Nov

4

Audacity Rocks

Posted by: | November 4, 2010 | Leave a Comment

For my latest E-learning toolkit experience I decided I would try my hand at working with the free audio editor Audacity. As a digital audio enthusiast I will admit that I have used Audacity in the past for basic audio editing needs. I have also recommended Audacity to a number of my clients for its ease of use, excellent features and most importantly, its great price (free of course). It’s been a few years since I last used Audacity so this exercise will be a good refresher.

I started this exercise by downloading the latest version of Audacity and installing it to my PC. As well, I downloaded LAME MP3 encoder in case I needed to create any MP3’s. Next, I reacquainted myself with Audacity by exploring some of the menus and features. It is truly incredible that such a small free program can contain so many audio tools that many professionals require. Now that I had the software installed and ready to go, it was time to record my voice. I took the advice listed under “Getting Ready” on the ETEC 565 Vista page and created a “Do not disturb” sign to post on my door, made sure that the bedroom of my condo had all of the windows and doors shut, and I turned my cell phone off. In addition, I wrote a brief script on a piece of paper that could be easily followed. I launched Audacity, positioned myself somewhat close to my laptop, hit record and tested the built in microphone on my PC laptop to see if it was working. All was good. Audacity recorded a mono file with perfect levels. It was now time for the main recording. With script in my hand, I hit record again and began reading. After about one minute I pressed stop. In front of me was a perfect recording of my voice that required very little expertise and experience. Although a professional microphone would have created a better sounding recording, I was quite happy with quality I was able to get. I also decided to mess around with some of the built in effects that Audacity has to offer. For my final step I saved my Audacity project and as well exported my audio as both an MP3 and a WAV file.

In all, the process of recording myself using Audacity was super easy. There was basically no setup and the results were very pleasing. I was surprised the fidelity was so good since I was using the built in microphone on my laptop. Of course there is nothing we can do about my voice. I would caution, however, that those that are new to Audacity may run into problems with their microphone not working on first try. If this happens, I recommend they check their input settings in both Audacity and in the Windows Control Panel (For Mac look in system utilities). As well, they must make sure that they select the right input as some will want to use the line input instead of the built in microphone.

For me, the challenge was not so much in using Audacity but more to do with creating a quality recording. It can be incredibly difficult and frustrating having to record in environments that are not meant for the recording of audio. Making sure your environment is set up appropriately for recording is most important in creating a great sounding recording.

Using Audacity was a lot of fun and easy to use. In the future I may just start using it more often to compliment my more sophisticated audio tools. Audacity seems like the perfect tool for capturing some guitar ideas before I lose them for forever.


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