A classic Windows tool that has been loved by many
Audacity is a free recording program capable of a lot of things. You can do anything from recording a song to recording lines for a cartoon. If you've written a song, and need an easy way to record it, this article will tell you how to record your song with Audacity, and give it a professional finish. Audacity, the multi-faceted media application, allows you to record audio from the web (Skype, WhatsApp, or others) or to save system sounds - as well as its primary function, a video player.
Audio editing app Audacity is a classic Windows tool that has been loved by many - at this stage, practically for generations. It’s not slick and it’s not pretty, but it does a basic job (editing audio tracks) exceedingly well. Compare it to pay-for options and you’ll see that for a free program, it’s really very impressive.
A classic audio editor that deserves its good reputation
Audacity Music Editor
For quick and dirty (and free) audio editing, you couldn’t ask for more
Audacity has held a spot at the top of the audio editing charts since 1999 (!) and with good reason. This open-source software looks dated, old-fashioned, and frankly unattractive, but can edit an audio file professionally and quickly despite the fact that it’s entirely free.
What Audacity lacks in looks, it makes up for in pure functionality. It can edit audio, record live and computer playback. It cuts, copies, splices and mixes audio; adds effects to tracks, (like silences, fades, and reverbs); and supports a variety of plug-ins, including LADSPA, LV2, Nyquist, VST and Audio Unit.
We’ve already touched on how it’s not the most attractive program, but does offer a very familiar interface, so anyone who has used a computer program in the last 10 years will probably be able to find their way around pretty quickly. It will take a fairly sharp learning curve to decipher what, exactly, all the buttons do, but the Audacity developers have predicted this and offer a lot of help and educational resources online.
Audacity natively deals with WAV, AIFF, FLAC, MP2, MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files which is an ok selection, but not superb. To deal with more modern files, like MA4, you’ll have to convert them online or download additional libraries from the Audacity site. While you’re over there, check out the tutorials section. It takes a little wading around but talks you right through many of the most common (and less common) tasks you might want to do with the program. In the long run, it will save you lots of time.
If you’re old-school, Audacity offers 2 features you’ll likefirstly, the program lets you convert tape and record...um...recordings into digital tracks (if you have the correct equipment), and offers really good keyboard support for commands. Once you get to grips with the program it will make the editing process much faster.
In all, Audacity is never going to replace professional audio studio software. It's great, but it's not polished and most of the edits you can perform are destructive. If you need to do anything elegant or delicate, it's probably not going to be the best software to help you, but if you need to do a quick polish of a podcast, for example, or take some blank spaces out of a recording, it will do just fine.
Where can you run this program?
This version is for Windows and Audacity is also available for Mac and Linux.
Is there a better alternative?
Sure, there are plenty of alternatives to Audacity. It’s important to remember that Audacity is free and open source. If you pay for your audio editor, it will look and feel much nicer but you have, after all, paid for it. If we stick to free versions, Ocenaudio and Wavosaur are two very popular alternatives. Depending on exactly what you need to do with your audio, you'll find that they're just right, or a little too simple. In the event they're too simple, then Audacity might have exactly what you need.
If you're assessing from the other side, you can also get a free trial of Adobe Audition, which will demonstrate what exactly you’re sacrificing by choosing freeware like Audacity.
Our take
Unattractive as it is, Audacity has definite charm. It’s functional and effective and can do basic jobs very well. It also offers a lot of features and, if you can take the time to learn to do them properly, it should give you good results. We imagine that the best use case for the software is someone who really does need to do some audio editing, like a podcast editor on a budget. With a definite project, you should be able to get the results you want (or close to them) from Audacity as long as you have the right motivation. For casual jobs or a quick look, we don’t think many are going to fall in love.
Audacity For Dell Laptop
Should you download it?
Yes. If you’re on a budget but need to do some serious audio editing, then set aside some time and give it a go. If you’re a window shopper or need only very basic edits, then we think you should look somewhere else.
Highs
- Take audio from multiple sources
- Batch edit
- Noise reduction features good
Lows
- Tends towards destructive editing
- Audio quality not top end
- Doesn't support a wide variety of file types
Audacityfor Windows
3.0.0
Audacity is the premier free audio recording and editing application in the realm of freeware audio editing. It is freely distributed as open source software that anybody can use. With the removal of Windows' sound recorder, there opened up a huge need for a free audio recording solution and the team behind Audacity took up that challenge.
Audacity is able to record live audio from your microphone or other sources, covert tapes and records to mp3s or digital CDs, Edit OGG Vorbis, MP3 and Wave files (among others).
More of what Audacity can do include a long list of editing tools. You're able to cut, copy, paste, splice and mix sounds together. Changing the pitch of your voice or other recording has never been easier; Audacity has an unlimited undo and redo history, making it extremely easy to correct mistakes. This application is also a pro at editing very large files such as recordings over several hours.
Among some of the effects Audacity can apply to your sound files: you can remove static and hiss noises, alter the frequencies and apply equalization. The adjustment tools can change the volumes with the compressor, amplify and normalize effects.
In addition to the many effects and tools already built-in to Audacity, the developers have also opened the program up to plug-ins which are freely available across the Internet.
And as always, you can save your finished audio files with a range of different qualities such as editing 16-bit, 24-bit and 32-bit samples and create recordings of up to 96 kHz. Mixing tracks with different sampling rates is no problem: Audacity will equalize and compensate.
Overall, Audacity is an excellent tool to use for editing and recording audio files with full support for the most common audio formats including MP3 and WAV.
Download Audacity For Laptop
Audacity can convert mp3 to ringtone, apply effects to music, edit audio, convert audio and record audio.
Features and highlights
Audacity App For Laptop
- Record from microphone, line input, USB/Firewire devices and others
- Device Toolbar manages multiple input and output devices
- Timer Record and Sound Activated Recording features
- Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings
- Record at high sample rates in excess of 192,000 Hz
- Record multiple channels at once
- Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during and after recording
Audacity 3.0.2 on 32-bit and 64-bit PCs
Audacity App For Laptop
This download is licensed as freeware for the Windows (32-bit and 64-bit) operating system on a laptop or desktop PC from sound/audio recorders without restrictions. Audacity 3.0.2 is available to all software users as a free download for Windows. As an open source project, you are free to view the source code and distribute this software application freely.
Audacity App Download For Laptop
The program was created by the developer as a freeware product, but donations for the continued development are highly appreciated. You may generally make a donation via the developer's main web site.
Filed under:Audacity Laptop Recording
- Audacity Download
- Freeware Sound/Audio Recorders
- Open source and GPL software
- Portable Software
- Major release: Audacity 3.0