Audio Editing

This week’s blog post is because of another recent project, this time inspired by a Digital Design Studio customer named John I.  John is an artist, but over the years has also worked on a very personal and important project.  He recorded a dear family friend read her poetry over 20 years ago with audio tape.

John finally has the time, and wants to now go through the hours of recordings and pick snippets for a virtual gallery display.  His main goal is to have video and images on display as the poetry is read aloud by the poem’s author.

Because the recording is two decades old, he needs to find the clips he wants, cut them and try to enhance the volume. 

I introduced him to a great little program called Audacity.  Audacity is simple multi-platform software for recording and editing sounds.   It’s another Open-Source software program that is user-friendly and really accessible.  There is a lot of documentation and tutorials that will help anyone get their project complete.  John has already examined and edited 100 poems that were recorded from over 6 hours of recording.

Audacity is a free, easy-to-use and multilingual audio editor and recorder for Windows, Mac OS X, GNU/Linux and other operating systems. You can use Audacity to:

• Record live audio.
• Convert tapes and records into digital recordings or CDs.
• Edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF sound files.
• Cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together.
• Change the speed or pitch of a recording.
• And more! See the complete list of features.

This program can record live audio, convert tapes and records into digital recordings or to CD, edit Ogg Vorbis, MP3 and WAV sound files. It can also cut, copy splice and mix sounds together as well as change the speed or pitch of a recording. Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or digitize recordings from cassette tapes, vinyl records, or minidiscs. With some sound cards, it can also capture streaming audio.

With Audacity you can Import sound files, edit them, and combine them with other files or new recordings. Export your recordings in several common file formats. Audacity sound quality is that of professional sound editing apps. Sample rates and formats are converted using high-quality resampling and dithering, and you can mix tracks with different sample rates or formats, and Audacity will convert them automatically in realtime. Audacity does not include any spyware or adware. Audacity is completely free and open source.

Have fun!!!
Greg