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Audacity

Audacity

Overview

What is Audacity?

Audacity is a free and open source audio recording and editing software.

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Recent Reviews

TrustRadius Insights

Audacity has been widely used by various individuals and organizations for a range of audio editing needs. Its robust features make it a …
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Pricing

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What is Audacity?

Audacity is a free and open source audio recording and editing software.

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

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  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services

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Alternatives Pricing

What is GarageBand?

Apple offers GarageBand, a digital audio workstation packaged with its operating system.

What is Audition?

Adobe offers Audition as part of the Creative Cloud suite, a sound and audio editing and creation application.

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Product Details

What is Audacity?

Audacity Video

A basic tutorial on how to do simple audio editing in Audacity for your podcast, videos, or presentations.

Audacity Technical Details

Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo

Frequently Asked Questions

Audacity is a free and open source audio recording and editing software.

Reviewers rate Support Rating highest, with a score of 5.

The most common users of Audacity are from Small Businesses (1-50 employees).
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Comparisons

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Reviews and Ratings

(101)

Community Insights

TrustRadius Insights are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, 3rd-party data sources. Have feedback on this content? Let us know!

Audacity has been widely used by various individuals and organizations for a range of audio editing needs. Its robust features make it a preferred choice for editing audio in video recordings and podcast episodes, as users have found it helpful for cleaning up audio and making the editing process easy. With Audacity, users can accomplish advanced tasks such as compressing and normalizing audio for multiple platforms. It is also handy for syncing prerecorded audio segments to presentations, allowing attendees to view them at their own pace. Faculty and staff use Audacity to create media for students, including classroom use and public-facing content like podcasts. It is appreciated by film, TV, and commercial composers due to its speed and small footprint, making it ideal for recording audio for YouTube channels without the need to purchase expensive software. Additionally, Audacity is commonly utilized by instructors to support students in developing audio editing skills for podcasts. Its cost-effectiveness and cross-platform compatibility make it a popular choice in the podcast production industry for multi-track editing and post-processing. Audacity's simplicity, ease of use, and ability to trim, edit, and extract audio in various formats make it a favorite tool among users with varying audio needs. Whether it's editing meeting recordings, creating music samples or karaoke tracks for sale on websites, or simply applying quick tweaks and cuts in video production work, Audacity proves to be a reliable secondary audio editing software. Its versatility extends even further, as it is used by linguistics labs for recording and manipulating audio data for analysis and by eLearning video producers for seamless audio editing tasks such as adding music and ensuring smooth transitions. Overall, users rely on Audacity for its ability to efficiently handle a wide range of audio editing tasks with its user-friendly interface.

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Robust Audio Editing: Users have consistently praised Audacity for its robust capabilities and wide variety of controls, with many stating that it meets their audio editing needs. The program allows users to splice audio segments together seamlessly, ensuring a smooth editing experience. Additionally, the availability of basic editing features such as cuts and fades is appreciated by users who are looking to make simple edits.

Ease of Use: Many reviewers have highlighted how easy it is to navigate and use Audacity's user interface. They find it simple and intuitive, even for those with minimal experience in audio editing. The program's workflow is considered easy and straightforward, allowing users to quickly complete tasks without feeling overwhelmed. Furthermore, the learning curve for Audacity is small, making it accessible to new users who want to get started with audio editing right away.

Free and Cost-effective Solution: The fact that Audacity is free has been widely appreciated by users looking for a budget-friendly option. Its open-source nature makes it accessible to anyone without having to spend money on expensive software. Users also value the program's compatibility with both Mac and PC platforms, allowing a wide range of individuals to access its features at no cost.

Onboarding Tutorial Needed: Some users have suggested that Audacity could benefit from implementing an onboarding tutorial walkthrough within the software to help new users understand its full capabilities and features.

Issues with Exporting Files: Several reviewers have reported encountering difficulties when exporting files in specific formats. They mentioned having to download patches or additional plugins to enable the desired functionality.

Messy Dashboard and Navigation: A common complaint among users is that the dashboard of Audacity appears cluttered and lacks intuitive design, making it challenging to navigate through the various options efficiently. Improving the navigation system would greatly enhance the overall usability of the software.

Users commonly recommend using Audacity for simple audio works, home projects, or low budget editions. It is suggested as a support tool for audio editing, including audio on video, and for filtering out background noise from recordings or for experimenting. Audacity is frequently recommended for quick edits on small audio projects. However, some users caution against considering it a professional digital audio workstation or a tool for creating high-quality audio files. Despite this, many believe that Audacity is a great tool for beginners in audio editing and offers simplicity and power for editing or creating tracks. Users also recommend Audacity for podcasting needs, easy and straightforward audio editing, basic sound editing, desktop audio editing, and personal or business use. It is highly recommended for technical and hands-on teams on a limited budget. Users suggest trying out Audacity due to its user-friendly nature and the belief that it can rival paid products in terms of features. They also recommend watching tutorials and consulting online manuals for assistance. Overall, users think Audacity is an excellent choice for beginners, a good starting point for those entering the field of audio editing, and a reliable option for basic yet powerful audio editing tasks.

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-25 of 25)
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Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is well-suited for any basic audio recording and editing needs. If you have a small budget, only need a program for a small, specific project, or don't need too many extra tools, Audacity is the perfect program for you. It helps me prerecord presentations before posting them online, so I'm not giving the same presentation over and over again.
Jo Ströhfeldt | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity has always been my go-to program for basic recording and editing of sound bites, voice memos, song ideas, and meeting recordings. It has a super simple UI and all the basic features. If you are looking to compete with high-end audio editors like Adobe Audition, the feature list will be disappointing and the UI frustrating.
Rob Gokee | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
If you've got a WAV or AIFF file that needs editing or tweaking, for me, it's faster to drop it into Audacity and make the changes than do it in my DAW. Also, if you've got a WAV file that needs splitting (multiple tracks in one file), most paid DAW's won't do this for you - Audacity does it free and fast.
Carey Roberts | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
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.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is great for pretty much anyone, it can be used for many tasks ranging from professional audio recording to recording just for fun.
It's more or less beginner-friendly, at the very beginning there might be some difficulty in getting to know where everything is but there isn't too much to see so getting used to the software won't be hard either.
I would recommend audacity to anyone who is starting out with audio editing and recording, but if you are doing this professionally the better choice would be to go for a paid software like Adobe Audition.
Paul Weber | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is great for a person doing a one-time or hobby level audio recording where they need to keep costs low or are just recording something quickly and not regularly needing an audio editor. As a professional, I rarely use Audacity myself because the interface isn't enjoyable and some features are better supported on paid software such as Audition, Logic, Pro Tools, etc.
Samuel Lyons | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Excellent for a learning environment with students, large teams, projects that are low budget. When your team has experience working with Adobe Creative Cloud or other Adobe software such as Premier, it makes sense to use the Adobe equivalent. Additionally, for a professional team working on a large range of productions with different file formats, I believe Audacity may fall behind or slow the process down.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It is easy to use for those who haven't edited audio before. It's not overwhelming with features. It's also free which is a good way to start learning about audio editing. Not appropriate for major edits or something with lots of layers of audio files.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is great when you just need something simple and easy to use for editing audio tracks. If you only have very basic needs (cutting off the end of a too-long track, inserting silence, raising or lowering the overall volume, fading in or out, combining tracks--even making simple loops) and don't need or want to pay for a program with greater functionality, Audacity is perfect as it is free and very simple to use.
Tamar Weinberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is a free open-source product that does a great job with audio editing, handling pretty much all files with ease. While out of the box, you may require some free plugins to process the audio file you work with, some of the functionality for more advanced tasks requires paid plugins that may not necessarily even resolve the issue. In particular, Audacity doesn't seem to have a seamless solution to remove echo, and many of the various help documents seem to suggest that a paid plugin would resolve this issue; none of them work. The interface looks very professional, but to that end, it's also intimidating to use and it's difficult to figure out how to do things at times. You may need to refer to help documents on a regular basis; for every podcast I've recorded, I've had to revisit another help issue. I've done more than 40 hours of editing since I've started but I still don't feel confident I understand how to amplify the volume in text or to reduce it. I feel like a newbie and perhaps I shouldn't be one at this "late" stage. That said, Audacity is perhaps one of the best audio solutions on the market, and it doesn't hurt that this is free.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
It's free - can't go wrong there! Plus it's open source, so anything is possible. If you are new to audio mixing, and are looking for the right software to get you started, Audacity is up there with the best of them. I would recommend this to anyone who enjoys mixing, podcasting or even singing.
February 16, 2020

Fun, fancy, and free!

Jennifer Stirling | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I think for novices who need to slow down/speed up music, trim or edit music, or do general editing of the music with effects Audacity is a great software program to use! If you're looking to be a producer the free version probably isn't going to have enough options.
John Marshall | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Instead of hiring a professional audio consultant to create and manage your VoIP phone system prompts and messaging, Audacity allows you to keep this in-house to be able to react in real-time to special messaging requirements. This is very well suited for the 8X8 Virtual Contact Center (VCC) which allows for separate inbound channel scripting and messaging to create a customized brand, experience, and messaging silos for each inbound caller type.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I LOVE using Audacity for my audio clips! I'm very picky about the audio quality on my own videos and Audacity helps me to maintain that high level of quality. I can edit the music files I pull in, copy, cut/paste, etc. It's really great and provides me a great deal of flexibility!
Keith Lillico, M.Ed, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is well suited for any scenario where you need to edit audio or do any sort of audio recording. I have used it to record voice-over for eLearning courses, record podcasts, narration for videos, and even to do editing in audio that was recorded somewhere else. You cannot beat the flexibility of this software.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Overall Audacity is a great program for audio editing in a wide range of uses. It is quick and easy to start using it for basic tasks but has the functions to do more advanced tasks with a little understanding of the interface. Audacity has many editing options available and a wide range of keyboard and mouse shortcuts so anyone using it professionally would be able to navigate it quickly and efficiently.

It is available on the three main computer platforms, Windows, MacOS and Linux, and being open source software it has the source available for those that want to change it and make the product better. Audacity is a small download and small install meaning start up is quick, and running multiple instances is possible and doesn't hog machine resources.

The only time I think it may not be suitable is for complete novices that may need a program with less options or features as the amount of options, switches, and sliders in Audacity could be confusing for them.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For those who are on a budget and enjoy open-source programs, Audacity will work well for most. It is fairly easy to use and has multi-track audio editing capability. It's great for podcasting, narrations, and most everything else involving voice and music. Audacity may not be appropriate for those who want to create music. Easy publishing options may not be available. Real-time audio effects are not automatically applied. Generally, for our needs, Audacity works well for multiple users.
Jeff Eaton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Audacity as a podcast editing, prep, and export tool; it has enough filtering and audio-processing features to perform tasks like balancing tracks, removing background noise, and it lets us make fast edits across multiple synced audio tracks. A common scenario for us is chopping out a minute or two of irrelevant conversation from the three parallel tracks for each podcast participant — some of the simpler editing tools we evaluated required that edits be made track-by-track, all but ensuring the audio falls out of sync.

The more complex the editing, the more Audacity's clunky interface can frustrate — it's impossible to beat the price (free!) but it's also easy to feel lost when trying to accomplish something basic until you learn its idiosyncrasies.
Jarem Atkinson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For robust audio editing needs, Audacity is a great tool to use. When you want to comb through the layers of audio and make small or large changes to your file, and even being able to export to various file types, Audacity is my recommended tool. For people who need small audio editing changes like simple clippings of audio, there are more user-friendly tools out there than Audacity.
Ho'omana Nathan Horton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is absolutely invaluable as a free resource for making high-quality audio recordings on a computer and editing those recordings. Sure, there are other paid options with newer interfaces, but they are typically super expensive. Audacity works, it works well, and it's totally free. As a linguistic researcher who does recording, analysis, and manipulation of files, there's virtually no audio problem I've come across that Audacity won't work for.
Dan Talvi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
For individuals looking to record and/or only make quick, small edits or tweaks to audio, Audacity should be your go-to software. Tools are mostly self-explanatory and easy to use. Requires some computer literacy to initially set up, but otherwise is easy to use. Audacity, however, is not best suited for multi-track or advanced audio engineering projects.
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