If you do not hear anything, see Audacity Setup and Configuration. Step 4: Listen to the imported audioĬlick the Play button to listen to the audio. The ruler above the waveform shows you the length of the audio in minutes and seconds. Where the waveform reaches closer to the top and bottom of the track, the audio is louder (and vice versa). The track name takes the name of the imported audio file (“No Town” in this example). The left channel is displayed in the top half of the track and the right channel in the bottom half. This image above shows a stereo waveform. Or drag and drop the file onto the timeline Import an audio file by selecting File > Import > Audio…. Step 1: Find a file to editĪudacity can import many common audio file formats, including WAV, AIFF, and MP3. It shows one or multiple tracks on a timeline.

Audacity: A free, open source, cross-platform audio editor and recorder.Īudacity, like most digital audio workstations (DAWs) shows a waveform of a recording on a track.Audacityīelow is a link to the Audacity website, where the latest version is freely available to download and use. ‘D’ and the transition from ‘iy’ to ‘ah’ are also noticeable, but to a lesser extent. Note how the letters ‘K’ and ‘P’ are very high-frequency sounds and stand out a bit from the rest of the word. Above is the waveform produced by an English speaker saying the word “Wikipedia”. The voice is a set of complex sounds: long throated sounds (vowels) with shorter, higher sounds in between (consonants). Note the top recording is much louder in general than the bottom one. You can tell from the vertical size of the waveform how loud it is – its amplitude.

Amplitude (“Volume”)Ībove is a pair of stereo recordings as shown in Audacity – the left and right tracks of a recent song from a CD, followed by the left and right tracks of the same song on a vinyl LP record. The visual representation of this is called a waveform.

In practice, sound captured by a microphone (or our ears) will nearly always be a complex wave – lots of different sounds of differing volumes stacked upon one another.

A raspy sound like a washing machine or a librarian going “shhhh” will be a very complex wave. A very pure sound like from a flute or a tuning fork will look like a pure sine wave.

Audacity editor