Audacity

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

Click here to open a pdf with short instructions by the Media Desk workers about how to make a simple recording in Audacity.

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
• How to Export a recording as an MP3 format sound file

• 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 1.2.5 for Intel Macs

Be sure to choose the Intel version, which is currently (Jan 2009) at version 1.2.5:

Audacity installs just like other Mac applications:

• Double-click the downloaded .dmg to mount it & then open it
• Drag the Audacity.app file from there to the Applications folder

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.

Windows:

1. Go to the LAME download page
   
2. And click to download the lastest ZIP file
3. When you have finished downloading LAME, unzip it and save the file lame_enc.dll anywhere on your computer: C:\Program Files\Audacity is good.
4. The first time you use the “Export as MP3″ command, Audacity will ask you where you saved that lame_enc.dll, so simply browse to it and confirm.

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.

Mac OS X

Here is a short version for Intel Macs (which you almost certainly have unless you have a really old Mac. See above about that.)

1. Go to the LAME download page
2. Click to download “Lame Library v3.98.2 for Audacity on OSX.dmg”
   
3. Double-click the downloaded .dmg to extract “Lame Library v3.98.2 for Audacity on OSX.pkg” to Finder
4. Double-click the .pkg to install “libmp3lame.dylib” (FYI, it puts it in /usr/local/lib/audacity)
5. The first time you use the “Export as MP3″ command in Audacity, it will ask you where libmp3lame.dylib is and prompt you with a view of a folder called  “lib” - double-click to enter the folder called “audacity”
   
6. Then choose file libmp3lame.dylib, which will be the only file in the folder, and press the Open button.

(Geek Note: You can also set this in Audacity’s Preferences under the File Format area, using the Find Library button.)

That’s it.