A guide for Jaws users, written by David Bailes at Chorlton Workshop for hsbp. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.
The remainder of this guide is for version 1.3.3 of Audacity. However, version 3.4.2 of Audacity, which contains new features and bug fixes, is now available from the Windows download page of Audacity's website. There's also a guide for this new version: Audacity 3.4.2 guide.
Audacity is a free multi-track audio editor. You can use it for recording, simple editing of single tracks, or more advanced editing involving multiple tracks.
This guide is for the 1.3.3 beta version of Audacity. The reason for choosing the beta version is that a lot of work has been done since the last stable version (1.2.6) to make Audacity easier to use for users of screen readers. There is still work to be done in this area, but version 1.3.3 is much easier to use than version 1.2.6. The downside of using the beta version is that it still contains a number of bugs, and these are mentioned in the guide. Audacity 1.3.3 can be downloaded from audacity.sourceforge.net.
Audacity is an extremely powerful program, and this is only an introductory guide. For more information see the Audacity website, and the Audacity 1.3.3 User Manual which is under construction.
The objects which Audacity edits are known as projects. So projects are equivalent to documents in Microsoft Word, and workbooks in Microsoft Excel.
An Audacity project simply consists of a number of tracks.There are a number of different types of track in Audacity: audio, label, and time. However, the latter two are inaccessible to Jaws users, and so this guide will only describe the use of audio tracks. For many simple tasks you'll probably only have one track in a project.
You can save an Audacity project using the Audacity project file format, and this preserves all the tracks in the project. However, you only need to save a project in this format if you intend to continue working on the project in the future.
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, and this is similar to the cursor in Microsoft Word. The cursor in Audacity is used for defining times such as: the start of playback, the position where you want to start selecting a time range, and the place where audio is pasted from the clipboard.
To open either an audacity project file or a standard audio file, use the Open dialog, which is on the File menu (or CTRL + O).
When you first open Audacity, the window contains an empty project, and so when you open an audio file, it opens in this initial window. If you open any other files, then they each open in a new window. (If you want to deliberately create a new window with an empty project, choose New from the File menu, or press CTRL + N.)
Audacity can open audio files in the following standard formats: WAV, AIFF, AU, MP3, MP2/MPEG, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC. Note that it can't open files in the Windows Media Audio format (wma). If you want to edit a file in this format, you have to use another program to convert the wma file to one of the formats Audacity can open. There are several audio format conversion programs available, for example, Switch which is free in its basic version, or dBpoweramp Music Converter.
When you open a standard audio file, then the project initially consists of a single track.
If you open a compressed file, such as an MP3 file, then after you press the open button in the Open dialog an Import dialog opens which gives the progress of Audacity decompressing the file.
You can save the audio in a project in either the audacity project format, or one of the standard audio formats, as described in the following sections. The Audacity project format preserves all the tracks in the project. You only need to save a project in the audacity project format if you intend to continue working on the project in the future. In contrast, when you save in one of the standard audio formats, Audacity automatically mixes all the tracks down to a single track.
When you close Audacity, if you haven't saved your changes to an Audacity project file, then a Save changes? dialog opens asking you whether you want to save changes before closing. The default button is Yes, but unless you want to save the project as an Audacity project file, just TAB to the NO button and press it.
To save in this format, choose Save Project... from the File menu. The first time you do this, you get a Warning dialog box telling you that only Audacity can read these project files. The dialog box contains a check-box which you can check if you don't want this warning again. If you press the OK button, you then get a Save Project As dialog.
Audacity can save audio in the following standard formats: WAV, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and MP2. Due to patent issues, the Audacity installation does not include an MP3 encoder, and so to save in the MP3 format, you need to download an MP3 encoder as described in the MP3 Export section of the Preferences section.
To save audio in one of the standard audio formats:
This section describes the controls in the Specify MP3 options dialog, and then gives some recommendations for setting them. The dialog has the following controls:
These are some recommended settings:
For a full description of the options for the LAME MP3 encoder see the Lame page of the Hydrogen Audio wiki.
Playback depends on whether there is a time range selected (see the Selecting audio section): if there is no selection, then playback starts at the cursor position; if there is a selection, then playback starts at the start of the selection, and stops at the end of the selection.
The volume of the playback is controlled by the output volume slider which is on the Mixer toolbar in the Toolbars. Because this volume slider also controls the volume of Jaws (why?), it's best to adjust this slider to maximum.
Keystrokes for playback:
The Toolbars section contains several different toolbars. You can navigate to all the controls in the Toolbars just by using the TAB key.
These are the different toolbars:
You can show and hide all these toolbars using the Toolbars sub-menu on the View Menu. Only showing the toolbars you're likely to use, like the Mixer Toolbar, has the advantage of greatly reducing the number of TABs needed to find a particular control.
The Track table contains the tracks which make up the project. The table just has one column, and a row for each of the tracks. Each track has a name, and Jaws reads this when you move to the track, or press INSERT + UP ARROW to read the current line.
An audio track is a container for audio data, and this is displayed as a waveform. Often the audio data starts at time zero, but after editing, this is not always the case. At the left hand end of an audio track there is a small area containing various controls, which include a menu, and controls for track gain and pan. Using these controls is described in the More advanced editing section of this guide.
The Cursor is displayed in the track table as a vertical line, as is the playback position during playback. The positions of both the cursor and the playback position are available to Jaws users via the Selection Start and Audio Position spinboxes in the the Selection Bar.
Whenever the focus is within the track table, and the table contains one or more tracks (rows), then one of the tracks has the focus, and you can move between tracks by using the UP and DOWN ARROWS.
You need to be able to select tracks:
To toggle the selection of a track which has the focus, press ENTER. Also, if you press CTRL + A this selects all the tracks (and all the audio, as described in the Selecting audio section).
Jaws tells you whether a track is selected, if you do any of the following:
More precisely, if you do any of the above, then:
There are five controls on the Selection bar, and as in any toolbar use TAB to move between them:
Each of the spinboxes contains a time which can be in a number of different formats. The default format is hh:mm:ss, and the description below assumes that this is the format being used.
If you move to a spinbox by tabbing, then an example of Jaws reading the contents of the spinbox is 00h13m04, that is 0 hours, 13 minutes, and 4 seconds.
In fact, each of the spinboxes is made up of three sub-spinboxes, each containing two digits: h edit-spinbox, m edit-spinbox, and an s edit-spin box.
Within a spinbox, one of the six digits has the focus. You can move this focus by using a number of keystrokes, and whenever the focus moves to a different sub-spinbox Jaws reads out the contents of the sub-spinbox. The keystrokes for moving this focus are:
To change the value of the time, you can either:
As mentioned above, the time in a spinbox can have a number of different formats. The shortcut menu of a spinbox gives several options for the format. For example, the hh:mm:ss + milliseconds format is useful for making small changes in the time. If you change the format of one spinbox, then the formats of the other spinboxes are changed as well.
Audacity has a cursor to specify a particular time during the audio, for example, the start of playback, the position where you want to start selecting a time range, or the position where audio is pasted from the clipboard.
There are a number of ways of moving the cursor:
In the case of an audio editor which can only edit a single audio track, then selecting audio simply consists of specifying the start and end times of the audio which you want to select, that is, a time range. For example you might want to select the audio between the times 1 minute 2 seconds and 5 minutes 23 seconds.
However, Audacity is a multi-track editor. If the project consists of a number of tracks, then you may want to select the audio on only some of the tracks for a given time range. So in Audacity, as well as having to select a time range, you also have to specify which tracks are selected. If you've selected some audio, tried to edit it, and nothing's happened, it may well be because none of the tracks are selected. The selection of tracks was described in the track selection section above, and selecting a time range is described in the next section.
A quick way of selecting all of the audio in the project is to use the shortcut CTRL + A: this selects all the tracks, and selects a time range which includes all the audio.
The general way of selecting a time range consists of two steps:
There are a number of ways of setting the end of the selection:
BUG WARNING: Pressing either of these keys has the unwanted side-effect of selecting the track which has the focus. When working with a single track, this isn't a problem as you'll always want the track selected. However, when working with multiple tracks, make sure that the track which has the focus is a track that you want to be selected before using these keys.
There are a number of ways of making small adjustments to a selected time range:
If you press CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT ARROW or CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW this contracts the selection by a small amount on either the left or right hand end of the selection respectively.
BUG WARNING: Pressing any of these keys has the unwanted side-effect of selecting the track which has the focus. When working with a single track, this isn't a problem as you'll always want the track selected. However, when working with multiple tracks, make sure that the track which has the focus is a track that you want to be selected before using these keys.
If you press any of the keys which move the cursor (HOME, END, LEFT and RIGHT ARROWS), then any selected time range is deselected. After you have pressed the LEFT or RIGHT ARROW keys, then the cursor position is at the start or end of the selection which has just been deselected.
To undo press CTRL + Z, and to redo press CTRL + Y.
To delete the selected audio, press the DELETE key.
If you want a preview of the audio after deletion, press C which plays back from a short time before the selected audio to a short time after the selected audio, but omitting the selected audio. The length of the times of playback before and after the selection can be set in the Cut Preview section of the Audio I/O category in the Audacity Preferences dialog.
To replace the selected audio with the same length of silence, choose Silence from the Edit menu, or press CTRL + L.
To insert a period of silence into the selected tracks:
Note that all the commands on the Generate menu have the following behaviour. If no audio is selected, the generated audio is inserted. However is some audio is selected, then the selected audio is replaced with the generated audio.
Audacity provides a large number of effects which are available on the Effects menu.
As a simple example, to either fade in or out over some selected audio, choose either Fade In or Fade Out from the Effects menu.
To add a new empty track, choose an option from the Add New sub-menu which is on the Tracks menu.
You can import one or more audio files, and these become new tracks in the existing project. To import standard audio file(s), open the File menu, and choose Audio from the Import sub-menu. A “Select one or more audio files” dialog opens, which has the same structure as a standard Open dialog. Select one or more files, and press ENTER to press the OK button.
Note that immediately after the import, the new tracks are selected, and all other tracks are unselected.
To duplicate the selected audio into new track(s), choose Duplicate on the Edit menu. The duplicated audio retains the same timings as the original selected audio, so in the new track(s) the audio data starts at the start of the selected time range.
If you record tracks when you already have existing tracks, you may well need to time shift the audio data in the new tracks so that they synchronise with the existing tracks.
To time shift the audio data in one or more tracks:
You can open the menu of a focused track by pressing either the APPLICATION KEY or SHIFT + M. The options on the menu include renaming the track.
To change the gain of the focused track, press SHIFT + G. A Gain dialog opens which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the gain. The initial focus is on the edit box, but note that the current gain is not selected. The range of gain (db) is -36 to +36.
To change the pan of the focused track, press SHIFT + P. A Pan dialog opens which contains both an edit box and a slider for changing the pan. The initial focus is on the edit box, but note that the current pan is not selected. The range of pan is -1 to 1, corresponding to left and right.
The Mute and Solo settings on each track only affect playback, they don't affect the project.
If one or more tracks are set to Mute, then these tracks don't contribute to playback. To toggle the Mute setting of a focused track, press SHIFT + U.
If one or more tracks are set to Solo, then only these tracks contribute to playback. The Solo setting overrides the Mute setting. To toggle the Solo setting of a focused track, press SHIFT + S.
Unfortunately, Jaws does not give any feedback as to the the state of these settings, which makes them difficult to use.
Whenever you start to record, a new audio track is added to the project, and the recorded audio is inserted into this new track.
There are a number of settings which may need changing before you make a recording:
BUG WARNING: After you have played back any audio, you can only change the value of the slider whilst recording.
There is an input level meter provided for helping to set up the input volume, but it isn't accessible to Jaws users. However, it's easy to set up the input volume by making some short test recordings and using the dialog box of the Amplify effect to measure the peak level of the recorded sound. Before giving a list of step by step instructions for making the test recordings, there's a description of how the Amplify dialog can be used to measure the level of the recorded sound.
If you select some audio, and then open the Amplify dialog on the Effects menu, then the initial focus is on an Amplification edit box. The initial value in this edit box is the amount of amplification in decibels needed so that the recording uses the full dynamic range. This value indicates if you need to change the value of the input volume slider:
To make some short test recordings so that you can adjust the input volume slider, start with an empty project, and move to the input volume slider which is in the Toolbars. Then go round the following loop until you are happy with the setting:
Note that in the above instructions, the reason for the pause and unpause is to get round the bug in the input volume slider which was noted above.
The Audacity Preferences dialog allows you to adjust many of the settings in Audacity. After a brief description of the dialog box, the following sections describe some of the more common settings.
To open this dialog box, choose Preferences on the Edit menu.
On the left hand side of the dialog is a list of categories. To the right of this list are a set of options which correspond to the category which is selected in the list of categories. The dialog's default button is the OK button.
Whilst playing, you can jump (seek) forward or backward by either a short or long period. To set the values of the short and long periods:
Due to patent issues, the Audacity installation does not include an MP3 encoder. There are several patents covering MP3 encoding, and these are owned by a number of different companies. Up until very recently, the only company that has asked for royalties has been Thomson, and they are quite happy for people to use the free LAME MP3 encoder for private, non-commercial use. However, other companies are now fighting court battles over MP3 patents, and it remains to be seen how they view the private use of the LAME MP3 encoder.
To install the free LAME MP3 encoder:
You now need to tell Audacity the location of the file lame_enc.dll, and this is described in the next section.
To tell Audacity where to find the LAME MP3 encoder library:
To set the number of channels for recording:
To set the default sampling rate and format for a new project:
You can change the keyboard shortcut for any of the commands in Audacity. To do this, first select the Keyboard category in the Audacity Preferences dialog.
To change a shortcut:
To reset all the shortcuts to their default values, TAB to the Defaults button and press it.
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Open audio file | CTRL + O |
| New project | CTRL + N |
| Save project | CTRL + S |
| Preferences dialog | CTRL + P |
| Cycle forward through Toolbars, Track table, and Selection bar | CTRL + F6 |
| Cycle backward through Toolbars, Track table, and Selection bar | CTRL + SHIFT + F6 |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Start/Stop | SPACEBAR |
| Pause/unpause | P |
| Seek left short period during playback | LEFT ARROW |
| Seek right short period during playback | RIGHT ARROW |
| Seek left long period during playback | SHIFT + LEFT ARROW |
| Seek right long period during playback | SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW |
| Play cut/delete preview | C |
| Play looped | L |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Move to previous track | UP ARROW |
| Move to next track | DOWN ARROW |
| Toggle selection of focused track | ENTER |
| Select all the tracks (and all the audio) | CTRL + A |
| Open menu of focused track | APPLICATION KEY or SHIFT + M |
| Close (Delete) focused track | SHIFT + C |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Change gain of focused track | SHIFT + G |
| Change pan of focused track | SHIFT + P |
| Mute/Unmute focused track | SHIFT + U |
| Solo/Unsolo focused track | SHIFT + S |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Skip to start of tracks (time zero) | HOME |
| Skip to end of audio | END |
| New cursor position at playback position | [ |
| Cursor left by a small amount | LEFT ARROW |
| Cursor right by a small amount | RIGHT ARROW |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Select time range which includes all the audio, and select all tracks | CTRL + A |
| Selection end at start of tracks (time zero) | SHIFT + HOME |
| Selection end at end of audio | SHIFT + END |
| Selection start at playback position | [ |
| Selection end at playback position | ] |
| Extend left hand end of selection by a small amount | SHIFT + LEFT ARROW |
| Extend right hand end of selection by a small amount | SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW |
| Contract left hand end of selection by a small amount | CTRL + SHIFT + LEFT ARROW |
| Contract right hand end of selection by a small amount | CTRL + SHIFT + RIGHT ARROW |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Undo | CTRL + Z |
| Redo | CTRL + Y |
| Delete selected audio | DELETE |
| Cut selected audio | CTRL + X |
| Copy selected audio | CTRL + C |
| Paste | CTRL + V |
| Replace selected audio with silence | CTRL + L |
| Close (Delete) focused track | SHIFT + C |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Record | R |
| Pause/unpause | P |
| Stop | SPACEBAR |