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Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool Pick of the Week
The macosxhints Rating:

[Score: 8 out of 10]
[This is the Pick of the Week for the week of May 29th]

Lately I've had the need to do more audio recording -- I've had a couple talks on the Macworld podcast, and did a tutorial video on using Butler a while back. For both podcasts and the video project, I found myself needing an audio application with the ability to record my voice, and then edit those recordings. Sure, I could have used QuickTime Pro, but it's audio recording tool is fairly simplistic, and the editing tools leave much to be desired.

Enter Audacity. This open-source app, which runs on OS X, Windows, and Linux, was the perfect solution to my needs. It's built-in recording tool worked quite well, and the editing tools more than met my needs. I was able to zoom in on my audio track and find the break points, so that I could seamlessly splice in my corrections (more corrections than I care to remember). There also a number of effects that can be added, though I resisted the temptation to put myself in a large auditorium through the liberal use of the Echo effect.

Audacity may not meet the needs of people who work with audio for a living, but for my needs, it was more than enough. I've barely scratched the surface of its feature set, though -- it can do much more than I asked of it. So if you work with audio and are looking for a useful and free recording and editing tool, Audacity is probably worth an audition.
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Audacity and Automator
Authored by: dunsurfin on Jun 08, '06 10:14:58AM

Audacity is a great piece of software (and also has a portable apps version that runs from a USB flash drive). I was wondering if anyone has any luck creating Automator workflows for Audacity. I would love to be able to get Automator to go through a directory of files and normalize, trim and then export to MP3….



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Audacity and Automator
Authored by: osxpounder on Jun 08, '06 12:03:16PM

The portable apps version sounds great. Where can that be found? I don't see mention of that on Audacity's download pages.... I could really use that now & then.

Now that I think about it, isn't any OSX version of this a portable apps version?

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What clown decided that the iPod calendar view didn't need to show you the Location field? I guess they always use the same room at Apple.



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Audacity and Automator
Authored by: dunsurfin on Jun 08, '06 12:18:29PM
Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool
Authored by: joshpar on Jun 08, '06 10:24:26AM

Audacity is a wonderful app... however a Universal build has been slow to come, and compiling the source is problematic on the new intels. Also of concern is the length of time between releases (the last releases coming in Novemeber of last year!). 1.3 will be great once it is really working.

If anyone out there has been succesful in an Intel build, please let us know how you did it!



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Easier than GarageBand
Authored by: tatilsever on Jun 08, '06 11:09:10AM

I have used Audacity on my PC more than a few times. As with most good open source projects, there are good tutorials for beginners on the web, it is very intuitive to use and its built-in noise removal function is great (well, you have to do some trial and error to find right amount of applied before you start affecting the quality of the recording). As an occasional and not so demanding user of an audio recording tool, I found it much more intuitive and easier to use than GarageBand, which does not have noise removal capability. Unfortunately, Mac version (on my intel) does not seem to be as stable and well-behaved as the Windows version. Maybe universal version will help solve the problem, but I was sort of told not to expect it before intel based PowerMac replacements come out. I tried to compile on my own, but it did not work out well. Bummer...



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Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool
Authored by: osxpounder on Jun 08, '06 11:41:44AM

I've used it for years, even for professional work, because it's easily had, it's free, it does the basics very well, and, once I put in the time [not much needed] to learn its interface, I'd rather do it in the app I already know, than pull up a more powerful app to do the same thing.

Audacity helped me a lot with its spectrogram view, too --- I used that to make a series of images for a professor who teaches educators of the hearing-impaired, for example.

The developers are particularly responsive to disabled users, and do more to make this app accessible than most folks. I'm impressed with the dedication and the responsiveness of Audacity's developers. Top notch. Far and away the finest example of free, open source software I've yet encountered.

The email list for users is also top notch -- full of helpful, knowledgeable users, of all abilities, and frequented by developers of the program. I can't say enough great things about Audacity, but I've got to stop somewhere. Get it if you think you need audio editing software.

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What clown decided that the iPod calendar view didn't need to show you the Location field? I guess they always use the same room at Apple.



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Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool
Authored by: osxpounder on Jun 08, '06 12:17:46PM

I should add that I've not yet used an Intel Mac, so I haven't encountered the problems I see mentioned with Audacity on those machines. That would be a bummer, if I had to rely on it, but here's how I look at it: if I *must* rely on a software tool, then I *must* keep a machine that will run that tool. Also, I *must* have a reliable tool, which, in this case, suggests that my already-ordered MBP will need a different audio editor if I expect to use it for that kind of work.
Thanks for mentioning the Intel problems!

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What clown decided that the iPod calendar view didn't need to show you the Location field? I guess they always use the same room at Apple.



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Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool
Authored by: joab on Jun 08, '06 03:41:57PM

I used it once to record a live dj mix from my turntables and mixer. I doesn't seem it is very well designed for recording stuff longer than a couple of minutes. It crashed hard on me after about an hour (and the GUI was a mess before the crash too. It was like it had restarted from the beginning of the timeline when I reached a certain length of recording). Had to start the mix over from the beginning. Since then I cannot trust it.

Now I record everything in Logic Express and couldn't be happier!



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Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool
Authored by: joshpar on Jun 08, '06 05:19:30PM

For long recording projects, I have had excellent results with Ardour. It requires X11 and Jack, but is by far one of my favorite audio tools.

Josh



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Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool
Authored by: morespace54 on Jun 08, '06 12:05:29PM

Indeed... that would be awsome...



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Amadeus
Authored by: gidds on Jun 08, '06 01:00:45PM
It's a while since I saw Audacity; it looked pretty solid, and it's great to see a good-quality free, open-source app.

But there are alternatives, and the audio editor in my Dock is Amadeus II. It has tons of features -- for example, a pitch/timestretch which gave better results than both of Cubase's ones; very powerful denoising and declicking, and it can use VST plug-ins too. And its interface seems very well designed; I find it quick and easy to do some pretty complex editing. It'll do the obvious stuff like timed recording, normalisation, stereo balancing, echoe, EQ and some pretty advanced filtering, and it has a range of spectra, sonograms and other analysis tools. It's shareware, but pretty cheap, and the author has been pretty responsive to suggestions. (Disclaimer: no connection other than as a happy user.) Well worth a look.

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Andy/

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Audacity on a new MacBook
Authored by: jscarry on Jun 11, '06 08:53:31PM
I jst got my new MacBook for some reason my usual sound program, Sound Studio, won't accept my registration, so I downloaded a copy of Audacity. I've tried Audacity in the past but it always had problems. I had the same reliability issues as another poster and rarely used it.
It has had trouble booting up on my MacBook, but after a force quit, it started. It recorded a short test file fine, but I'm getting a spinning beach ball when I try to play back a 2 minute test. So, it isn't ready for Intel Macs yet.
An interesting side effect of my testing is that I noticed the sound quality of the built-in mic is really good. There is almost no background noise. The noise filter in Audacity took what little noise there was out. You could definitely use the MacBook to record meeting notes or podcasts.
Another aside, the MacBook works well with Skype. Good sound quality for the person on the other end and excellent quality for me.

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Audacity on a new MacBook
Authored by: Mikey-San on Jun 11, '06 10:28:44PM

Regarding your Sound Studio 3 registration code not working:

I've sent you an e-mail via the OS X Hints messaging system. Please check the e-mail address associated with your OS X Hints account.

Thanks!

Michael Watson
Freeverse Software



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