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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

Offerings

  • 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

(102)

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
I use Audacity for audio recording, editing, normalizing audio levels, and more. It's especially handy when I need to sync prerecorded audio segments to a presentation so it can be viewed more than once by attendees at their own pace. The program offers quite a bit of functionality for a free software.
June 25, 2023

Very satisfied!

Janet Denison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Audacity for almost every video I record. In addition, since I'm promoting literacy, I also create an audio recording to accompany almost every web page and all my course pages. This way, my clients can listen as they read, and their reading skills can improve as they are learning how to learn.
Rob Gokee | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a film, TV & Commercial composer, I spend my live inside DAWs (Digital Audio Workstation) - I started my career on Pro Tools, moved to Cubase, then Abelton. One DAW I consistently come back to is also one that costs nothing - Audacity. As robust as the other DAWs are, there are often things that Audicity can do faster, and small footprint makes it easy to jump in and out of.
Carey Roberts | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use the live audio from [Audacity] to do a live to 2-track stereo recording with audacity from our Behringer X32. After service, we'll use the effects to compress and normalize the audio which will then be uploaded across multiple campuses. Services will then be uploaded online for other members to listen to after the fact or used for coaching/improvement.
Score 6 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Audacity to record audio for our YouTube channel. Audacity addresses many problems such as eliminating the cost to buy recording software. Audacity is completely free and open-source, there are many other recording software [programs] that are free but I think that audacity is a simple-to-use and feature-packed software.
The recordings are clear and audio can also be edited in audacity.
We use Audacity to record audio, eliminate background noise, and also add reverb and other effects that come built in to Audacity.
Paul Weber | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is being used by individuals as a standalone audio recording and editing software for audio projects as well as to record, edit, or mix audio in support of video projects. Faculty and staff usually create media to be used by students, often within the classroom. Some users create public facing content including podcasts.
Samuel Lyons | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I've used Audacity for a number of years to support our students in developing their skills in audio editing podcasts. It's a fantastic tool that offers pretty much all the features you find in the leading competitor software. It works perfectly in the learning environment and provides easy access to students. Its interface is simple and intuitive. Students take to it like a duck to water and it offers them the opportunity to learn the essentials of audio editing.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Audacity as a quick and simple tool to edit audio files for use on our website, to add to simple videos, to make mashups of my music and vocal clips and to do fade-ins and fade-outs when putting groups of songs together. I also use it to quickly make loops of my music for uploading to royalty-free sites. When I'm not on my Mac Audacity is my go-to (free and simple) program to edit audio tracks on PC.
Tamar Weinberg | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Right now, we are using Audacity after recording podcasts to edit the output of the resulting audio file. This includes splicing, adding an intro and outro, removing "ums" and "you knows" as well as any other interference, as well as removing other unnecessary noise.
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I used Audacity as the main mixing software for my Podcast. We were three participants, and I was the only user. It's great because you can learn ''on the job'' while using the software, and tons of tutorials exist on YouTube for example. It feels like a very polished, fleshed out product in every way.
February 16, 2020

Fun, fancy, and free!

Jennifer Stirling | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
I use Audacity to create samples of music, karaoke tracks, and piano accompaniments that we sell on our website. I appreciate the simplicity of the product, ease of use, and ability to trim, edit, and extract the audio in a usable format (it allows you to choose between AIFF, WAV, mp3, AC3, M4A, MP2, FLAC, AMR, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc. and options for various bit rate modes, quality, variable speeds, and channel modes (stereo/joint-stereo). I also appreciate the ability to change the speed of the music without changing pitch and the ease with which I can transpose. The sound quality of the transposed music is surprisingly good.
John Marshall | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Audacity is a free app that allows VoIP users to create custom greeting and announcements for Auto Attendants and on-hold messaging. Its multi-track capability allows mixing, fading and adding of background music, as well as combining tracks into mono or stereo files in a variety of audio formats.
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My team produces eLearning videos for our own products. We use music for title slides and the like—and I am very picky about my audio. I like to use clips that make sense and don't just start and stop. Audacity allows me to do some basic editing and to do it fairly easily.
Keith Lillico, M.Ed, MBA | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
My time runs on a tight budget and you can never beat the price of free. What makes it even better is that even with it being free software it has the ability to do just as much if not more than all the professional software that is on the market.
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our primary use of Audacity within our business is for the editing or recording of sound files to use in our PBX phone system. We have also used it for other projects such as editing sound files for corporate videos.
The main functions we have used is recording, both from microphone but also from playing computer sounds (what you hear), and editing functions:
  • trimming
  • joining/merging
  • cutting and pasting
  • volume adjustment
  • stereo to mono conversion
  • fading in and out
  • sample rate conversion
  • format conversion
It is mostly used within our IT and Marketing departments to create new sound files with speech, or modify existing sound files we have to better suit a project via trimming and joining in different order, and saving in the correct format. Using Audacity has allowed us to be cost effective and nimble with our existing recordings as we can modify them to suit current needs rather than requesting and paying for new recordings. Re-using existing recordings also means it feels familiar to our customers, even if the message is different.
Jeff Eaton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Our team produces a number of podcasts on development, design, and content strategy — audio editing isn't a normal part of our workflow, so we don't have a suite of high-end editing tools on hand to use. Our hunt for a low-cost, cross-platform audio editing tool flexible enough for multi-track editing and post-processing led us to Audacity and we've been using it ever since.
Jarem Atkinson | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Audacity on a weekly basis for editing the audio of our video recordings in our online courses and editing the audio of our podcast episodes. It is just used by the marketing department within the company. Audacity helps us to easily clean up the audio in our video and audio recordings, and more importantly, it makes the editing process very easy. The learning curve for using Audacity is small, yet it is a robust software, allowing room for learning more and getting advanced things done within audio editing.
Ho'omana Nathan Horton | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Audacity in the linguistics lab to record audio through a USB pre-amplifier (typically the Focusrite Scarlett Solo) and to re-sample or re-encode audio data in other formats which may not be readable (or maybe too big) for analysis software like Praat. We also use Audacity for some post-recording manipulation for perceptual studies.
Dan Talvi | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
As a digital media arts instructor, we utilize Audacity as a secondary audio editing software for video production work. In conjunction with other professional audio production software that can feel bloated or overly complicated for small tasks, Audacity fills the gap for projects when we need quick and efficient tweaks and cuts, rather than full audio engineering work.
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