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Audacity 1.3.2 GuideAudacity 1.3.2 Guide
A guide for Jaws users, written by Chorlton Workshop for hsbp.
Introduction
Audacity is a free multi-track audio editor. You can use it for recording,
simple editing of single tracks, or more advanced editing involving multiple
tracks.
This guide is for the 1.3.2 beta version of Audacity. The reason for choosing
the beta version is that a lot of work has been done since the last stable
version (1.2.6) to make Audacity easier to use for users of screen readers.
There is still work to be done in this area, but version 1.3.2 is much easier
to
use than version 1.2.6. The downside of using the beta version is that it still
contains several bugs, and these are mentioned throughout the guide. Audacity
1.3.2 can be downloaded from audacity.sourceforge.net.
Audacity is an extremely powerful program, and this is only an introductory
guide. For more information see the Audacity website, and the Audacity 1.3.2
User Manual which is under construction. Note that the Help in Audacity is
inaccessible to Jaws.
Projects
The objects which Audacity edits are known as projects. So projects are
equivalent to documents in Microsoft Word, and workbooks in Microsoft Excel.
An Audacity project simply consists of a number of tracks.There are a number of
different types of track in Audacity: audio, label, and time. However, the
latter two are inaccessible to Jaws users, and so this guide will only describe
the use of audio tracks. For many simple tasks you'll probably only have one
track in a project.
You can save an Audacity project using the Audacity project file format, and
this preserves all the tracks in the project. However, you only need to save a
project in this format if you intend to continue working on the project in the
future.
Cursor
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, and this
is
similar to the cursor in Microsoft Word. The cursor in Audacity is used for
defining times such as: the start of playback, the position where you want to
start selecting a time range, and the place where audio is pasted from the
clipboard.
Contents
The remaining sections of the guide are as follows:
Main window.
Opening an audio file.
Saving audio.
Playback.
Toolbars.
Track table.
Selection bar.
Moving the cursor.
Selecting audio.
Basic editing.
More advanced editing.
Recording.
Preferences.
Main window
Main components
Title bar. When the window contains an unnamed project, for example, when you
first start Audacity, then the text in the title bar is Audacity. When the
window contains a named project, then the text is the name of the project. To
read the title bar press INSERT + T.
Menu bar.
Toolbars.
Track table. This contains the tracks which make up the project.
Selection bar. This contains controls for reading and setting the cursor
position and the start and end/length of any selected time range.
Status bar. When the mouse is over a control in the interface then often the
status bar gives help on using the control, though this is of little interest
to Jaws users. During a recording, the status bar gives the disk space which
remains for recording. When there is no text in the status bar, then if you
read the status bar, then Jaws reads the contents of the controls on the
selection bar (together with a spurious graphic 60034). To read the status
bar, press INSERT + PAGE DOWN.
Moving around the window
As in any window, to move to the menu bar press ALT, and to leave it press
ESC.
Pressing CTRL + F6 moves you around the following components: Toolbars, Track
table, Selection bar, Toolbars, etc. Pressing CTRL + SHIFT + F6 moves you
around in the opposite direction.
Opening an audio file
To open either an audacity project file or a standard audio file, use the Open
dialog, which is on the File menu (or CTRL + O).
When you first open Audacity, the window contains an empty project, and so when
you open an audio file, it opens in this initial window. If you open any other
files, then they each open in a new window. (If you want to deliberately create
a new window with an empty project, choose New from the File menu, or press
CTRL
+ N.)
Opening standard audio files
Audacity can open audio files in the following standard formats: WAV, AIFF, AU,
MP3, MP2/MPEG, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC. Note that it can't open files in the
Windows Media Audio format (wma). If you want to edit a file in this format,
you
have to use another program to convert the wma file to one of the formats
Audacity can open. There are several audio format conversion programs
available,
for example, Switch which is free in its basic version, or dBpoweramp Music
Converter.
When you open a standard audio file, then the project initially consists of a
single track.
If you open a compressed file, such as an MP3 file, then after you press the
open button in the Open dialog an Import dialog opens which gives the progress
of Audacity decompressing the file.
Saving audio
You can save the audio in a project in either the audacity project format, or
one of the standard audio formats, as described in the following sections. The
Audacity project format preserves all the tracks in the project. You only need
to save a project in the audacity project format if you intend to continue
working on the project in the future. In contrast, when you save in one of the
standard audio formats, Audacity automatically mixes all the tracks down to a
single track.
When you close Audacity, if you haven't saved your changes to an Audacity
project file, then a Save changes? dialog opens asking you whether you want to
save changes before closing. The default button is Yes, but unless you want to
save the project as an Audacity project file, just TAB to the NO button and
press it.
Saving audio in the audacity project format
To save in this format, choose Save Project... from the File menu. The first
time you do this, you get a Warning dialog box telling you that only Audacity
can read these project files. The dialog box contains a check-box which you can
check if you don't want this warning again. If you press the OK button, you
then
get a Save Project As dialog.
Saving audio in one of the standard audio formats
Audacity can save audio in the following standard formats: WAV, MP3, Ogg
Vorbis,
FLAC, and MP2. Note that to save in the MP3 format you need to download an MP3
encoder, as described in the following section.
To save audio in one of the standard audio formats, you have to use one of the
export commands on the File menu:
To save all the audio, go to the Export As... sub-menu on the File menu, and
choose one of the formats on this sub-menu. A standard Save As dialog opens
with a title such as Save MP3 File As:.
To save the selected audio, go the the Export Selection As... sub-menu on the
File menu, and choose one of the formats on this sub-menu.
Saving audio in MP3 format
Due to patent issues, the Audacity installation does not include an MP3
encoder.
However you can download the free LAME MP3 encoder and configure Audacity to
use
this encoder as described in the MP3 Export section of the Preferences section.
There are several patents covering MP3 encoding, and these are owned by a
number
of different companies. Up until very recently, the only company that has asked
for royalties has been Thomson, and they are quite happy for people to use the
LAME MP3 encoder for private, non-commercial use. However, other companies are
now fighting court battles over MP3 patents, and it remains to be seen how they
view the private use of the LAME MP3 encoder.
Playback
Playback depends on whether there is a time range selected (see the Selecting
audio section): if there is no selection, then playback starts at the cursor
position; if there is a selection, then playback starts at the start of the
selection, and stops at the end of the selection.
The volume of the playback is controlled by the output volume slider which is
on
the Mixer toolbar in the Toolbars. Because this volume slider also controls the
volume of Jaws (why?), it's best to adjust this slider to maximum.
Keystrokes for playback:
To start or stop, press SPACEBAR.
Pause or unpause, press P.
Seeking/Jumping. Whilst playing, you can jump forward or backward by either a
short or long period. To jump forward or backward by a short period press
RIGHT ARROW or LEFT ARROW respectively. To jump forward or backward by a long
period, press SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW or SHIFT + LEFT ARROW respectively. The
size
of both the short and long periods can be set in the Preferences dialog, as
described in the Seek times section.
Bug Warning: There is a bug in this feature. If the length of the audio being
played is less than about five minutes, then playback stops after a few
jumps.
When this happens, the position of the cursor is unaffected.
Toolbars
The Toolbars section contains several different toolbars. You can navigate to
all the controls in the Toolbars just by using the TAB key.
These are the different toolbars:
Control. Controls for playback and recording which all have keyboard
shortcuts.
Device. Allows you to set the soundcard for recording and playback. These
controls are also available under the Audio I/O category of the Preferences
dialog. By default this toolbar is not shown.
Edit. This contains buttons for Cut, Paste, etc. These commands are also
available on either the Edit or View menu, and all have keyboard shortcuts.
Meter. This contains both an input and an output level meter but both of
these
are inaccessible to Jaws.
Mixer. This contains output and input volume sliders and a combo box to
select
the input source for recording.
Tools. This contains tools for editing which involve the use of the mouse.
Transcription. This contains a playback button and a playback speed slider.
You can show and hide all these toolbars using the Toolbars sub-menu on the
View
Menu. Only showing the toolbars you're likely to use, like the Mixer Toolbar,
has the advantage of greatly reducing the number of TABs needed to find a
particular control.
Track table
The Track table contains the tracks which make up the project. The table just
has one column, and a row for each of the tracks.
Each track has a name, and Jaws reads this when you move to the track, or press
INSERT + UP ARROW to read the current line. Each audio track is displayed as a
waveform, with the addition of a small area containing various controls at the
beginning of the track. These controls include a menu, and controls for track
gain and pan. Using these controls is described in the More advanced editing
section of this guide.
The Cursor is displayed in the track table as a vertical line, as is the
playback position during playback. The positions of both the cursor and the
playback position are available to Jaws users via the Selection Start and Audio
Position spinboxes in the the Selection Bar.
Track focus
Whenever the focus is within the track table, and the table contains one or
more
tracks (rows), then one of the tracks has the focus, and you can move between
tracks by using the UP and DOWN ARROWS.
Track selection
You need to be able to select tracks:
For operations such as aligning tracks which can be found on the Tracks menu.
As part of the process of selecting some audio, as described in the Selecting
audio section.
To toggle the selection of a track which has the focus, press ENTER. Also, if
you press CTRL + A this selects all the tracks (and all the audio, as described
in the Selecting audio section).
Jaws tells you whether a track is selected, if you do any of the following:
Move the focus to the track.
Press INSERT + UP ARROW to read the current line.
Toggle the selection of the track, by pressing ENTER.
More precisely, if you do any of the above, then:
If the track is not selected, then Jaws says table the name of the track
row
If the track is selected, then Jaws says table the name of the track select
on row.
Selection bar
There are five controls on the Selection bar, and as in any toolbar use TAB to
move between them:
Project Rate edit-combo box. This is the sampling rate of the project.
Selection Start edit-spinbox. If there is a time range selected then this
gives the start of the selection, else it gives the position of the cursor.
Selection End or Selection Length edit-spinbox, depending on the setting of
the End/Length radio buttons described below.
Audio Position edit-spinbox. This gives the playback position during
playback.
End/Length radio buttons, which determine whether the second edit-spinbox
shows the length or end of the selection.
Edit spinboxes
Each of the spinboxes contains a time which can be in a number of different
formats. The default format is hh:mm:ss, and the description below assumes that
this is the format being used.
If you move to a spinbox by tabbing, then an example of Jaws reading the
contents of the spinbox is 00h13m04, that is 0 hours, 13 minutes, and 4 seconds.
In fact, each of the spinboxes is made up of three sub-spinboxes, each
containing two digits: h edit-spinbox, m edit-spinbox, and an s edit-spin box.
Within a spinbox, one of the six digits has the focus. You can move this focus
by using a number of keystrokes, and whenever the focus moves to a different
sub-spinbox Jaws reads out the contents of the sub-spinbox. The keystrokes for
moving this focus are:
HOME moves you to the beginning of the spinbox, that is the first digit of
the
hours.
END moves you to the end of the spinbox, that is the second digit of the
seconds.
The LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys move you through the six digits of the spinbox.
To change the value of the time, you can either:
Type in digits.
Use the UP and DOWN ARROW keys to increment or decrement the value of the
focused digit. After each increment or decrement, Jaws reads out the six
digits in the spin box.
Restricted keystrokes in edit-spinboxes
Within any of the edit-spinboxes, most of the standard keystrokes used in
Audacity do not work. Keystrokes which do not work include:
CTRL + F6 for moving between the main components of the interface.
The keystrokes for playback, for example, SPACEBAR.
This means that you have to TAB to the End/Length radio buttons before you can
use all of the standard keystrokes. Hopefully these restrictions will be
removed
in the next version of Audacity.
Edit-spinbox formats
As mentioned above, the time in a spinbox can have a number of different
formats. The shortcut menu of a spinbox gives several options for the format.
For example, the hh:mm:ss + milliseconds format is useful for making small
changes in the time. If you change the format of one spinbox, then the formats
of the other spinboxes are changed as well.
Bug Warning: to get round a bug in the current version, follow these
instructions to change the format:
With the focus on the spinbox, press the APPLICATION key to open its shortcut
menu.
Select a format from this menu, and press ENTER.
Due to a bug, no control in the Audacity interface now has the focus, and
nearly all of the shortcut keys don't work. The easiest way of regaining the
focus is to press ALT + TAB twice. This switches you to another running
program and then back to Audacity again since Jaws is running, you'll
always
have at least one other program running.
The focus should now be in the Track table, so to return to the spinbox,
press
CTRL + F6 to move to the Selection bar, and then TAB to the spinbox.
Moving the cursor
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, for
example, the start of playback, the position where you want to start selecting
a
time range, or the position where audio is pasted from the clipboard.
There are a number of ways of moving the cursor:
HOME and END keys. These move the cursor to the start and end of the audio
respectively.
The [ key during playback. If during playback you press [ and then SPACEBAR
to
stop, the cursor is moved to the point in the audio where you pressed the [
key. In practice, the following method is more flexible:
During playback, press P to pause when you reach the position where you
want
to move to cursor to.
If you're unhappy with this position, unpause and using the Seeking/Jumping
keys have another attempt to pause in the right place.
Press [ to mark the new cursor position.
Press SPACEBAR to stop.
The Selection Start spinbox on the Selection bar. Note that when you do this
you should first set the End/Length radio buttons to Length, so that the
second spinbox gives the Selection Length rather than Selection End. (If it's
set to End, then if you decrement the cursor position the Selection End
spinbox remains unchanged and you inadvertantly select a time range.)
LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys. If the focus is in the Track table, then pressing
the LEFT or RIGHT ARROW keys moves the cursor to the left or right by a small
amount respectively. However, without the visual feedback of seeing the
cursor
in the waveforms of the tracks, this method is of limited use.
BUG WARNING: If you use these keys, and then move the cursor using the HOME
or
END keys, all the selected tracks may become unselected for no reason.
Selecting audio
In the case of an audio editor which can only edit a single audio track, then
selecting audio simply consists of specifying the start and end times of the
audio which you want to select, that is, a time range. For example you might
want to select the audio between the times 1 minute 2 seconds and 5 minutes 23
seconds.
However, Audacity is a multi-track editor. If the project consists of a number
of tracks, then you may want to select the audio on only some of the tracks for
a given time range. So in Audacity, as well as having to select a time range,
you also have to specify which tracks are selected. If you've selected some
audio, tried to edit it, and nothing's happened, it may well be because none of
the tracks are selected. The selection of tracks was described in the track
selection section above, and selecting a time range is described in the next
section.
A quick way of selecting all of the audio in the project is to use the shortcut
CTRL + A: this selects all the tracks, and selects a time range of the entire
recording.
Selecting a time range
The general way of selecting a time range consists of two steps:
Move the cursor to where you want to start the selection, as described in the
Moving the cursor section above.
Set the end of the selection.
There are a number of ways of setting the end of the selection:
To set the end of the selection at the end of the tracks, press SHIFT + END.
To set the end of the selection at the start of the tracks, press SHIFT +
HOME. Note that the spinboxes in the Selection bar always give the start and
end of the selection in chronological order. So in this case the start of the
selection will be 00:00:00.
The ] key during playback. If during playback you press ] and then SPACEBAR
to
stop, the end of the selection is set at the point in the audio where you
pressed the ] key. In practice, the following method is more flexible:
During playback, press P to pause when you reach the position which you
want
to be the end of the selection.
If you're unhappy with this position, unpause and using the Seeking/Jumping
keys have another attempt to pause in the right place.
Press ] to mark the position for the end of the selection.
Press SPACEBAR to stop.
Using the spinboxes on the Selection bar:
If you want to set the end of the selection after the cursor, set the
End/Length radio button as desired, and increment the End/Length Selection
spinbox.
If you want to set the end of the selection before the cursor, set the
End/Length radio button to End, and decrement the Start Selection spinbox.
You can press SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW a number of times to
select the time before or after the cursor respectively. However, this is not
a particularly useful method without the visual feedback of seeing the
waveform and the selected time range.
Adjusting a selected time range
There are a number of ways of making small adjustments to a selected time range:
Find zero crossings. If you choose Find Zero Crossings on the Edit menu, then
Audacity adjusts slightly both the start and end of the selection so that
they
occur when the amplitude of the audio is zero. This can reduce the audible
clicks which can be created when cutting and pasting pieces of audio.
Using the Start and End/Length Selection spinboxes on the Selection bar.
If you press SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW this extends the
selection by a small amount on either the left or right hand end of the
selection respectively.
If you press CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW this
contracts the selection by a small amount on either the left or right hand
end
of the selection respectively.
Deselecting a selected time range
If you press any of the keys which move the cursor (HOME, END, LEFT and RIGHT
ARROWS), then any selected time range is deselected. After you have pressed the
LEFT or RIGHT ARROW keys, then the cursor position is at the start or end of
the
selection which has just been deselected.
BUG WARNING: If you use either the LEFT or RIGHT ARROW keys to deselect a
selected time range, then all the selected tracks may become unselected for no
reason.
Basic editing
Deleting audio
To delete the selected audio, press the DELETE key.
If you want a preview of the audio after deletion, press C which plays back
from
a short time before the selected audio to a short time after the selected
audio,
but omitting the selected audio. The length of the times of playback before and
after the selection can be set in Cut Preview section of the Audio I/O category
in the Audacity Preferences dialog.
Cut, Copy, and Paste
To cut the selected audio, press CTRL + X. For a preview of the audio after
the cut, press C.
To copy the selected audio, press CTRL + C.
To paste the audio on the clipboard, move the cursor to where you want to
insert the audio, and press CTRL + V.
Replace with silence
To replace the selected audio with the same length of silence, choose Silence
from the Edit menu, or press CTRL + L.
Insert silence
To insert a period of silence into the selected tracks:
Move the cursor to where you want to insert the silence.
Choose Silence from the Generate menu.
A Silence Generator dialog opens, and the focus is on a spinbox which allows
you to specify the length of the silence. The spinbox is identical to the
spinboxes used on the Selection bar, though the default format is just
seconds. Set the time that you want, and then press ENTER to press the
default
OK button.
Note that all the commands on the Generate menu have the following behaviour.
If
no audio is selected, the generated audio is inserted. However is some audio is
selected, then the selected audio is replaced with the generated audio.
Effects
Audacity provides a large number of effects which are available on the Effects
menu.
As a simple example, to either fade in or out over some selected audio, choose
either Fade In or Fade Out from the Effects menu.
Deleting tracks
To delete the focused track, press SHIFT + C.
To delete the selected track(s), choose Remove Tracks from the Tracks menu.
This provides a quick way of deleting all the tracks if you first press CTRL
+
A to make sure that all the tracks are selected.
More advanced editing
Adding a new empty track
To add a new empty track, choose an option from the Add New sub-menu which is
on
the Tracks menu.
Import audio files
You can import one or more audio files, and these become new tracks in the
existing project. To import standard audio file(s), open the File menu, and
choose Audio from the Import sub-menu. A Select one or more audio files
dialog
opens, which has the same structure as a standard Open dialog. Select one or
more files, and press ENTER to press the OK button.
Note that immediately after the import, the new tracks are selected, and all
other tracks are unselected.
Duplicate
To duplicate the selected audio into new track(s), choose Duplicate on the Edit
menu.
Aligning tracks
The Align Tracks sub-menu on the Tracks menu gives several options for moving
selected track(s) in time. For example, suppose you have two tracks, and you
want to move the second track so that it starts at the time 5 seconds. To do
this:
Set the first track to unselected, and the second track to selected.
Set the cursor position to 5 seconds using the Selection Start spinbox on the
Selection bar.
Choose Align with cursor from the Align Tracks sub-menu.
Track menu
You can open the menu of a focused track by pressing SHIFT + M. The options on
the menu include renaming the track.
BUG WARNING: if there is only one track, SHIFT + M does not open the menu. As a
work-around, you can use the Jaws cursor to open the menu: press INSERT +
NUMPAD
MINUS to route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor, and then press NUMPAD SLASH to
press the left mouse button, which opens the menu.
Track gain
To change the gain of the focused track, press SHIFT + G. A Gain dialog opens
which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the gain. The initial
focus is on the edit box, but note that the current gain is not selected. The
range of gain (db) is -36 to +36.
Track pan
To change the pan of the focused track, press SHIFT + P. A Pan dialog opens
which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the pan. The initial
focus is on the edit box, but note that the current pan is not selected. The
range of pan is -1 to 1, corresponding to left and right.
Track Mute and Solo
The Mute and Solo settings on each track only affect playback, they don't
affect
the project.
If one or more tracks are set to Mute, then these tracks don't contribute to
playback. To toggle the Mute setting of a focused track, press SHIFT + U.
If one or more tracks are set to Solo, then only these tracks contribute to
playback. The Solo setting overrides the Mute setting. To toggle the Solo
setting of a focused track, press SHIFT + S.
Recording
Whenever you start to record, a new audio track is added to the project, and
the
recorded audio is inserted into this new track.
The default name of a new track is Audio Track, but for some reason Jaws
reads the name as Track n, where n is replaced by the row number of the
track.
The new track is initially not selected.
The recorded audio is inserted starting at the cursor position. (If there are
no tracks in the project, then the cursor position is normally 0 seconds.)
Set up
There are a number of settings which may need changing before you make a
recording:
Input source. This is set by a combo box which is on the Mixer toolbar in the
Toolbars, and is the next control after the input volume slider. The combo
box
contains options such as microphone.
Input volume slider. This is on the Mixer toolbar, which is in the Toolbars.
Adjusting this is described in one of the following sections. BUG WARNING:
After you have played back any audio, you can only change the value of the
slider whilst recording.
Number of channels. For recording speech, mono is fine. See the Number of
channels for recording section in the Preferences section.
Sampling. For recording speech, a sampling rate of 22050 Hz, and sampling
format of 16-bit seems to be considered ok. For music use 44100 Hz, and
32-bit
float. Setting the defaults for these for a new project is described in the
Default Sampling section of the Preferences section.
Recording controls
To start recording, press R.
To pause or unpause recording, press P.
To stop recording, press SPACEBAR.
Adjusting the input volume slider
There is an input level meter provided for helping to set up the input volume,
but it isn't accessible to Jaws users. However, it's easy to set up the input
volume by making some short test recordings and using the dialog box of the
Amplify effect to measure the peak level of the recorded sound. Before giving a
list of step by step instructions for making the test recordings, there's a
description of how the Amplify dialog can be used to measure the level of the
recorded sound.
If you select some audio, and then open the Amplify dialog on the Effects menu,
then the initial focus is on an Amplification edit box. The initial value in
this edit box is the amount of amplification in decibels needed so that the
recording uses the full dynamic range. This value indicates if you need to
change the value of the input volume slider:
If the value is 0, then the recording is taking up the full range, or has
been
clipped to the full range. In this case you should adjust the input volume
slider to a lower setting.
If the value is too high, then the recording is only taking up a small
fraction of the dynamic range, and you'll be getting an unnecessary amount of
noise in the recording. My uneducated guess is that anything above about 6 db
is too high, and you should try adjusting the input volume slider to a higher
setting.
To make some short test recordings so that you can adjust the input volume
slider, start with an empty project, and move to the input volume slider which
is in the Toolbars. Then go round the following loop until you are happy with
the setting:
Press P to pause.
Press R. Because you previously paused, the recording won't start until you
unpause in one of the following steps.
You should be focussed on the input volume slider, so you can adjust its
value
using the LEFT and RIGHT ARROW keys.
Press P to unpause, and so start the recording.
Make some representative noises for a short while, and then press SPACEBAR to
stop.
Press CTRL + A to select all the audio.
Choose Amplify from the Effects menu.
The Amplify dialog opens, and the initial focus is on the Amplification edit
box. On the basis of this value, decide if you need to repeat this loop with
a
different setting of the input volume slider as discussed above.
Press ESC to close the Amplify dialog box.
Choose Remove Tracks from the Tracks menu to delete the test track.
Note that in the above instructions, the reason for the pause and unpause is to
get round the bug in the input volume slider which was noted above.
Preferences
The Audacity Preferences dialog allows you to adjust many of the settings in
Audacity. After a brief description of the dialog box, the following sections
describe some of the more common settings.
Audacity Preferences dialog box
To open this dialog box, choose Preferences on the Edit menu.
On the left hand side of the dialog is a list of categories. To the right of
this list are a set of options which correspond to the category which is
selected in the list of categories.
Note that when you first open the dialog, you would expect the focus to be the
list of categories, but in fact it's the OK button. Just TAB twice to move to
the list of categories.
The dialog's default button is the OK button.
Seek times
Whilst playing, you can jump (seek) forward or backward by either a short or
long period. To set the values of the short and long periods:
In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Audio I/O category.
Tab to the Seek Time Short period and Long period edit boxes, and enter the
desired values in seconds.
MP3 Export
The Audacity installation does not include an MP3 encoder due to patent issues.
However you can use the LAME MP3 encoder for private non-commercial use. To
install the LAME MP3 encoder library:
Download a copy of the LAME encoder. This is available from a number of
websites, for example the MP3 page of the Rarewares website, whose address is
rarewares.org/mp3.html. A direct link to the zip file which you need to
download is: lame3.97.zip.
The only file which you need from this zip file is lame_enc.dll. Note that a
zip file is treated as a folder in Windows Explorer. Copy the file
lame_enc.dll to another location on the disk: for example, create a LAME
folder in either My Documents or C:\Program Files, and copy lame_enc.dll to
that folder.
You now need to tell Audacity the location of the file lame_enc.dll, and this
is
described in the next section.
Location of LAME MP3 encoder library
To tell Audacity where to find the LAME MP3 encoder library:
In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the File Formats category.
TAB to the MP3 Export Setup: Find Library button, and press it.
A dialog opens asking you whether you would like to locate the file
lame_enc.dll. Press ENTER to press Yes.
A Where is lame_enc.dll? dialog opens which has the structure of a standard
Open dialog. Navigate to the file, select it, and press ENTER.
You are returned to the Audacity Preferences dialog. Note that if you now
want
to press the default OK button, you have to first TAB to move away from the
Find Library button, and then then press ENTER to press the default OK
button.
Bit Rate
To set the bit-rate for MP3 export:
In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the File Formats category.
TAB to the MP3 Export Setup: Bit Rate combo box, and select a value. 128 kbs
is normally OK for music, and a bit rate as low as 64 kbs may be OK for
speech.
Number of channels for recording
To set the number of channels for recording:
In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Audio I/O category.
TAB to the Recording: Channels combo box, and select either 1 (mono), or 2
(stereo). Mono is fine for speech recordings, and reduces file sizes.
Default sampling
To set the default sampling rate and format for a new project:
In the Audacity Preferences dialog, select the Quality category.
TAB to the Sampling: Default Sample Rate combo box. For music, set the rate
to
44100 Hz, but for speech 22050 Hz is fine and reduces file sizes.
TAB to the next control which is the Sampling: Default Sample Format combo
box. Audacity recommend that you leave this on 32-bit float, but for speech
16-bit is fine.
Keyboard shortcuts
You can change the keyboard shortcut for any of the commands in Audacity. To do
this, first select the Keyboard category in the Audacity Preferences dialog.
To change a shortcut:
TAB to the list of Key Bindings, which is a list of the commands and their
corresponding shortcuts. To navigate this list you can use the HOME, END, and
UP and DOWN ARROW keys. Unfortunately, you can't use the first letter(s) of
the command which is a real pain as there are 158 commands.
Select the command whose shortcut you want to change.
Then either:
To set a new shortcut: TAB to the edit box, and type the new shortcut; then
TAB to the Set button and press it.
To remove the shortcut: TAB to the Clear button and press it.
To reset all the shortcuts to their default values, TAB to the Defaults button
and press it.
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