Audacity is a free cross-platform digital audio recorder and editor.

Audacity is already installed on most e-classroom, academic and general purpose Windows lab machines on campus. It will be found in the Start > Programs > Multimedia Applications menu. Directions for getting in on your laptop or desktop will be found below.

How to Use It

Can you use a DVD player, VCR, or remote control? Then you can use Audacity with its pushbuttons.

Video Tutorials

Watch some short screencasts on how to use Audacity. These are in Quicktime, so wait for them to load.

• How to record and save a recording (1:57)
• How to save and upload a recording to Blackboard as homework for your class (2:31)
• The Double Feature (3:58 - be patient loading it)

Other Tutorials Online

• Audacity’s own tutorial pages

• Using Audacity: From Guides and Tutorials Site
• Audacity for Podcasting Tutorial

Installation on Your Machine

Audacity is already installed on most e-classroom, academic and general purpose lab machines on campus. If you want to install and use it on your own desktop, first download and install Audacity following the directions there. Choose latest non-beta version for Windows, which is 1.2.6 as of September 2007.

Windows

• Download and install 1.2.6 for Windows

Mac

Unless you have an older PowerPC Mac, you will have an Intel Mac. You can check this in Apple menu > About This Mac and look at the Processor type.

• Download and install version 1.2.6 for Intel Macs

Saving Audacity audio files in MP3 format

There is a file you need to install on your Windows machine to help convert audio files into MP3 format for use in Audacity. (You don’t need to do this on any UPS lab or classroom machines, only on your own laptop or desktop.) From then on Audacity will find it and use it to convert into the standard MP3 format.

Follow the instructions on the Audacity site to download and install it.

Mac note: if you have an Intel Mac, choose the second option to download libmp3lame-osx-universal-3.97.zip

PC Geek Note: If you already have an MP3 encoder file such as lame_enc.dll on your PC, you do not need to install another one. Simply tell Audacity where it is via the Edit > Preferences > File Formats menu.