Audacity - A powerful audio recording and editing tool

Jun 08, '06 07:29:00AM

Contributed by: robg

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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