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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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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

(105)

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.

Reviews

(1-25 of 25)
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Archivist experience with Audacity

Rating: 8 out of 10
August 09, 2023
HF
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
2 years of experience
  • Splicing audio segments together
  • Recording & re-recording directly in the program
  • Editing sound levels so segments aren't dramatically louder or quieter than another

Very satisfied!

Rating: 10 out of 10
June 25, 2023
JD
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
3 years of experience
  • Ease of recording.
  • Simple steps to increase the volume of the recording.
  • Simple to save and export the audio file.

Basic sound editing and recording in a dead-simple package

Rating: 9 out of 10
November 03, 2022
JS
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
5 years of experience
  • Simple editing of waveforms without much prior knowledge of audio manipulation.
  • The UI is very simple, but also helpfully sparse. This cuts down on the sense of feeling overwhelmed by the task.
  • It does incredibly well with different audio formats and is able to work with all major audio sources.

Best open-source audio recording/editing software.

Rating: 6 out of 10
May 19, 2021
MN
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
3 years of experience
  • Simple user interface for anyone to use.
  • Open-source, so it's completely free.
  • Comes with a huge list of features, [and] it also has the option to add plugins.
  • Doesn't require a large amount of RAM and can be used on almost any computer.

Great free app for new users

Rating: 9 out of 10
May 08, 2021
PW
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
6 years of experience
  • Audacity is great at supporting users across platforms and is equally approachable on Mac and PC
  • Audacity gives good basic editing (cuts and fades) and recording (usb or internal microphone) functionality for free
  • Audacity has several helpful tips geared towards the novice user, including helping them to export a file rather than just save an Audacity project

Excellent product for simple audio editing needs

Rating: 10 out of 10
March 20, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
12 years of experience
  • It's simple and intuitive.
  • I can quickly and easily see where I need to cut off or extend tracks.
  • It's easy to raise or lower volume and to add silence to areas of a track.

Audacity makes my end product better and my life easier!

Rating: 8 out of 10
February 12, 2020
Verified User
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
1 year of experience
  • Editing of length; creating clips, etc.
  • I like that I can adjust the volume before pulling in a recording to my video. This makes for less work on the video end of my project.
  • I know there are other features I could probably use but I'm still learning.

Use Audacity (a Free Open-Source Software) for Robust Easy Editing of Your Audio Files

Rating: 9 out of 10
March 20, 2019
JA
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
4 years of experience
  • Audacity has a wide variety of controls and capabilities for editing, making it a very robust tool for audio editing.
  • Even though it's a robust tool, it is very easy to use to get many basic things done in audio editing. The learning curve is small.
  • Love that audacity is free! What else could you ask for? There really is no reason not to use it.

Audacity is NOT Audition, but IS all you need for simple projects.

Rating: 10 out of 10
March 20, 2019
JJ
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
12 years of experience
  • It is very lightweight. Uses relatively few resources, but is robust with its functionality.
  • It is highly intuitive, user-friendly. If you want simplicity without a huge learning curve, this is a great solution.
  • I know this is specific, but its Noise Reduction tool is excellent. For anyone needing to remove background noise, quickly and easily, with quality and fine-tunable results, you can't go wrong!

Powerful, free audio suite that's virtually essential for acoustic analysis of linguistic data

Rating: 9 out of 10
March 20, 2019
HN
Vetted Review
Verified User
Audacity
10 years of experience
  • Audacity is free and user-friendly but also allows for outstandingly fine-grained tuning if you know what you're doing.
  • We find this software invaluable for recording or re-encoding audio data for linguistic analysis.
  • We're also able to manipulate audio files (e.g. by changing pitch) to present for perceptual studies. Audacity's algorithms really do an excellent job of manipulating only the selected variable and maintaining the integrity and crispness of the audio file.
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