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Audacity is a free digital audio editor and recording application, available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux and other operating systems.
Audacity was started by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg at Carnegie Mellon University.
The latest release of Audacity is 2.0.0 and was released on 13 March 2012. As of 10 October 2011 (2011 -10-10), it was the 11th most popular download from SourceForge.net, with 76.5 million downloads. Audacity won the SourceForge.net 2007 and 2009 Community Choice Award for Best Project for Multimedia.
Features and usage
As well as recording audio from multiple sources, Audacity can also be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including podcasts by adding effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out. Audacity has also been used to record and mix entire albums, such as by tUnE-yArDs. It is also currently used in the OCR National Level 2 ICT course for the sound creation unit.
Audacity's features include the following:
Importing and exporting of WAV, AIFF, MP3 (via the LAME encoder, downloaded separately), Ogg Vorbis, and all file formats supported by libsndfile library. Versions 1.3.2 and later support Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC). Version 1.3.6 and later also support additional formats such as WMA, AAC, AMR and AC3 via the optional FFmpeg library.Recording and playing back soundsEditing via Cut, Copy and Paste (with unlimited levels of Undo)Multitrack mixingA large array of digital effects and plug-ins. Additional effects can be written with NyquistBuilt-in LADSPA plug-in support. VST support available through an optional VST Enabler.Amplitude envelope editingNoise removal based on sampling the noise to be removed.Audio spectrum analysis using the Fourier transformation algorithmSupport for multi-channel modes with sampling rates up to 96 kHz with 32 bits per samplePrecise adjustments to the audio's speed while maintaining pitch (Audacity calls it changing tempo), in order to synchronize it with video or run for a predetermined length of timeChanges to the audio's pitch without changing the speedFeatures of modern multi-track audio software including navigation controls, zoom and single track edit, project pane and XY project navigation, non-destructive and destructive effect processing, audio file manipulation (cut, copy, paste)Conversion of cassette tapes or records into digital tracks by automatically splitting the audio source into multiple tracks based on silences in the source materialSupport for multiple platforms — Audacity works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix-like systems (including Linux and BSD), among others The latest stable version supports Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista/7, but Windows 95 and NT are not supported. Audacity uses the wxWidgets software library to provide a similar graphical user interface on several different operating systems.Limitations
A plug-in is required for VST plug-ins in Audacity 1.2.x. Audacity lacks dynamic equalizer controls, real time effects and support for scrubbing. MIDI files can only be displayed.
Audacity does not directly support WMA, AAC, or most other proprietary or restricted file formats. To import or export AC3, AMR(NB), M4A, WMA and other proprietary formats, use Audacity with the optional FFmpeg library.
Language support
In addition to English language help, the ZIP file of the downloadable Audacity software program includes help files for Afrikaans, Arabic, Basque, Bulgarian, Catalan, Chinese (simplified), Chinese (traditional), Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Galician, German, Greek, Hungarian, Irish, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian (Bokmål), Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Slovak, Slovenian, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian, and Welsh in its user interface. A partial Bengali help file is also included.
The Audacity website also provides tutorials in several languages.