To get the most out of the program, it’s worth spending some time setting up the preferences and organizing your projects. What would an Audacity tutorial be without looking at the basic layout of the program. While Audacity may not be the best choice for certain projects large multitrack music, it’s more than enough for basic recording of music tracks, editing stereo mixes, podcasts, etc.

The waveforms you see actually represent the audio and once you make a change, there’s no easy way to go back. Before that, you can turn them on and off, change settings, etc as many times as you like.

In modern DAWs the effect will only be applied to the audio when you render the file. The same applies to working with plugins. In Audacity each edit you make it printed to audio immediatley, so there’s no way back at a later stage. You can still the selection points later and get back to the original audio source. You simply work with “pointers” so the project knows what to do with the original audio file. If you cut something out in Ableton for example, it shows you the selection you cut out, but it didn’t actually cut the recording file.

Audacity is a destructive editor – and this will affect your workflow. The main difference is that editing in Audacity needs a different approach than what you may be used to. This still makes it excellent tool for podcasts, simple musical projects and mastering, but not so great if you heavily rely on Midi and effect plugins. It’s great at audio recording and editing, but midi and effect processing is very limited. Don’t think of it as a DAW, more like an audio editor. Audacity is a powerful open-source app for recording and editing audio for macOS, Windows and Linux – and best of all it’s free! Whether you’re looking to record a podcast, mix music, or master audio, you can’t go wrong with the free audio editor Audacity… as long as you know how to use it well! The software is quite different from other audio application, so there’s a bit of a learning curve, but don’t fret! Let us guide you through all the features of this popular audio editor in our Audacity tutorial.Īudacity has been around for ages, but it takes some time to get used to working with it – especially if you have worked with another DAW before.

Audacity tutorial for beginners