Audacity
From Bazaar Wiki
Type of application / System Requirements
Audacity is free, open source software for recording and editing sounds. It is available for Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, GNU/Linux, and other operating systems.
Purpose
You can use Audacity to:
- Record live audio.
- Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
- Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
- Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
- Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
What it does
Putting it simply, Audacity is the most popular software for editing audio. It is cross platform and provide easy to use and powerful functionality. Even if you do not user Audacity as your main audio editing pro gram (I use GarageBand) you will still want to have a copy for those little tasks other programs do not handle so well.
How can it be used for creation of OERs
Open Educational Resources are not just about providing access to lecture notes and handouts. OERs can be multi media rich content including audio and video. Audacity is a great tool for editing audio to provide rich media Open Educational Resources.
How can it be used for consumption of OERs
Audacity is a tool for creating, not consuming. However it may prove useful for converting audio between different file formats.
How can it be used for reuse of OERs
Audacity can be for repurposing and reediting. For instance Audacity can be used to provide a different language soundtrack for a video.
License support
Audacity is free software, developed by a group of volunteers and distributed under the GNU General Public License (GPL).
== Standards / Compatibility Audacity supports the following file formats:
- Import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, and Ogg Vorbis files.
- Import MPEG audio (including MP2 and MP3 files) with libmad.
- Export MP3s with the optional LAME encoder library.
- Create WAV or AIFF files suitable for burning to CD.
- Import and export all file formats supported by libsndfile.
- Open raw (headerless) audio files using the “Import Raw” command.
- Note: Audacity does not currently support WMA, AAC, or most other proprietary or restricted file formats.
HOW TO USE IT
There are extensive tutorials and help files freely available on the web. The best starting point is the Audacity Wiki tutorials.
Links / examples / Who is using it
Audacity in the University of East London's Multimedia Production Centre
Audacity is currently installed on over 60 Apple Macintosh workstations and is used primarily in conjunction with GarageBand by students studying radio journalism who do not require, nor want to deal with, more technically challenging applications (such as Logic Pro) for performing simple audio editing. It's mainly used for the following:
- Sample rate conversions of audio files to be imported into GarageBand (GarageBand won't convert files that are of a different sample rate to that which it is operating, but simply plays them back faster/slower).
- Click removal via the Pencil tool.
- Quick and straightforward transfer of recordings from other media (MiniDisc etc) where complex multitrack editing is not required.
Audacity in the Technology Innovation Centre of Birmingham City University
Audacity is installed on one of big computer lab in Technology Innovation Centre (TIC) of Birmingham City University as requirements for Digital Music Processing module teaching. Students are encouraged to investigate into Audacity source code and compare their Matlab assignment to be able to understand the algorithm of
Examples of music and other audio created with Audacity can be found here.
Sandbox
Audacity can be downloaded from Sourceforge.
Comments / Discussion
This is a great piece of software and one of the examples of where an Open Source project has become the market leader in its area. Try it out - it may look a little complex at first but it really is very easy to use.
