Jumpstart your recording career for free with Audacity

August 19, 2013

Music soothes the savage breast, but newcomers to the sonic scene may screech louder than a dubstep-tinged turntable session when they see the cost of professional audio-editing software. Fortunately for folks who don’t want to take out a second mortgage to fund their podcast, there’s Audacity, a powerful open-source audio editor that offers excellent basic production capabilities for a very reasonable price: free. Audacity isn’t as complicated as its full-priced DAW (digital audio workstation) brethren, but the program’s dizzying array of buttons and options will stymie most novice users. This handy-dandy beginner’s guide walks you through the basics of getting started with Audacity. Fussy file types You know a program is complex when a beginner’s guide has a section dedicated to getting files running. In Audacity’s case, the traditional File > Open command works as you’d expect it to, but you may run into compatibility issues when you try to open a common file type such as AAC, M4A, or WMA. That’s because Audacity doesn’t include rights for some proprietary file formats. Out of the box, it supports playback of only six formats: AIFF, FLAC, MP3, OGG, WAV, and Audacity’s own AU. Audacity won’t play proprietary audio formats like WMA without the aid of third-party plug-ins. Fortunately, a third-party plug-in enables support for Dolby’s AC3, Microsoft’s WMA, and Apple’s AAC, M4A, and M4R files. Head to the LAME library download page, and download and run most current version of the FFMpeg Binary available for your operating system. (You’ll have to restart Audacity afterward, if it’s open at the time.) To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046687/jumpstart-your-recording-career-for-free-with-audacity.html#tk.rss_howto