Audacity is a free open-source (meaning that original code may be edited and modified by anyone) digital audio editor and recording application software. Audacity is currently available for Windows, macOS and Linux operating systems. Audacity was released on May 28th, 2000, during the web 1.0 era and was created by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg at Carnegie Mellon University. FossHub, a website dedicated to hosting free public downloads, boasts a large number of 69 million downloads of Audacity. This number however does not represent the download numbers from the official Audacity download page, we can only assume that the true download number is in the hundreds of millions.
So, what can Audacity do? Audacity is able to perform a multitude of tasks from recording to importing/exporting, sound quality performance, internal and external plug-in use, editing, effects, accessibility, and analysis for visualizing and selecting frequencies. To break down these features even further I shall try my best to explain the many features of Audacity through my own understanding of them.
Recording: When a microphone is plugged in through a USB port, Audacity can record live audio. This is a great tool in which users can also dub over existing tracks to add layers of audio onto a project. Audacity can also use a internal sound card to capture streaming audio.
Importing/Exporting: Audio files can be can be imported into Audacity and then edited with a vast amount of features to help improve the quality or too just be edited into a new or pre-existing audio file. Once the imported file is up to par with the users preference it can then be exported in different file formats.
Sound Quality: Once a file has been recorded or imported, sample rates in 16-bit, 24-bit or 32-bit can be converted using high-quality resampling. In other words 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit audio files are now obsolete, computers nowadays run on a 64-bit operating system.
Plug-Ins: A multitude of plugins are compatible with Audacity whether they be internal or external. Plug-ins can also be modified in a text-editor or can be created by users.
Editing: Editing is made easy with Audacity. Users can chop up audio files and combine them with other existing audio files. Users can scrub to certain chunks of audio in order to edit with ease. Multiple layers of audio can be stacked on top of each other and blended together in projects.
Effects: Internal audio effects integrated within Audacity allow for users to modify pre-existing audio. Plug-ins can also help to modify/create new audio effects. A great effect within Audacity is the ability to remove white-noise.
Accessibility: Dragging a mouse across a screen to click on multiple commands can be slow and time consuming when trying to complete a project in a specified amount of time. Audacity allows for the use of keyboard commands in order to complete tasks with a swift press of a key on the keyboard.
Audacity generally tends to pull on support from the public in order to achieve the best quality possible. The credit page lists at least a hundred or so names that have helped in order to create the best possible product on the market. These names vary from team members to contributors and translators. It is clear to see that Audacity is a product for the people, created by the people. Contributors are typically listed for contributing to code (plug-ins), translations, patches, feedback and donations. Audacity makes it quite clear that contributors help to support Audacity and are quite thankful for it.
However, although it is a popular tool; during my first initial practice run I found it quite hard to grasp the software. The overall aesthetic of Audacity makes it feel quite outdated and it does genuinely have a early 2000s feel to it. The program still works as one would expect it too. I would not recommend Audacity to a beginner in the field of audio editing as it can be quite eerie when trying to learn. Thankfully contributors and youtubers have posted numerous guides for beginners to help polish up skills. With practice and time anyone can grasp the workings of Audacity. It is user-friendly in the sense that someone without any knowledge of Audacity can easily import and scrub through audio files, but when it comes to removing and cleaning up certain areas of audio whether it be through the use of plug-ins or effects it can be quite daunting. Once users have the hang of it, it can then be easily used to clean up audio for a presentation, you tube video or podcast. Audacity can do it all.
If you would like to download or find out more about Audacity, you can do so here: https://www.audacityteam.org/
– Kharum
Thank you Kharum for this very interesting post on Audacity. I agree that many opensource tools do not have the slick user interfaces that we’ve come to expect over the past decade and feel like they are stuck in the early 2000s. I expect the developers focus their time on keeping the functions as strong as possible and don’t find the time to work on the look and feel of the software.