Audacity

Software Overview

Audacity is an open source program that allows you to record and edit audio on Windows, OS X, and Linux platforms. It is one of the most popular open source audio editors available.

This program enables you to create audio from multiple sources such as a microphone, line input, imported audio files, and USB devices. Audacity supports audio formats such as MP3, WAVE, AIFF, FLAC, and Ogg Vorbis. The audio editor is extensible as well, which allows you to add additional audio format support to the program.

The application provides helpful editing features such as the ability to fade in and out, trim clips, apply normalization, and change the speed or pitch. You can customize your audio clips with cut, copy, and paste capabilities. When you do make that inevitable mistake, Audacity provides unlimited sequential Undo and Redo, which allows you to go back any amount of steps.

Audacity is a great option for recording and editing your audio, unfortunately it lacks any useful publishing options. To publish, say a podcast, you would have to export the recording and then manually upload it to your hosting or publishing service. Besides that shortcoming, the audio program does offer a robust set of features for free, which makes it a cost-effective alternative to the expensive audio editing applications.

Supported File Types

Primary file extension

Other file extensions used by Audacity 2

Updated: September 7, 2018