Audacity Manual

# Main Page

### From Audacity Manual

## Audacity User's Manual

This manual is a work in progress. It relates to the current Beta release (1.3.12) not 1.2.5 or 1.2.6! Audacity Beta is the basis for our upcoming 2.0 stable release.

New users may want to look at:

- Audacity for the Impatient - Schematic diagram of Audacity with quick links to the main parts of the interface.
- Getting Started - Quick help to get you recording, importing files, editing and exporting your work in no time.
- Tutorials - walk-throughs of common tasks in Audacity.

## Using Audacity

### Foundations

- Digital Audio
- What is an Audacity Project?
- Audacity Setup and Configuration
- Playing and Recording
- Audacity Selection
- Audacity Tracks and Clips
- Zooming
- Undo, Redo and History

### Help with Advanced Issues

- Accessibility (Audacity for the visually impaired)
- Working with Audio CDs
- Batch Processing
- Customization
- Recording Quality
- Recovery
- Scripting
- Simplifying Audacity
- Latency Test

## Reference

### Project Window

- Timeline
- Tracks
- Details:

  - Track Drop-Down Menu
  - Mixing Audio Tracks

### Menu Bar

Audacity* | File | Edit
View | Transport | Tracks
Generate | Effect | Analyze
Window* | Help

Items with * are Mac only.

- Sub Menus and Details

  - On-Demand Loading of uncompressed files
  - Exporting

### Toolbars

Control | Device | Edit
Meter | Mixer | Selection
Tools | Transcription

- Details for the Tools Toolbar

  - Selection Tool - the special characteristics of audio selection
  - Envelope Tool - for controlling amplitude changes smoothly
  - Zoom Tool - seeing details or the big picture
  - Multi-Tool - combining all tools in one

### Preferences

Devices | Playback | Recording
Quality | Interface | Tracks
Import/Export | Projects | Libraries
Spectrograms | Directories | Warnings
Effects | Keyboard | Mouse
List of all keyboard shortcuts

## Miscellaneous

- Index
- Glossary of Terms with links to Wikipedia and/or main Wiki including audio file formats.
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Audacity Project Format
- Further Help

- Credits
- License
- Information for Developers - how to join our developer community

Links: Most links are to other pages in this Manual. Bold italicized links are to a description in our Glossary. Other italicised links are to pages external to this Manual, for whose content we are not responsible.

Screenshots: Unless otherwise noted in the hover text of the image, all screenshots of Audacity in the Manual are of Microsoft Windows® operating systems.

Copyright: Unless otherwise noted, all pages on this site are available under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license. In essence, you are free to (1) copy, distribute and transmit the work (2) to adapt the work, under condition you must attribute the work to the authors (but not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). For any reuse or distribution, you must make clear to others the license terms of this work. Any of the above conditions can be waived if you get permission from us.

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