Audacity: A Freeware Audio Editor

Music is a pretty big part of all of our lives. For some, this means listening to the car radio every day as we drive to and from work or school. For others, this means collecting huge libraries of song files. And, for still others, this means putting together collections of songs that mean something special to them, and burning them to a CD.

More ambitious music lovers want the ability to actually interact with the music they listen to. They want to be able to splice and dice different songs together, improve the sound quality of their favorite tunes, create elaborate mix tapes to share with others, and much more. To do all of that, you'll need an audio editor. And the audio editor that's worked best for me is called Audacity.

What Is Audacity?

Audacity is a free audio editor that allows you to manipulate digital audio files, like WAV and MP3 files. And, since Audacity is a cross platform audio editor, you can use it with Windows, Mac, and Linux Operating Systems.

Audacity is designed to be used by just about anyone, from absolute beginners who've never used an audio editor before, to novices with some audio editing experience, to full-blown experts who know audio editors like the back of their hands. Beginners can learn to use the program to perform some pretty simple operations almost straight out of the box. And, as you become more comfortable with this audio editor, you will be able to do more complex things, like mixing sound files, and adding effects to songs.

Learning to Use Audacity

While you can learn to use Audacity to do simple things pretty quickly, it will take time and effort to learn to use this audio editor to do more complex operations.

The help file that comes bundled with Audacity can teach you some basics about the program. And, if you've never used an audio editor before, there are several tutorials you should also take advantage of.

One tutorial I found really helpful was the Audacity 1.2 Tutorial. This tutorial uses text, screenshots and video to quickly teach you the basics of using this audio editor. It took me less than fifteen minutes to go through the entire thing and, once I was done, I was doing simple edits on sound files with ease.

You should also download the Audacity Manual, which will take you on a tour of some of the programs many features. In the manual, you'll find chapters like Basics - About Digital Audio, Editing for Beginners, and Effects for Beginners.

Whether you're a music lover who simply wants to quickly and easily "clean up" the sound quality of your favorite songs, or someone who aspires to learn all there is to know about sound editing, Audacity is the audio editor you're looking for.