Audacity is a free, cross-platform, open-source audio program. With the program you can capture, record voices from a microphone, digitize recordings from cassettes and reels, dub stories and fairy tales, and convert files into other formats. You can also remove noise, etc.
Audacity is an excellent program for processing audio files that has won first place among the free programs in its field. Its arsenal includes many features and filters for the processing of music tracks. If you have a multi-channel sound card, you can record up to 16 channels simultaneously.
In order to save processed music in MP3 format you will need to download the LAME MP3 encoder and extract the file lame_enc.dll from any location on your local disk drive.
Editor Audacity features
- Import and export WAV, MP3 (using LAME MP3 encoder), Ogg Vorbis, FLAC and other formats;
- recording from microphone, line input and other sources;
- recording with simultaneous listening to available tracks;
- recording up to 16 channels simultaneously (multi-channel sound card required);
- effects and extensions both bundled and installed separately (LADSPA or Nyquist functional language);
- recording and playback level indicators;
- tempo change with preserving the pitch;
- pitch change with tempo preservation;
- pattern noise removal;
- playback of multiple tracks simultaneously (without multi-channel sound support – when playing back, only two channels are used, into which all tracks are mixed);
- mixes tracks with different quality characteristics with automatic conversion to the specified characteristics of the project in real time;
- results can be saved in many formats provided by the libsndfile library.
We recommend the AppImage file for installing the program, because it contains the complete set of libraries and you will have no problems with mp3 format.
The program window can be divided into two areas:
- The working area, where we will load audio files.
- the area with tools.
Panels with tools you can easily move in and out of the program window by holding them with the left mouse button. In addition, we can remove and put back panels which get in the way or are simply not needed in some cases. For example, in the program window, select the View → Panels tab and uncheck the Transcription panel and Selection panel.
Let’s move on to the following settings Menu Edit → Preferences. In the Options: Devices you can configure various settings, from the input/output devices used by the program to the interface settings. These settings are divided into groups and each group is located on a separate tab.
On the toolbar, under the microphone indicator section, enable monitoring.
In principle, Audacity defaults to the average operating settings.