Audacity - Handouts

Control Toolbar
Editing Tools
Selection tool - for selecting the range of audio you want to edit or listen to.
Envelope tool - for changing the volume over time.
Draw tool - for modifying individual samples.
Zoom tool - for zooming in and out.
Timeshift tool - for sliding tracks left or right.

Multi tool - lets you access all of these tools at once depending on the location
of the mouse and the keys you are holding down.
Audio Control Buttons

Skip to Start - moves the cursor to time 0. If you press Play at this point, your project will play from the
beginning.
Play - starts playing audio at the cursor position. If some audio is selected, only the selection is played.
Loop - if you hold down the Shift key, the Play button changes to a Loop button, which lets you keep playing the
selection over and over again.
Record - starts recording audio at the project sample rate (the sample rate in the lower-left corner of the
window). The new track will begin at the current cursor position, so click the "Skip to Start" button first if you
want the track to begin at time 0.
Pause - temporarily stops playback or recording until you press pause again.
Stop - stops recording or playing. You must do this before applying effects, saving or exporting.
Skip to End - moves the cursor to the end of the last track.
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Mixer Toolbar
The Mixer Toolbar has three controls, used to set the volume levels of your audio device and choose the input source. The
leftmost slider controls the playback volume, the other slider controls the recording volume, and the control on the right
lets you choose the input source (such as "Microphone", "Line In", "Audio CD", etc.). Use the Record Level Meter to set the
correct level.
Changing these controls has no effect on the audio data in your project - in other words it doesn't matter what the output
volume level is when you Export or Save a project - the end result is the same.
Edit Toolbar
All of the buttons on this toolbar perform actions - and with a couple of exceptions, they're all just shortcuts of existing
menu items to save you time.
Holding the mouse over a tool will show a "tooltip" in case you forget which one is which.
Cut
Copy
Paste
Trim away the audio outside the selection
Silence the selected audio
Undo
Redo (repeat last command).
Zoom In
Zoom Out
Fit selection in window - zooms until the selection just fits inside the window.
Fit project in window - zooms until all of the audio just fits inside the window.
Meter Toolbar
The Meter Toolbar is used for monitoring the input and output audio levels. Typically it is used to make sure that the
loudest volume is as loud as possible (for maximum fidelity) without clipping or distorting it. The output (playback) meter is
the green one, on the left in the picture above, and the input (recording) meter is in red, on the right.The meters provide a
visual indication of the current audio levels going in and out of audacity.The right hand end of the meter corresponds to the
point at which the audio will be clipped, and the left hand end is silence
 For stereo, the top bar shows the left channel, and the bottom bar shows the right channel.
 The brightest part of the bar shows the average audio level (related to the loudness) and the darker part of the bar
shows the peak audio level.
 The peak-hold line to the right of this shows the maximum audio level achieved in the last 3 seconds.
 Finally, the clipping indicators on the far right of each meter will light up if clipping is detected (meaning that the
audio was too loud and will sound distorted).
If clipping is detected when you are recording, you should stop, lower the volume of your input source, and start recording
again from the start. If the output meter clips then you need to make some or all of your tracks quieter using the track gain
control.
Track Pop-Down Menu
The Track Pop-Down Menu appears when you click in a track's title. This lets you access a few special commands that apply
to individual tracks.
Name... - lets you change the name of the track.

Move Track Up - exchange places with the track above this one.
Move Track Down - exchange places with the track below this one.
Waveform - sets the display to Waveform - this is the default way of visualizing audio.
Waveform (dB) - similar to Waveform, but on a logarithmic scale, measured in decibels (dB).
Spectrum - display the track as a spectrogram, showing the amount of energy in different frequency bands.
Pitch (EAC) - highlights the contour of the fundamental frequency (musical pitch) of the audio, using the Enhanced
Autocorrelation (EAC) algorithm.
Mono - makes this track a mono track, meaning it is played out of just one speaker, or played out of the left and right
speakers equally.
Left Channel - makes this track come out of only the left speaker.
Right Channel - makes this track come out of only the right speaker.
Make Stereo Track - if there is another track below this one, joins them to make a single stereo track, with the top track
representing the left speaker, and the bottom track representing the right speaker. When tracks are joined into a stereo
pair, all edits automatically apply to both the left and right channel.
Split Stereo Track - if the selected track is a stereo track (a pair of left and right tracks joined together as a single track), this
operation splits them into two separate tracks that you can modify and edit independently.
Set Sample Format - this determines the quality of the audio data and the amount of space it takes up. 16-bit is the quality
used by audio CD's and is the minimum quality that Audacity uses internally (8-bit audio files are automatically converted
when you open them). 24-bit is used in higher-end audio hardware. 32-bit float is the highest quality that Audacity
supports, and it is recommended that you use 32-bit float unless you have a slow computer or are running out of disk
space.
Set Rate - sets the number of samples per second of the track. 44100 Hz is used by audio CDs. Tracks can have different
sample rates in Audacity; they are automatically resampled to the project sample rate (in the lower-left corner of the
window).
Note : Raw Project file in Audacity is saved as .aup file. To compressed it, export to mp3, wav or any file format available in
FILE>EXPORT option.

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Control Toolbar

Envelope tool - for changing the volume over time.

Draw tool - for modifying individual samples.

Zoom tool - for zooming in and out.

Timeshift tool - for sliding tracks left or right.

Audio Control Buttons

Trim away the audio outside the selection

Silence the selected audio

Redo (repeat last command).

Name... - lets you change the name of the track.

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