Audacity Manual Contents

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Audacity 2.2.1 Manual

New features in this release

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 Unpinned Play/Recording Head   11 Timeline   12 Scrub Ruler  
13 Track Control Panel   14 Audio Track   15 Label Track   16 Selection Toolbar   17 Status Bar  

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

Help buttons

• Some places in Audacity have a help button, click for the relevant Manual page.

Additional Menus on Mac

• Audacity
• Window

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
• Vocal Removal and Isolation
• Looping - make an audio loop with Audacity
• Making Ringtones and IVR messages - For your cellphone or IVR system
• Recording streaming audio playing on the computer
• Punch-in repair of recording fluffs

• Recording streaming audio playing on the computer
• Copying tapes, LPs and other media to CD or computer
• Click and pop removal techniques
• Splitting a recording into separate tracks
• Burning Audio CDs and How to import CDs
• Sample workflow for LP digitization and Sample workflow for tape digitization

• Exporting to iTunes and Importing from iTunes
• Sample workflow for exporting to iTunes

• Recording 78 rpm records

Using Audacity

Quick Help

• Getting Started - Recording, Importing, Editing, Exporting...
  • Audacity Tour Guide - quick tour of selected features of Audacity
• Installing and updating Audacity on Windows, Mac or Linux
• Installing plug-ins for Audacity on Windows, Mac or Linux
• Themes - learn how to select your preferred Audacity look and feel

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
  • Track Control Panel and Vertical Scale
  • Label Tracks
  • Time Tracks
  • Note Tracks
• Playing and Recording, Quick-Play, Scrubbing and Timer Recording
• Importing audio and Exporting audio files - For use in other applications
  • 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 with Audacity

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

Help with Advanced Topics

• Mixer Board - Analogous to a hardware mixer board
• Accessibility - Audacity for the visually impaired
• Latency when recording overdubs
• Adding plug-ins & other customization, Scripting and Simplifying Menus
• Chains - for batch processing and effects automation
• Sync-Locked Track Groups
• Time Tracks - used for varying speed control
• Crash Recovery

Index, Glossary and More

• Subject Index
• Glossary of Terms
• Credits

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

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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 10® operating system. Representative images of Audacity running on Mac 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.