A nice bit of free software (Audacity)

Member Name: Donf18

Product:	Audacity
Date:	12/11/08 (285 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Great help in removing unwanted noise from sound clips

Disadvantages: none

Audacity is a free audio utility in which you can modify your sound files in various ways. It can be freely downloaded from audacity.sourceforge.net/download/. The installation is very quick as is the download.

Although not primarily designed as a converter you can input one file type and save as another so therefore you end up with a conversion. The program is simplicity itself to operate being that it is menu driven.

It is similar in appearance to other windows menu driven programs in so much as it has the usual menus. From left to right they are

File Edit Project Generate Effect Analyse Help


Each menu has sub menus, which really need not be listed and are pretty much self-explanatory. The Generate and effect menus are where you can create additional; sounds effects to your chosen sound file, for example you can add an echo from the effects menu. Attempting to do this brings up a small pop up window in which the parameters can be adjusted. This pop up idea is used with other effects.

Audacity is a nice little program if you have a use for such a thing, it has the added bonus of being able to record sound files presuming you have a microphone. There are other options for the control of your project and those are using the symbols which are visible in the layout, and again these are pretty much self-expanitary. The main control area is that just below the menu system. This control is similar to that of a VCR, being that the options are play, rewind, forward, stop, and pause. These buttons do appear to be quite large in comparison to other buttons and options, but I guess some may consider them the main controls and therefore prefer the larger size.

For a free program the sound output whether it be MP3, windows audio or any other format is excellent, but it is in the editing that the big bonuses are. Inputting your sound file produces a large window visualisation of your file. A guide line is visible and using this you can cut or insert at will. The visualisation is in the format of a left and right channel should the inputted file be in stereo and just the one channel for mono. In this manner you can add channels and end up with some pretty sophisticated sounds, but this does require a fair bit of hassle.

All in all this is a nice piece of software especially when you consider that it is free, and in most circumstances it will enable you to edit out those unwanted bits of sound on your sound files. It also quite a nice bit of kit to use just to have a muck around and see what you can create from a simple recording or inputted file.

Summary: A really useful piece of kit

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