your mobile phone, ensure that the jacks and pins are in place. The device has to be connected to your laptop or desktop before you start recording.

Red, blue and yellow are the colors to remember! Click the red button to start recording in audacity, pause using the blue button and no prizes for guessing that yellow is for stop.

Once you get your audio recording in place make a copy of it and perform edits with the virtually zillion options and features audacity offers users.