How to use Audacity to Record & Edit Audio | Beginners Tutorial (2024)

recording audio and audacity is very simple if you press the red record button the recording will start though the recording is as simple as clicking a button you have to set all the options correctly before recording otherwise your recording quality will be poor I will show you the process of getting the best quality recording possible go to audio setup and you can configure the necessary options here the most important configuration is the recording device you will see all your connected microphones from the recording device the currently selected microphone will have a tick mark beside it for me it is MacBook Pro microphone if you want any other microphone on the list click on that and that will be selected as the recording device sometimes you may not see all your connected microphones in the list it happens when you attach the microphone while audacity is open in such cases go to transport and rescan audio devices you now can see a new Option appears Scarlett 2i2 USB it is the audio interface through which my microphone is connected if I used a USB mic I would see the microphone's name I can select it by clicking on it besides microphone you have to set other things like recording channels rather than setting everything one by one from here you can do that from audio settings it is more convenient and all the necessary options are here it is the playback device settings if you play the audio after recording this device will be used for playback so it is not important to set it before recording unless you use live monitoring or an overdub feature I will get back to these points later for now I will record a simple voiceover for the recording device I will choose Scarlet 2i2 through which my microphone is connected you will see a different name if you are using another audio interface or a USB mic directly attached to the computer after selecting the recording device set the recording Channel there are two options for recording channels mono and stereo for voice over mono is fine for music recording you might want to select the stereo recording Channel with a stereo recording Channel you can add different effects on the left and right sides of the headphone you will not need such effects for voice recording so select mono to keep things simple you can convert a mono track to a stereo track if required later the next thing you have to set is the sample rate in previous versions of audacity it was called project rate from version 3.3.1 audacity named its sample rate the microphone captures audio as an analog signal and needs to be converted to Digital Data to be stored on a computer the sample rate is the number of samples taken per second during the conversion theoretically The More Sample is taken the more details of the audio is stored digitally it is under the quality section and you can see two options project sample rate and default sample rate the project sample rate is for this project only and the default sample rate works as the default value for any new project you do not need to use a higher sample rate than 44.1 kilohertz still you need to be aware of this sample rate a lower sample rate like 32 kilohertz or more down may fail to capture all the good bits of your recording so you should not choose a lower sample rate like 32 kilohertz however the opposite is not true you will not notice any difference in audio quality with a higher sample rate like 88 kilohertz or more instead your file size will grow significantly and take up much disk space you can get the best possible recording with 44.1 kilohertz or 48 kilohertz all the Fantastic MP3s you listen to are 44.1 kilohertz 48 kilohertz is used as the sample rate of CD burning you can choose a sample rate of 44.1 kilohertz or 48 kilohertz I see no good reason to use any other sample rate than 44.1 kilohertz so I will use it though 44.1 kilohertz is the default sample rate I discussed this as many beginners wrongly think their bad recording is due to the sample simple rate as you can see sample rate is under the quality section you may wrongly blame the sample rate as the cause of your bad recording that is not the case and when you are not getting a good quality recording it is more likely your recording environment or equipment not the sample rate keep the default sample format to 32-bit float once again you may not notice any difference with 24-bit or 16-bit recording but 32-bit float recording has some advantages during the editing process so choose 32-bit recording all the things from the audio settings are configured and now I will move to the next settings of the input level audacity has two meters to monitor the Audio Level the first is the record meter and the second one is the playback meter we need to focus on the record meter during recording click on the mic icon and you can start monitoring the Audio Level it is vital to set the recording volume level properly post processing your audio heavily depends on the input level of your recording your goal would be to hit around -12 on this meter during the loudest Peaks not every spoken word has to hit -12 in the meter only the louder sounds should be around -12 other spoken words should cross -24 and be around -18 most of the time you can rearrange these meters to extend them to see the reading properly I will take the recording meter in a separate row to see the reading at a very detailed level the recording meter also has a slider that can be used to control gain you can drag this slider to adjust the recording level though this slider sometimes freezes due to a bug in audacity it has freezed at the moment let me show that from the playback meter slider as both work similarly you can adjust the slider and check if the meter is hitting the right place when it hits the right place you set the slider in that position I usually keep the recording meter to 100 percent as you see even after it is 100 percent I am hitting around -12 in the playback meter you may have to position the microphone differently if you fail to hit -12 on the meter even after increasing the gain you may have to come closer to the microphone talk louder or adjust your talking Direction you may ask me why you have to hit -12 on the meter well you can hit higher than that but notice the maximum on this meter is zero the closer to zero you record the less Headroom you will have in post-production if you boost some signals in post-processing and it crosses zero it would result in clipping or distorted sound -12 is a safe enough value to get enough Headroom for post-processing you can always boost your volume level after recording the audio so keeping some Headroom for post processing is a smart thing to do you can stop monitoring by clicking the microphone icon and stop monitoring I suggest you enable the device toolbar in your audacity you can find the device toolbar from The View toolbars and device toolbar a new toolbar has been added and you can always see which microphone is currently selected for recording as everything is set I will press the record button now and let you hear the original recording audacity is the best free audio editing software if you know audacity very well you can do many kind of professional work with audacity the recording is done and you see the track you can see the audio waveform inside the track you can play the recorded audio by pressing the space bar audacity is the best free audio editing software if you know audacity very well you can do many kind of professional work with audacity after recording you can save the project from the file save project saving project from here will create an audacity project which is not a playable audio file if you want a playable audio file you have to export it you can export it as MP3 wave or other audio file formats usually export is done once you are done editing your audio file if you want to record Another audio track follow a simple trick if you press record again after recording audio a new clip will be added on the same track it is a new clip but on the same track to record Another track you have to take playhead to the position where you want to start recording the black vertical line is the playhead and I will move it here if I Mouse over the record button you can see the shortcut to record in the new track shift r as I press shift R it started recording a new track if you want live monitoring of your audio that means listening to the audio as you record you have to make software play through on for me it is off as I do not live monitor during recording overdub works with multiple tracks if you record Another track but want to listen to the other tracks while you record you have to turn on overdub as you see no tick mark beside those settings it means those settings are off for me after watching this video you should practice what you have learned the blue things are called waveforms in audio editing we mainly edit these waveforms waveforms are visual Guides of your audio you can get the idea of which parts are louder and which parts are quieter by seeing the waveform editing these waveforms are similar to editing a document editor I will discuss those in the next section how to use audacity interface and edit effectively the audacity interface may look confusing if you do not have experience with any editing software trust me audacity has the most straightforward interface of any audio editing software using it several times will make sense of all the buttons you see this whole thing is called a track and we only have a single track the track has an information panel at the beginning and a timeline with a waveform the numbers you see above the timeline are seconds if you click the number the audio will start playing from that second there are couple of other softwares which is free but audacity is done you can also play audio from inside the track click at the point from where you want to play the audio and press spacebar you can also use the play button how do I do editing and decoding to stop the playing audio press the space bar again in the speaking parts of the audio the waveform is clearly visible on the silent Parts the line looks flat though the line looks flat here there is some light background noise if I play the audio you can see the noise level in the meter you may hear the noise if you are listening in a quiet environment with headphones you can increase the track size vertically by dragging the track from the bottom you see some dots visible in the silent Parts which are different kinds of noises if you want to delete some parts in the audio select it and press delete on the keyboard to undo any change press command Z or Ctrl Z deleting something from the timeline Alters it if I delete this piece of audio everything after it comes forward in the timeline sometimes you may want to remove something but want to keep the timeline the same you can do that from the silence audio selection button those audios are gone and the other audios are in their place as before you can also do the opposite of that only keep the selected part and remove the remaining audio copy and paste of the audio works with standard shortcuts select the parts of the audio you want to copy and press command C or control C if you are using Windows click to the point where you want to paste and command V undo the Last Action is command Z you can see these shortcuts from the edit menu besides these copy paste commands there is another interesting command duplicate duplicate command duplicates an entire track and you have to select the track otherwise you will see a prompt asking you to select what to duplicate you can either duplicate the whole track or parts of the track I will select the entire Track by double-clicking inside it and duplicate it using command d a new track has been added at the bottom these two tracks are now at different heights if I used command shift F they would have equal Heights Ctrl shift F if you are using Windows you can get this command in View track size and fit to height if you have one track it will take the full height if you have multiple tracks the height will be distributed equally like fit to height there is another command fit to width your track will fit in the width of the audacity screen the waveforms are now looking more condensed as all waveforms are on the screen you can also do these things using the buttons Zoom toggle alternates between very detailed zoom and condensed Zoom fit to width buttons are added here and you can use these instead from the menu or shortcuts you can zoom in or out in the waveform as much as you want these help precise editing as the timeline gets bigger you can also use the mouse scroll bar to zoom in or out while the cursor is inside the track you can cross out any track using the cross icon you can rename any track name to remind yourself what is in which track this is useful when you are working with multiple tracks you can move around the tracks inside the timeline a hand icon appears when you place the cursor in the white area you can drag the track to shift in the timeline I will cross out this duplicate track and show some features from the top track you can also rename this it is basically a clip a track can have a single clip or multiple clips you can split a clip to split a clip go to a point from where you want to clip go to edit audio clips and split at the splitting point a bold vertical line appears a new clip is now created and I can move these clips around independently the second clip has the same name as the first clip I will rename it to clip 2. I can create as many Clips as I need following the same process go to the point of split and split it is possible to trim clips in audacity if you take your mouse pointer to the edges of the clip the cursor will change to a trimming icon the trimming icon with pointers on both ends should appear now but it is not appearing for some reason aha the icon has appeared now you can trim the edges to make a clip shorter you can trim spoken parts and expand to get those back audacity calls this feature non-destructive editing because the audio is there audacity developed this feature in version 3.1 but I am not sure if it is that useful I want to hear from you if you find this non-destructive helpful split can also be done to a new track however it does not work the same way as split where you just set a split Point splitting to new tracks requires a selection of the audio which you want to take to the new track I selected this part and if I go to split new I will get this audio to a new track the Audio I had selected moved to a new track just like other Clips I can move it around if I want to discard some last changes in editing and go to a previous point I can undo it multiple times to reach that point another way to do it is from history you will get history from The View menu for the current session Only If You Close audacity and open the same file a new session starts and history will have records from the current session an arrow will point at which action of editing you are currently if some gray lines appear after the current action that means those actions are undone by your undo command I want to discard all my changes after duplicating the track I will select duplicated action and click ok I will close the duplicated track if you want to rearrange different toolbars you can do that you can drag any toolbar and set it in a new position you can expand the meters if you want to see the details of the readings if you mess up the positioning of the toolbars you can always reset it from view toolbars reset toolbars toolbars have some other toolbars that you can check to see if they are useful to you some people find the cut paste toolbar handy a new set of icons was added here which is the cut paste toolbar you can now cut or copy any parts with the click of these buttons copy paste of audio waveforms is similar to any document editor audacity also has a pair of undo and redo buttons I prefer keyboard shortcuts for this type of action but it is up to you which method you prefer audacity supports adding labels in different places of the recording for example you may want to add a note either here or in both places click on the place where you want to add a label go to edit labels and add label at selection a new track will appear with a text input option write your note which may help you later in the editing process you can add as many labels as you want label track is not related to the audio recording so your sound will not be affected though you have to remember labels are not locked with the audio track so deleting something from the track misplaces the labels if I delete this selection issue 2 will point to a different place in the waveform I help audacity implements some locking between labels and tracks so that they always remain in sync that way labels will be much more useful the workaround for this will be to select both the audio track and label track when deleting something from the audio track if you select both the audio track and label tracks by dragging and then delete the labels will be in sync adding a label every time from the menu can be tedious and you can enable type to create a label enabling this option will let you add labels by typing inside the label track for example if I want to add a label anywhere I will click inside the label track and start typing this label can be expanded to point to a range in the track drag the handles in the label and you can adjust the selection I will close this label track and show you some features of this track information panel let's duplicate this track by selecting everything and command d the solo button makes the current track active and mutes all other tracks during playback only the active tracks can be heard Newt notes the current track as we expect after those two buttons an effects button lets you add real-time effects built-in effects in audacity cannot be used as real-time effects only third-party effects I will discuss this in the next section right-click inside the track information panel to see some track related settings you can see a spec program instead of the waveform the spectrogram shows which audio frequency has how much energy though audacity does not support that much good editing through a spectrogram if you are using audacity as an audio learning tool the spectrogram might help otherwise it is not much useful in terms of audio editing in audacity it is possible to see both waveform and spectrogram at the same time you can also change the waveform color if you do not like the default blue it is a cosmetic change and has no effects on the sound if you prefer your waveform in another color you can change it I would prefer the default blue a select button at the bottom selects the whole track double-clicking inside the track does the same job the triangle before the select button is for collapsing the track if multiple tracks are not fitting well or you want to focus on more than one track you can collapse other tracks a gain control slider can increase or decrease the volume of the Audio I will play and adjust and you will hear the difference audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what I see is the easiest one to use the next slider is the pan slider which adds a panning effect on the left or right side of the headphone or the city is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what a city is the easiest one to use if you are using a headphone you will understand what I mean you can repeatedly listen to a part of the audio through the loop button for the city is the best for the city is the best for the city is the best for the city is the best for the city is the best free software for audio editing and recording a marker appears on top of the timeline to denote the loop starting and ending you can adjust Loop selection by rearranging these markers for the city is the best fees of other cities the best fees of other cities the best I will end this editing Basics section by showing the frequency analysis tool if you want to know which frequencies are making a sound you can select it and go to the analyze menu click on plot Spectrum a beautiful graph appears showing which frequency has how much energy for basic audio editing this may not be important for those who want to dive deep into audio editing it's a fantastic tool how to use audacity effects there is another major purpose of using audacity besides recording and editing audio this purpose is to use audio effects to make it better or different you can see all the available effects from the effect menu there are two kinds of audio effects one fixes some issues and the other makes the audio different for example the noise reduction effect removes some noise from the recording so it is an example of an effect that fixes something on the other hand the echo effect makes the sound echoey so it is an example of an effect that makes the audio different audacity has some effects on its own called built-in effects you can also use third-party effects with audacity all the effects under this line are third-party effects they are grouped by vendor names I have installed plugins from news FX and izotope so I see those names for you this vendor name will not be the same the built-in effects are grouped by what kind of task it does I will discuss later this ad real-time effects and plug-in manager you can change the way effects are grouped from audacity preference it is actually a matter of choice and convenience you can configure different settings for audacity from preference on the effects you will see a sort or group drop down you can change from the default to other options for example sorted by effect name click OK and you will see the effects are arranged differently you can now see effects are arranged by name it makes the effect menu quite big but the effects are easier to find it is up to you how you want your effects to be displayed I will change it back to the default group option there are many built-in effects And discussing all those effects will take a very long time instead I will discuss some most used effects these four effects are the primary effects to make any voice sound better the order of these effects is also very important to get the optimal result however I will not maintain this order to show how the effect works my goal is to help you understand how an effect work and how to configure an effect so I will discuss it in an order that is easier for you to understand but when you use the effects to improve your sound maintain this order I will duplicate this track to compare it with the effect apply track I will rename this bottom track to original and apply the effects on the top track double-click inside the top track to select everything inside it the first effect I will apply is the normalize effect you will get it in volume and compression you can think of normalizing as a mechanism for volume control the loudest part of the audio will get the value you set here so if you set the peak amplitude as -3 the maximum peak in this meter will be -3 let's assume before normalizing the loudest part of the audio is hitting -15 in this meter after normalizing with a peak amplitude of -3 the minus 15 will become -3 a total increase of 12 DB in the volume every part of the audio will increase by 12 DB then it means your noise will also be increased by 12 DB I am not going into detail to keep this tutorial beginner friendly once you finish this tutorial you can check other videos on my channel which discuss various audio topics in detail you can get back to the default settings from Factory presets for any built-in effects keep the remove DC offset checked it keeps the waveform centered around this 0.0 value however modern recording equipment does not produce such offset very often but keeping this check will not do any harm I am working with a mono track so there is no point in checking this last checkbox as that is for the stereo Channel you may wonder what the perfect value for this peak amplitude is it depends on the situation the maximum value can be zero which is the maximum in audacity meters it will not take any positive value and controls become inactive when I enter a positive value I usually use -3 as the peak amplitude some platforms do some processing after upload so -3 keeps a Headroom for extra processing -3 makes the audio comfortably Audible audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what you see the audio has become louder and is not Crossing -3 in the meter let me find a sample with a higher Peak and if you think about some paid software it is not getting close to -3 let me find another sample it looks like this one has the loudest Peak but whatever software you use you have to know the basics of audio recording and editing so you see it is not Crossing -3 as I had normalized the peak to -3 did you notice the hissing noise has become strong after normalization there are many causes for hissing noise such as AC laptop fan Etc even the microphone or audio interface can introduce some hissing noise though we do not hear those during recording audacity has an effective noise reduction to minimize this hissing noise it only works with hissing noise or white background noise if you have irregular background noise it is not that useful to remove hissing noise you have to select a noise only part from anywhere in the recording it can be from the start middle or end foreign is your selected hissing noise is also present in other parts of the audio so when you reduce that noise the same noise from other parts also gets reduced I have already selected a piece from the beginning noise reduction is a two-step process the first part involves introducing that noise to audacity with the noise sample selected go to noise reduction click on get noise profile and audacity will match this noise and remove it in Step 2. select the portion of the audio from where you want to remove that noise for me that white noise is present all over the audio so I will select everything on the track by double clicking inside it go to the noise reduction effect again you have to set values for these sliders remember there is a cost with noise reduction the more noise you reduce the harsher the sound becomes if you want to know the detail about an effect click on the help icon on the effects settings you will be taken to a detailed documentation of that effect you can read about what the settings do and how to configure the settings this documentation is useful for those who want to go deep into audio editing the noise reduction manual has recommended settings for voice it suggests a value of 6 for each of the sliders let's get back to audacity and configure those sliders set the amount of noise you want to reduce from the noise reduction slider it is recommended to use six though you may need to go higher like nine the default value of this slider is 12 though I feel it introduces a noticeable harshness I will set it to 12 for demo purposes sensitivity decides how aggressively the noise reduction process will be if it is set to zero no noise reduction will happen regardless of what value you set in other sliders the maximum value is 24 but you can hardly go over six because a too aggressive noise reduction will destroy the audio quality set the sensitivity value to 6. after noise reduction a gap is introduced in in the audio frequency smoothing bands reduce that Gap it helps to reduce the harshness introduced due to noise reduction for music recording a lower value like two or one is recommended 0 means no smoothing will be applied for voice recording a value of 6 works best if you want to preview how it will sound audacity will play a six second preview to apply these settings click on OK the line already looks flat if I play this the noise is quite reduced it is hitting somewhere between -36 and -39 in this meter due to a mouth noise here this tiny dot is the mouth noise the noise other than the mouth noise is quite small if I delete the mouth noise you can see it in the meter I will undo the delete and you should focus more on the noise in the spoken parts let's check how the spoken words sound now audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but vodacity is the easiest one to use I feel it is a bit harsh after noise reduction as I said earlier a value of 12 makes the sound bit harsh I will undo the noise reduction from history and do a noise reduction with six I already gave audacity a noise sample in this session so I can skip step one audacity already has the noise profile I will set noise reduction to 6. let's hear or the city is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of I think the sound is okay and no obvious noise is there there is one effect in audio editing that can make or break a recording Equalization Equalization or EQ in short is the process of editing volume by frequencies you will get EQ from EQ and filters the filter curve EQ is the most sophisticated of all these EQ effects and I will use it you can draw curves of frequency manipulation to EQ your audio I will reset it to default settings the green line where we draw the curve is now flattened you can also flatten the curve from the flatten button the green line is aligned with 0 DB in this horizontal axis you can see the frequencies frequency started at 20 Hertz and ended at 20 kilohertz every sound we hear has a frequency a human can only listen to sounds in the frequency range of 20 Hertz to 20 kilohertz in the vertical axis you see the DB numbers you can either increase or decrease the volume of a frequency by dragging the green line to a certain DB the topic of how sound is distributed over frequencies is quite a large topic for the sake of EQ it is good to know that when we hear a sound it is a combination of many frequencies in other words we hear multiple frequencies simultaneously for a particular sound so different words or different sounds will have a different combination of frequencies when we increase the volume of some frequencies we call it a boost when we decrease the volume of some frequencies we call it a cut so how do we know which frequencies to cut or boost for voiceover we have certain guidelines but the actual process of EQ also depends on experience I will discuss some common guidelines and you will understand them after trying them a couple of times audacity has some Factory presets and you can go over them to get an idea of what they are doing for some voices a treble boost can make the sound crispier it depends on the voice type that I will get back to shortly if you analyze the treble boost graph it starts boosting at four kilohertz and reaches 9 DB at 5 kilohertz then it applies a 9 DB boost on the rest of the frequencies boost should be limited to 6 DB because a 9 DB boost may sound unnatural the small white dots you see are drag points I can drag the green line from the white points I will drag the green line from 9 DB to 6 DB a white dot will appear if I click anywhere at the green line I can drag it to boost or cut I am cutting frequencies after 16 kilohertz because for voice there is nothing after that frequency most of the time let's apply this EQ and let's hear how it sounds audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording it sounds crispier I will undo the EQ effect from history and apply a more advanced EQ this Advanced EQ is recommended for most of the voices from Factory presets I will use low roll off for speech this preset is slowly rolling off frequencies less than 100 Hertz I will roll off from 80 Hertz instead of 100 because our fundamental frequency can start from as low as 80. anything less than 80 Hertz is not our voice if there is something Beyond 80 Hertz that is probably noise rolling off from less than 80 Hertz can help to reduce that kind of noise to add crispiness I will add the treble boost I cannot use that from the factory preset as that will overwrite the modification I already did instead I will add those manually I have added two dots on four kilohertz and five kilohertz I will drag the five kilohertz dot to 6 DB like last time I will add a cut after 16 kilohertz it is a generic EQ that works for most of the voice however some voices produce sibilance or sharp s for that kind of voice treble boost should be avoided or used with a de-esser I can save this drawing as a preset so that I do not have to redraw it again next time click on Save preset and give it a name I will name it my best eq1 this preset will appear in user presets I will apply the EQ order city is the best free software for audio editing and decoding though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but it sounds way much better than the original recording audacity is the best free software for audio editing and decoding though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what a CD is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this software you can move to we have to learn about another effect the compressor a compressor reduces the gap between louder and quieter sounds this Gap is called dynamic range and the compressor reduces it you will hear the term dynamic range in audio editing frequently audacity has two kinds of compressors downward compressor and upward compressor configuring a downward compressor with audacity is difficult as we cannot read values directly from the meter it uses the RMS value which is a bit difficult to read with audacity if you check the compress based on peak's checkbox an upward compressor will be used I will use an upward compressor the makeup gain checkbox does a zero DB normalization after compressing the sound it does not matter if you keep this checked or unchecked because we normalize after compressing so this checkbox does not matter you have to measure a value for the threshold and noise floor from your recording it will vary from recording to recording so it is important to understand how to measure it it is good to apply the compressor before normalizing I will get back to the point of editing before the normalize effect now I have exactly the original recording just duplicate it also in the bottom track if you remember I said these effects have to apply in this order to make a voice recording better so I will apply the first two effects and then show you how to measure the compressor's sound levels I am fast forwarding noise reduction in EQ as I have already discussed those in detail I will now apply the compressor in the proper way I have to measure a value for the threshold as I will be using an upward compressor any value less than the threshold will be increased in volume I will play some parts of the audio and note where it hits the meter though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what I see is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this software you can move to it crosses minus 21 most of the time and the peak hits minus 15. the threshold will be a value between these two values I also have to measure the noise floor value foreign it is just over -45 so the noise floor value in the compressor configuration has to be greater than this value I will go to compressor effects as I have all the required readings I will choose -18 as the threshold value any recording under -18 will be increased in volume and the Gap with louder sound will be minimized I kept the noise floor to -35 greater than the noise floor I measured -35 is also less than any spoken word volume so it is a safe value I will choose four to one as the ratio choose a ratio like 3 to 1 or 4 to 1. too much compression makes the sound unnatural audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other software the last effect to make the sound better will be normalized you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this software you can move to a more complex software so this is how the final edited recording sounds there is another effect that works as an alternative to normalize you will need this effect if your project requires a loudness level on Lofts you can normalize based on RMS or perceive loudness perceived loudness is most used some TV channels have a requirement of -23 lufts audacity is the best free software it may sound a bit of a low volume for YouTube videos for YouTube videos you can use -18 loves you will notice an increase in the waveform as I apply -18 loves so far all my shown effects were on the fixing side let's see an effect whose purpose is an enhancement Reverb from Factory presets you can select different kinds of Reverb you can make the recording sound like it was in a large room or church Hall different room sizes have different types of sound Reflections and the Reverb effect adds that reflection you can play around with other sliders and check how it sounds audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording audacity is [Music] it sounded pretty funny the last effect I will show in this tutorial is truncate silence it can be a time-saving effect I will fit the entire waveform onto the screen go to truncate Silence from the special group configure how audacity will recognize a silence I configured that if the sound level is less than -28 DB for half a second is silence the action tells audacity what to do when such a silent part is found I set to truncate the silence to 0.3 seconds so whenever my audio has a 0.5 seconds or more extended silence the silence will cut to 0.3 seconds you can see the overall waveform got shorter as the silence Parts got truncated audacity has many other effects and I advise you to explore those if you want to know about any effect in detail let me know in the comment real-time effects real-time effects are a new feature in audacity introduced in version 3.2.0 you can produce better or excellent sounding audio using real-time effects without knowing the details of audio editing you will drag the necessary effects and your sound will improve instantly to add real-time effects click on the effects tab on the track information panel you can add real-time effects from the add effect button only third-party effects can be used as real-time effects audacity did not have good compatible plugins when it first introduced real-time effects news FX has developed some plugins that are both useful and work well with audacity before applying any of these effects let me show you how to get these effects click on get more effects and you will be taken to the audacity plugin page you will get plug-in related updates on this page you can see what types of third-party plugins are available to audacity news FX plug-in Suites have several plugins and click on news FX 6. news FX is a collection of useful plugins that dramatically impact audacity's real-time effect these plugins are blended with audacity very well before these plugins real-time effects were not that useful in audacity click on the new sub link you have to install musub Helper and choose the file for your OS I already have installed musub Helper and I will open it you will get an icon from Muse Hub and go to effects remember this is a helper that lets you download the effects click on effects and you will see all the effects available I already have installed many effects from here and those show a tick mark you will see a get button and click on get to download the effect I recommend you install all the effects you see here after the effect gets downloaded restart your audacity I hope you understand the process of how to get news Hub effects back to audacity and let's make the audio better using real-time effects I will duplicate the track for future comparison as the real-time effects panel is already open I have to click inside the track where I want to add real-time effects I will add real-time effects on the top track there are a couple of effects that make the sound better the first one is compress compress will reduce the gap between the louder and quieter sounds news FX compress also makes the sound louder after compressing the compress effect is added and clicking on it will open the configuration pop-up real-time configurations are easy to configure you will listen to the audio using different presets and decide which one sounds best you can see a list of compressed presets here you can adjust the knob to set how much of the effect you want if you feel the effect is doing too much you decrease the knob if the effect needs to do more you increase the knob you can go back to the defaults from the factory preset I will play this audio with compress effect and try out different presets or the city is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but audacity is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this software you can move to a more complex software for Mac you have for Mac you also have the option of GarageBand and if you think about some I think the pop vocals preset is working best for this voice recording I will add another effect closing the pop-up does not mean the effect is disabled the effect is active if the blue icon appears before the effect name I will add an EQ to make the sound crispier news FX has two types of EQ Pro EQ and simple EQ Pro EQ offers a bit of flexibility but also requires some understanding of frequencies I will add simple EQ for now like the compress effect simple EQ has some presets I will listen to the audio with both effects I can switch off and on any effect using this switch button let's play and toggle between EQ on and off audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but audacity is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you I feel it sounded better when EQ was on I had only used the presence preset which is good for voice over but I suggest you explore and listen to which sounds best to you you can change an effect for example I want to use Pro EQ instead of simple EQ Pro EQ has a bit more knobs than simple EQ you can adjust those knobs to adjust a particular frequency range let's listen with Pro EQ audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but audacity is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this software you can move to I feel it sounded best with pop vocals with Pro EQ the sound has become quite better but the noise has also increased news FX does not have a good noise reduction effect at the moment I hope they will develop one in the near future news FX Has A Noise Gate but noise gating with strong hissing noise makes the listening experience worse The Noise Gate removes noise from quiet Parts but comes back suddenly in the spoken parts let's listen with the Noise Gate on and you will understand the issue audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what a city is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this software you can move to a more complex software for Mac you have for Mac you also have the option of GarageBand and if you think if you heard through the headphone you might find this on and off hissing noise distracting for noise reduction I would suggest the built-in noise reduction effect until news FX develops something I will disable the Noise Gate I can remove this effect from no effect I will add a Reverb effect which can be used for two purposes either it can add a different type of effect on the sound or it can take care of some room Reflections for example the vocal booth can minimize room sound reflections other city is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but audacity is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this not a big difference but it removed some of the sound Reflections in the room you can add the same effect multiple times as I said earlier Reverb could also add a different kinds of sound effects I will add some sound effects from this Reverb effect audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what a city is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this software you can move to a more complex software form I hope you understand how to get sound effects using Reverb I will remove the second Reverb as my intention is to make the sound better only at this point you may be wondering about the waveforms the bottom track is the original recording and no effects have been added to it the top track has three real-time effects applied but both waveforms look similar real-time effects in audacity do not show the change in the waveform immediately if I export the track with real-time effects I will see the changes in waveform I am exporting this track and will show you what I mean this is the exported track and if I drag it into audacity you will see the change in the waveform if I play the tracks you will see the first and third tracks are the same or the city is the best free software for audio editing and recording though there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what does it is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this it is possible to see the waveform change without exporting but it has another consequence click the track with real-time effects and go to the tracks menu mix and mix and render you see both the first and third waveforms are the same though we can see the change in the waveform the real-time effects stack no longer appears here if we want to change the effects we already added we will not be able to do that so I will undo the mixing and want to see which effects have been added during the export I get the sound I am hearing now so I feel no necessity to mix and render real-time effects in the track you can rearrange these effects stack though I do not hear any difference in rearranging in this way audacity may have plans for the future if you have installed any third-party effects and do not see them in the effects list check if that is enabled go to plugin manager from effect you can find all the plugins here both enabled and disabled these plugins include all the built-in effects from audacity and any third-party effects you can enable or disable any plugin select the plugin and you will see it enable and a disable button you can also filter down disabled effects I have most of my effects enabled I do not have any disabled effects currently news fxfx will be enabled automatically once you download the effect and restart audacity properly besides Muse fxfx other third-party plugins can be found on the plugins page you can check if any third-party plugin is available for your need usually these plugins are easy to use than built-in effects you will need a basic understanding of audio editing to use audacity built-in effects with third-party plugins you can dial some knobs and check how the sound changes not every third-party plugin gets into audacity automatically you can check the installation process for your OS news FX plugins are easy to install and use I suggest you spend some time learning how to use news fxfx multi-track recording in audacity multi-track recording is essential for producing songs or podcasts it is also necessary for re-recording parts of the voiceover if some parts of the voiceover need to be re-recorded you can record that part in another track and replace the part from the main track once you finish recording a track clicking on the record button will start recording after the track it will be the same track just a different clip it is denoted by number two of audio track 1. if you Mouse over the record button you will see a keyboard shortcut to record a new track shift R however shift R will start recording the new track from the last playhead position if you want to record the new track from the beginning click at that point to move the playhead then record the keyboard shortcut is not the only way to record in multi-track from the tracks menu add new track it can be a mono track or stereo track based on your need I will choose the mono track click inside the track from where you want the recording to start click on the record button and the recording will start I have not muted the top track so you may be wondering if the top track will be played back during recording it depends on how to set the overdub go to transport and then transport options I have no tick mark beside the overdub which means it is off I can click on it and the overdub will be on the overdub feature is on now if I record something you will hear both the existing track and the recording I will let you hear the original sounds during the recording what are you editing you can practice [Music] I don't find the overdub feature necessary for voice over recording so I will turn it off there is another option after the overdub software playthrough you will see a headphone input in many microphones it is for live monitoring if you want to hear how your recording sounds during recording you can use this option I do not use live monitoring so I will uncheck the software playthrough option I have said it before and reminding you again if you do not see your connected devices in audacity rescan audio devices can help I will now discuss an interesting effect very useful for podcasters the Audio I just dragged to audacity is a piece of music let me expand the tracks a bit it has become too squeezed after dragging the music track the voice and music track have similar loudness it would make it difficult to hear the voice using autoduck I can adjust the music track automatically though it will not work because the music track has to be on top of the voice track you can see a message asking for the auto duck track to be on the top you can move the track up or down using the track information panel I can now apply autoduck to the music track I will shift the voice to the right so that some music is played before the talking starts before applying Auto duck let's listen to how it sounds together [Music] audacity is the best free software for audio editing and recording the music is too loud for The Voice the auto duck will take the music down during the talks you can set the duck amount which is -12 DB by default I will apply the default settings let's play and listen for the city is the best free software for audio editing and recording so there are a couple of other softwares which is free but what a city is the easiest one to use you can practice your audio recording and editing in audacity and when you are used to this after Auto docking the music becomes low as the voice starts it is a handy tool for podcast intro and outro you can also manually adjust the volume from the envelope tool autoduck decided where to lower the music you can set two points with the envelope tool and drag the volume down or up it enables fine-tuning the volume levels I think the middle part of the music is already at the low points so the envelope tool is not doing much I can show this envelope tool from the part where the volume is much louder in the end the music is louder so let's try the envelope tool here select the envelope tool and click at two points drag from inside the two points so other audio parts will remain unaffected you just pissed huh stop button [Music] foreign [Music] I hope you understand how the envelope tool is doing a similar job to Auto duck audacity is a powerful tool if you can use it correctly you will want to get a single track or file from multiple track generating a single track from multiple tracks is called mixing you can find the mix tool in the tracks menu to mix multiple tracks you have to select those tracks I will select both tracks and go to tracks menu you can combine these get to get a single track it will have the same sound as when the both tracks were playing [Music] if you want to keep both tracks and mix them into a new track that is also possible a new mixtrack is created at the bottom to export this mixed track select everything in the track and go to export audacity lets you export your audio in many formats wave is a lossless format that keeps all the audio data if you need a smaller file size then you can choose MP3 I usually choose wave you have to choose a location and file name and you can save you now know everything to work with multiple tracks in audacity in fact you now know everything you need for voiceover or podcast recording and editing let me know in the comment if you want to know anything else about audacity my channel is full of audacity tutorials I suggest you browse through those if you watch all the audacity tutorials on my channel I think you will know all the necessary concepts of professional audio editing if you can comment on which purpose you use audacity it will help me to make future videos for example if you are generating an audiobook I can give specific tips for audiobook generation if you are using it for podcasting I can guide you in podcast editing if you want to generate good quality audio the first step would be to make sure your recording environment is right the right recording environment means it is quiet and has no obvious loud background noise otherwise you won't be able to generate as much good sound as you like your feedback is very important to make useful videos for you as I know audacity a bit sometimes I do not understand what a beginner can struggle with if you give me feedback like I should desucase those concept more then I will better understand what you are looking for audacity is a powerful audio editor that can do most of the audio editing tasks for beginners even professional voice over actors use audacity as it has all the necessary features it may lack features of some Advanced Audio editing softwares but still it is a fantastic audio editor thanks for watching and see you next

Channel: Master Editor

Views: 22,519

Keywords: audacity tutorial, audacity tutorial for beginners, audacity, how to use audacity, audacity for beginners, learn audacity, audacity how-to, editing audio, record audio audacity, how to record audio, audio editing

Id: 9z372xx552A

Length: 61min 25sec (3685 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 05 2023