Audacity is a free and open source audio recording and editing software.
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Spotify for Podcasters
Score 8.2 out of 10
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Spotify for Podcasters, formerly Anchor, is a podcasting platform, enabling the user to create, distribute, and monetize a podcast. It is available via a free plan. It features built-in uploading, recording, and editing tools so the can easily create and publish episodes.
For just a quick down and dirty audio recording from computer source, Audacity is a no-frills solution that any user can get up and running with quickly without the intimidating functions seen in most standard DAWs. This would be a great tool to start with to record church services, or basic live performances where someone wouldn't want to use a full DAW like Ableton Live or Studio One.
Anchor is a great podcast app for folks just starting out with podcasting or who want some of the technical things to be streamlined and simplified. With the built-in audience of Spotify subscribers, it's also easy to get started with a listening audience. There are easy ways to connect to other Podcast platforms and easy ways to integrate ads if that's something you want to do as a podcaster.
Monetization features are currently present in only a limited number of countries, I look forward to the various monetization features like pre-roll and mid-roll ads to be made available soon in my country India.
Add more platforms to its distribution services such as Amazon Music and similar ones so that we would not be required to submit the RSS Feed to platforms manually.
With no subscription fees unlike other products on the market, I am very confident I will continue using Audacity for my simple audio editing needs. I'm not an expert in audio editing, I'm sure what works for me as a more general user in a public institution would not suit someone more experienced, but I'm very happy with the quality of work I'm able to produce.
Audacity is for audio prodcasts only and not for video podcasts. Audacity does not have a transcript development feature. Audacity can not edit using the transcript feature that does not exist. I use another program to develop a transcript and edit using that transcript. Then I move the file into Audacity for final processing.
It's intuitive from the moment you log in until you publish. The only reason I'm not giving it a 10 is because some sections aren't translated into Spanish, and while it's not a problem for me, it's something that could be improved. Furthermore, the design is very clean and doesn't feel overwhelming with options. Everything is where it should be, and the process for publishing episodes is clear. Es intuitivo desde el momento que entras hasta que publicas. Si no le pongo un 10 es porque hay ciertas secciones que no aparecen traducidas al español, y aunque no me supone un problema, es algo mejorable. Además, el diseño es muy limpio y no da sensación de "saturación" de opciones. Todo está donde debe estar y el proceso para publicar los episodios es claro.
Audacity is great for this, it doesn't require a network connection once downloaded, and previous versions of the software are still functional in my experience. I have never experienced the program crashing, lost work, corrupted files, anything of the sort.
I have never had issues with speed in Audacity, I don't integrate it with other software but the program runs smoothly even with larger jobs. I haven't measured the CPU while using Audacity, but I imagine it's not high compared to other, more professional or specialized programs in the same category.
We have not used direct support for Audacity, other than using the information available on their website, which resolved the issues we were experiencing so we had a good experience in that regard. As this is Open Source FREE software, I don't believe there is direct support available. In saying that, it has the following great support options:
Online documentation and FAQ
Online tutorials covering all functions
Online user forums where questions are asked and answered by other users
Online wiki with more information
With these options most issues should be able to be resolved to get full use from Audacity.
Again I found it helpful to write up a step-by-step tutorial for coworkers based on our institution's standard practices. This combined with support from coworkers to answer questions is very effective for simple everyday use of Audacity. The support in-program is minimal but troubleshooting in the internet age is straightforward.
Easier to use than Garage Band. I have tried to use Garage Band for the same thing as I used Audacity and have had to give up. Not as easy. With the simple things that I have been able to accomplish, Audacity does it faster and better than anything I have tried. I have also used Pro Tools, however, that is more expensive
Anchor is less expensive and, in my opinion, much easier to use than SoundCloud for podcasting. Anchor makes syndication easy, and their recording and editing interfaces are clean and intuitive. SoundCloud seemed somewhat cumbersome to use, and I didn't care for its UI. Honestly, they seem better suited for other use cases.
I feel that Audacity is useful, simple, and suited both to casual users and more advanced use cases. There are options for expanding functionality in complex situations, but the option to not mess with it as a beginner is perfectly fine and suited to most everyday uses in my institution.
