How to Edit Audio Files in Audacity

The easiest way to use Audacity ^{[1] X Research Source} is to import an existing audio file and make minor changes. If you’ve never used Audacity before, you can start here.

Table of Contents

Purpose

Purpose. The purpose of this lesson is to learn how to edit an audio file. To this end you would import an existing audio file, remove all leaving only 10 seconds of this file, apply a 1-second fade-out volume at the end, export the results and play it with a favorite audio player. Those are the basic steps commonly used when editing audio file content.

Steps to take

Find the file to edit. Audacity allows importing of many popular audio file formats, including WAV , AIFF , and MP3 . If the FFmpeg options library is installed, you can import a wide variety of formats, including WMA and the audio content of most video files. Audacity cannot import copy-protected music files.

If you want to edit music that you have on a music CD, you need to “unload” the music into an audio file. See the Audio CDs page ^{[2] X Research Sources} for information on taking audio from CDs and putting into Audacity.
Don’t have any audio files available? There’s a lot of free music out there! Here is a page where you can download free and free music: Opsound ^{[3] X Research Source} .
The recordings on this site are free, distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Sharealike (CC BY-SA 3.0) license, which grants you the right to create derivative works without royalties, as long as you spare Get attribution and make your derivative work also free. This is similar to Audacity’s license, which allows any programmer to modify it and redistribute it freely.

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Import the file into Audacity. First start Audacity, then import an audio file by choosing File > Import > Audio… The faster method is that you just drag and drop the file like the following examples:

All 3 platforms support:
- Drag the audio file into Audacity’s window
- Drag the audio file to the Audacity icon in the graphical environment.
Platform-specific drag behavior:
- On Windows and Mac, you can also drag the Audacity icon to the file manager’s application.
- On Mac and Linux, you can drag files to the Audacity icon in the dock or taskbar, respectively, to import files into Audacity.
- On Windows, dragging a file to the Audacity icon on the Taskbar will switch the window to Audacity if it’s running (from where you can drag it in), or if Audacity is closed, give you the option to initialize Audacity with the file selected. that import.
You can also use the command line environment to import audio files into Audacity.

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View waveforms.

This image is a stereo waveform. The left channel is displayed in the top half and the right channel in the bottom half. The channel name takes the name of the imported audio file (“ No Town ” in this example). Where the waveform gets closer to the top and bottom of the channel, the sound will be louder (and vice versa).
The ruler above the waveform shows you the length of the sound in minutes and seconds.
Remove any eccentricity (DC offset ^{[4] X Research Source} ) if present. DC offset can occur in audio files when the recorded waveform is not centered on the horizontal line at 0.0 amplitude. It could be the cause of recording with a faulty sound card. The example in the image above is centered exactly at 0 and so there is no eccentricity. If your waveform is not centered, use the Effect > Normalize… command. ^{[5] X Research Source} ( Effects > Normalization… ) to eliminate eccentricity.

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Listen to the input audio.

Image titled Transport_topbar_annotated.png

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Pictured above is the playback control toolbar (Transport Topbar, see Understanding Audacity’s Toolbars)
Press the Play knob (Play or Play) to hear the sound. Press the Stop knob to stop playing. If you hear nothing, see Audacity Setup and Configuration ^{[6] X Research Sources} (Audacity Setup and Setup).
You can use the Space key as a shortcut ^{[7] X Research Source} to Play (Play or Play) or Stop .
Click the Selection Top selection tool on the Top Topbars (see Understanding Audacity’s toolbars) then click the wave shape to choose where to start, then click the Play knob. Click and drag to create a selection, and then when you press the Play knob only the selection is played.
Press the Skip to Start button or press the Home key to move the cursor to the beginning of the channel. This is like rewind, but it’s not for replay. Similar to pressing the Skip to End button or pressing the End key will move the cursor to the end of the channel.
To jump from where you are playing to a position forward or backward on an audio channel, tap the timeline ( Timeline ) above the waveform at the point you want to hear it.

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Create a 10-second file from your audio file. You edit sound waveforms in Audacity the same way you can edit text in a text editor.

To edit text, you first select the text you want to change and then choose what you want to do with it. You might want to cut or copy text, delete it, paste new text into it, or format it bold or italic, for example. You do the same thing in Audacity: first zoom and select the segment (or part) of the audio you want to change, and then choose what you want to do with it.

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Pictured above is the editing toolbar ( Edit Topbar , see Understanding Audacity’s toolbars) with zoom knobs highlighted. This is the zoom in tool ( Zoom In ) and the zoom out tool ( Zoom Out ).
To zoom in to see the waveform better, first select the selection tool ( Selection Top ) on the Tops Topbar , then click close to the point you are interested in, and then select the zoom knob ( Zoom In ) on the Edit Topbar . Keep pressing the Zoom In knob until you see the detail you need. Note that when you press the Zoom In knob, the cursor is placed in the center of the screen.
Use the zoom commands so you can make the most of the Audacity window to see as much detail as you need, or make sure you see the entire file when you need it.
Delete all leaving only 10 seconds of audio. To trim this audio file down to exactly 10 seconds, use these steps:
- Stop playing, click near the point where you want the 10-second segment to start.
- Zoom in until the timeline is just 10 seconds or a little more before and after the cursor.
- While holding down the Shift key, press 10 seconds to the right of the cursor. Note that this is exactly the same as selecting text in a word processor.
  
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- Press the Play knob or the Space key to hear the entire selection. Replay will stop when the selection is reached.
- Tweak the beginning and end of the mouse selection as follows:
  - Hover the pointer over the top of the selection – the pointer will turn into a left pointing hand.
  - Click and drag to fine-tune the top of the selection.
  - You can tweak the end of the selection in a similar way.
- Press Space to hear the refined selection. You don’t have to hear it all; press the Play knob or the Space key again at any time to stop playing again.
  - A convenient way to hear only the beginning of the refined selection is to move the mouse pointer slightly behind the beginning of the selection and then press the B key. The selection will play from the beginning of the selection to the cursor. To hear the end of the refined selection, move the cursor near the end of the selection, and then press the B key to play from the cursor to the end of the selection.
  - You can also play the parts before and after the selected part of the sound by pressing the C key. This allows you to be sure that none of the sounds you want to keep will be discarded. Playing in front and behind the selection can also be useful if you later want to cut a piece out of the selection – you can select the chunk to be cut, and then be able to preview what it will sound like like after cutting. To fine-tune the length of the audio played before and after the selection, choose the command Edit > Preferences > Playback > Cut Preview .
    
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- You have now selected the audio track you want to keep. Stop playing and delete everything except the selected audio, click Edit > Remove Special > Trim Audio .
  
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- If you make a mistake, you can always postpone it by pressing Edit > Undo . Audacity has unlimited Undo and Redo .
- You now have an audio region that starts a few seconds (maybe minutes) from the beginning of the channel. You can translate the audio to the beginning of the channel by using the command Tracks > Align Tracks > Start to Zero , but this is not necessary because when exporting, Audacity will ignore the gaps between time 0 and the start point. the beginning of the sound.

Gradually decrease the volume at the last second.

Press the Skip to End knob.
Zoom in until you can see the last 2-3 seconds of the waveform.
Tap the waveform for about 1 second before it ends.
Select the command Select > Region > Cursor to Track End ( Select > Region > Cursor to the end ).
Choose Effect > Fade Out ( Effects > Fade Out ). The last second of the audio will smoothly fade out in volume.

Export the resulting file. When you save an Audacity project with the File > Save Project command, you’re just saving the Audacity project. Audacity projects can only be opened in Audacity. If you want other applications (such as iTunes or Windows Media Player ) to also be able to open this file, you need to export it.

Before exporting this 10-second chunk to a separate file, we’re going to simplify things a bit. Select Edit > Preferences > Import/Export , and under the line “ When exporting tracks to an audio file ” uncheck “ Show Metadata Tags Editor before export ”. edit metadata tags before exporting). The Metadata Editor adds additional voice or music information to the file – see For More Information ^{[8] X Research Source} (For more information) below for more . You can also return to Edit > Preferences > Import/Export at any time to re-enable the Metadata Editor .
Output a WAV file. Click File > Export > Export Audio… – the standard “ Save ” dialog will appear.
- Let’s give the file a different name. Audacity always suggests the same file name as your Audacity project name. You should rename the file so that you don’t confuse the exported file with your Audacity project.
- Choose a location to save the file in the usual way.
- At the bottom of the Save dialog box is a drag-and-drop menu called ” Format “. From this menu select ” WAV (Microsoft) signed 16-bit PCM “.
- There are no options for that WAV file format, so there’s no need to press the Options knob.
- Click Save to finish exporting your project to a WAV file.
Output an MP3 file. To export files from Audacity to MP3 format you will need to download and install the optional LAME MP3 decoder. Directions are located here ^{[9] X Research Sources} . Once you have downloaded and installed the LAME decoder you will be able to create MP3 files using Audacity. The steps to export the file to MP3 format are the same as for a WAV file, except:
- In the Save dialog box, from the “ Format ” menu, select “ MP3 files ”
- Press the Options knob to set the bit rate and other options for the MP3 file.

Test your new audio product.

To demonstrate the difference between an Audacity project file ( AUP ), and an audio file you export from an Audacity project:
- Click File > Close , save the required changes.
- Find the AUP file on your computer and try opening it with an audio player of your choice (e.g. iTunes , Windows Media Player ). You won’t be able to do it.
- Find the exported WAV file on your computer and try opening it with the audio player of your choice. Success!
You cannot open an Audacity project in the media player. Only by exporting your project will you hear it in the media player.
Once you have exported your project, you may want to keep the original project file ( AUP ) and related data folder somewhere in case you want to make some changes in the future.

Recommendation

You can always use the keyboard to do all the operations in lesson ^{[10] X Research Source} .
Audacity is free, open-source, platform-independent software, dedicated to recording and editing audio. So it is a very good tool for creating audio digital resources, used for open access, open licensed and open educational resources.

Steps

Purpose

Steps to take

Recommendation

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