A guide for users of the Jaws screen reader, written by David Bailes. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website.
The remainder of this guide is for version 1.3.7 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 1.3.7 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 1.3.7 is much easier to use than version 1.2.6. Audacity 1.3.7 is available from the Windows beta download page of Audacity's website. In the Recommended Download section of this page there are links to the Audacity installer for various versions of Windows.
Audacity is an extremely powerful program, and this is only an introductory guide. For more information see the Audacity Wiki, and the Audacity 1.3.7 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.
When you start Audacity, a Welcome message box opens, and this contains an HTML window which contains some introductory information, and a “Don't show this again at startup” check box. To stop the message box appearing in future, just check the check box, and press the OK button.
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). The dialog's title is “Select one or more audio files...”, and its structure is similar to the standard Windows XP Open dialog.
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.)
Bug Warning: After opening either an audacity project file, or a standard audio file, there's a problem with the focus. Some keystrokes, for example Ctrl + F6 don't work, and others such as Enter incorrectly open a message box saying Disallowed for some reason. In fact, if you OK this dialog, then the focus is corrected. One way of correcting the focus after opening a file is to press Alt + Tab, and then Alt + Tab again to return to the Audacity Window.
The default installation of Audacity can open audio files in the following standard formats: WAV, AIFF, AU, MP3, MP2/MPEG, Ogg Vorbis, and FLAC. In addition, you can open files in some other formats, including wma and m4a if you download and install the FFmpeg library, as described in the FFmpeg library section. This is not included in the installation of Audacity due to legal issues about patents.
An alternative to using the FFmpeg library for opening files in other formats is to use another program to convert the file to one of the formats the default installation of 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.
Bug Warning: After saving audio in either the audacity project foramt, or a standard audio format, there's a problem with the focus. Some keystrokes, for example Ctrl + F6 don't work, and others such as Enter incorrectly open a message box saying Disallowed for some reason. In fact, if you OK this dialog, then the focus is corrected. One way of correcting the focus after saving a file is to press Alt + Tab, and then Alt + Tab again to return to the Audacity Window.
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.
The default installation of Audacity can save in the following standard formats: WAV, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, and MP2. In addition, you can save in some other formats if you download and install some additional libraries which are not included with Audacity because of legal issues with patents:
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. On Windows XP this volume slider also controls the volume of Jaws, so it's best to adjust this slider to maximum. However, on Vista the volume settings of Audacity and Jaws are independent.
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 spin boxes 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 Up Arrow and Down Arrow.
You need to be able to select tracks:
You can select or deselect tracks using the following keystrokes:
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 six controls on the Selection bar, and as in any toolbar use Tab to move between them:
Each of the spin boxes contains a time which can be in a number of different formats. The default format is hh:mm:ss, and you can change the format by choosing one of the options on a spin box's context menu. Changing one spin boxes format, in fact also changes the the formats of the other spin boxes. The format hh:mm:ss + milliseconds is also a useful format when small time intervals are important.
If you move to a spin box by tabbing, then Jaws reads the entire contents of the spin box, for example, 00h13m04s, that is 0 hours, 13 minutes, and 4 seconds.
Within a spin box, one of the digits is the focus. When you first move to a spin box after opening Audacity, the first digit is the focus, but if you subsequently return to the spin box, then the digit which was the focus when you left the spin box is the focus. The keystrokes for moving the focus are:
The time can be considered to be made up of one or more sections, depending on the format used. For example, when using the hh:mm:ss format, the time consists of three sections each consisting of two digits: hours, minutes, and seconds. When you move the focus to a digit in a different section, Jaws reads out the contents of the section, for example “ m edit spin box twelve”. As another example, when using the hh:mm:ss format, the time consists of four sections: hours, minutes, seconds before the decimal point, and seconds after the decimal point which contains three digits. Note that Jaws calls the last two sections edit spin box and s edit spin box respectively, which can be slightly confusing. If you press Insert + Up Arrow, then Jaws reads the contents of the current section, for example zero one, or twenty three.
To change the value of the time, you can either:
If this check box is unchecked, then the positions of the cursor, and start and end of any selection can effectively have any value.
However, if the check box is checked, then the positions of the cursor, and the start and end of any selection can only be at times which are exactly specified by the current edit spin box format. For example, if format of the edit spin boxes is set to hh:mm:ss, then the cursor can be at 2 minutes and 10 seconds exactly, but not 2 minutes and 10.1 seconds. In other words, the cursor always snaps to the nearest time that can be exactly specified by the edit spin box format.
BUG WARNING: If the Snap To check box is checked, then none of the methods for moving the cursor or selecting a time range which involve using the arrow keys work correctly.
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 one of the following sections.
There is an option to select all the audio in the project, if none is selected, and this option is on by default. This option affects what happens, for example, if you try to apply an effect when no audio is selected, that is either no tracks are selected and/or no time range is selected. If this option is off, then the commands on the Effects menu are unavailable, so stopping you from applying an effect. However, if this option is on, then even though no audio is selected the commands on the Effects menu are available, and the effect is applied to all the audio in the project. In addition, after the effect is applied, all the tracks are selected, and a time range which covers all the audio in the project is selected.
Because the automatic selection of tracks and time-ranges occur with no audible feedback, then for users of screen readers it's recommended that you turn this option off, as described in the Select all audio section of the Preferences section. All the instructions in the remainder of this guide assume that the option is off.
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:
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.
If you press any of the keys which move the cursor (Home, End, Left Arrow and Right Arrow), then any selected time range is deselected. After you have pressed Left Arrow or Right Arrow, then the cursor position is at the start or end of the selection which has just been deselected.
To deselect all the tracks, and deselect any time-range, press Ctrl + Shift + A. The new cursor position is at the start 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 Preferences dialog.
To replace the selected audio with the same length of silence, choose Silence Audio from the Edit menu (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 one or more tracks are selected, but no time-range, then the generated audio is inserted at the cursor. However, if a time-range is also selected, then the selected audio is replaced by the generated audio.
Audacity provides a large number of effects which are available on the Effects menu. Some of the commands, like fade in or fade out, simply execute the effect on the selected audio, but most of them open a dialog box so that you can adjust the parameters for the effect.
Nearly all the effect dialogs contain a Preview button which allows you to hear a short sample of the effect applied to the selected audio. BUG WARNING: After a preview, the focus is not returned to the Preview button – it disappears off into the unknown. To return the focus to the Preview button, press Alt + Tab, then Alt + Tab again.
By default, the length of the preview is 3 seconds, but you can change this in the Preferences dialog. In the Audio I/O category there's a Length of preview edit box, and the units are seconds.
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 Windows XP Open dialog. Select one or more files, and press Enter to press the OK button.
Note that immediately after the import, the last track in the project is selected, and all other tracks are unselected.
Bug Warning: After importing one or more audio files there's a problem with the focus. Some keystrokes, for example Ctrl + F6 don't work, and others such as Enter incorrectly open a message box saying Disallowed for some reason. In fact, if you OK this dialog, then the focus is corrected. One way of correcting the focus after importing a file is to press Alt + Tab, and then Alt + Tab again to return to the Audacity Window.
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.
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.
Each track has a mute setting which can be on or off, and a solo setting which can also be on or off. These settings are used to control which tracks contribute to playback, and in addition the mute settings, but not the solo settings, affect which tracks contribute to audio saved in one of the standard formats. By default, the mute and solo settings for each track are off.
BUG WARNING: Jaws does not always correctly say the Solo or Mute state of a track. If you move to a track, then after reading the name of the track, Jaws says mute on, if the mute setting is on, and solo on, is the solo setting is on. However if you then change the mute or solo setting as described below, Jaws does not say the new setting. Also if you press Insert + Up Arrow to read the current track, then Jaws reads the original mute and solo settings when you moved to the track, regardless of any changes which you may have made. To read the current state, just move to an adjacent track and back again.
If a track's mute setting is on, then it doesn't contribute to playback, or to the audio saved in one of the standard formats. You can either change the mute setting of an individual track or the settings of all the tracks:
If one or more tracks have their solo setting on, then only these tracks contribute to playback, regardless of the Mute settings of all of the tracks. To toggle the Solo setting of the focussed track, press Shift + S.
There are, in fact, a couple of options for how the Solo settings and the Mute settings of the tracks interact with each other. Using the default option, the Solo and Mute settings are completely independent: changing a mute setting has no effect on any Solo setting, and changing a Solo setting has no effect on any Mute setting.
The options for how the Solo and Mute settings interact can be found under the Interface category of the Preferences dialog. There's a solo button combo box in the Other interface choices section which has the options: standard (default), simple, and none. For users of screen readers, the simple option is not actually very simple, and the none option removes the solo option from the tracks.
Metadata is data which describes other data, and the metadata for audio files consists of a number of tags, where each tag is made up of a tag name and a tag value. The Metadata editor in Audacity allows you both to edit the values of a number of preset tags, and also to create your own custom tags.
You can open the Metadata editor at any time by choosing Open Metadata Editor from the File menu. In addition, if you save audio in one of the standard formats, then unless you've turned the appropriate option off, the Metadata editor automatically opens, as described in the Saving audio section above.
The Metadata editor contains the following controls:
The table has two columns: Tag Name, and Tag Value, and the first 7 cells in the Tag Name column contain preset tag names such as Artist Name and Track Title. Note that when you first enter the dialog, the focus is the first cell in the table – the Artist Name Tag Name. However, Jaws does not initially read this out. Just press Down Arrow, then Up Arrow, and it reads the cell correctly.
To navigate the table:
All the tag values except the genre tag value are edited using an edit box, but the genre tag value is edited with an edit combo box, which allows you to quickly choose from a list of genres.
To edit any tag value, except the genre tag value, there are two options: either overwriting or editing the current value, as described below. Both involve using the keystrokes Enter or Tab to confirm the edit. Enter moves you the the cell immediately below the current cell, and Tab moves you to the next cell, which is the tag name in the next row. Note that after both these keystrokes, Jaws says table grid window, rather than the contents of the cell. If you need to read this, move away from the cell and back again, by using something like Left Arrow, then Right Arrow.
To edit the the genre tag value:
You can use the rows in the table after the preset tags to create your own custom tags. In these rows you can edit both the tag name and the tag value.
For a new set of metadata, there's one spare row after the preset tags. You can add and remove rows from the table using the Add and Remove buttons which follow the table panel. The Add button appends a row, and the Remove button removes the current custom row.
To edit the list of genres which is available in the edit-combo box when you edit the genre value:
To reset the list of genres to the default list of genres, press the Reset button in the Genres section. A Reset Genres message box opens, asking you whether you're sure that you want to reset the list. Press Enter to press the default OK button.
The next three sections on settings, recording controls, and adjusting the input volume cover material which is relevant to nearly all recording. After that there's a latency correction section, which describes how Audacity can correct for the delay in the recorded audio when recording a vocal track whilst listening to existing tracks.
There are a number of settings which may need changing before you make a recording:
In Windows XP, objects such as onboard sound chips, internal and external sound cards, usb microphones etc are referred to as devices. Selecting an input consists of selecting a device, and then if the device has more than one input source, selecting the input source.
The recording device is selected in the Preferences dialog. Under the Audio I/O category, there's a Recording Device combo box which lists all the recording devices which were plugged in when you opened Audacity.
In fact the combo box lists many of the devices twice: one with the prefix MME:, and the other with the prefix Windows Directsound:. MME and Directsound are two different alternative software interfaces which can be used as part of the interface between Audacity and the hardware. The usual recommendation is to use the Directsound interface, but if you have any problems with it, then just try MME. Note that you have to use the same interface for both recording and playback, so you may have to adjust the Playback device combo box, which is the previous control.
Two devices that may appear on the list are MME: Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input, and Windows DirectSound: Primary Sound Capture Driver. Both of these correspond to the device which has been set as the sound recording default device on the Audio page of Windows XP's Sounds and Audio Devices Properties dialog. It's normally recommended that you choose the device explicitly, rather than use the default device.
If the device has more than one input source, you can now select this using the input source combo box, which is the control after the output and input sliders in the Toolbars section of Audacity's main window.
For nearly all input sources the input source slider which is on the Toolbars of Audacity's main window is in sync with the volume slider for that source which is available from the Windows Sound and Audio Devices Properties dialog, which can be opened from the Control panel. Because of this, you can use either slider, and it's normally easier to use the input source slider in Audacity.
One exception to this can be usb microphones, where the two sliders may be independent, and not in sync. In this case it's best to set the input source slider in the Audacity window to 100%, and then use the slider available through the Sound and Audio Devices dialog to adjust the input volume:
In Vista, all the inputs which are available from onboard sound chips, internal and external sound cards, and USB microphones etc. are treated as separate recording devices. These devices are listed on the Recording page of Vista's Sound dialog, which is described in the Vista's sound dialog section, for those unfamiliar with this dialog.
In Audacity, you select the recording device in the Preferences dialog. Under the Audio I/O category, there's a Recording Device combo box, which lists all the recording devices which were plugged in and enabled when Audacity was opened. If a device doesn't appear in the Recording Device combo box, then check the Recording page of Vista's Sound dialog to see if the device is enabled.
In fact the combo box lists many of the devices twice: one with the prefix MME:, and the other with the prefix Windows Directsound:. MME and Directsound are two different alternative software interfaces which can be used as part of the interface between Audacity and the hardware.
Two devices that may appear on the list are MME: Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input, and Windows DirectSound: Primary Sound Capture Driver. Both of these correspond to the device which has been set as the default device on the Recording page of Vista's Sound dialog. It's normally recommended that you choose the device explicitly, rather than use the default device.
The level of the recorded sound is affected by two sliders: one is on the levels page of the device's properties dialog, which can be opened from the Recording page of Vista's Sound dialog; and the other is the input source slider which is in the Toolbars section of Audacity's main window. Unfortunately, these two sliders are not synchronised. Therefore, you should set Audacity's input source slider to 100%, and use the slider on the Levels page of the Device's Properties dialog.
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, and it indicates if you need to change the value of the input volume. Normally a good value to aim for if about 6db. This should ensure that the recording level is both low enough so that distortion or clipping doesn't occur, and high enough so that you don't get an unnecessary amount of noise. So if the value's less than about 6, try lowering the volume, and if it's more than about 6, try increasing the volume.
To make some short test recordings so that you can adjust the input volume, start with an empty project. The location of the input volume slider depends both on the input source, and whether you're using Windows XP or Vista, and was described above in the Input volume on Windows XP, and Input volume on Windows Vista sections above. Go round the following loop until you are happy with the setting:
If you record a vocal track whilst listening to one or more existing tracks, then due to various delays, the newly recorded track won't be in sync with the original tracks. The total delay is known as the latency and some of the factors which affect its size are: the recording and playback devices, the size of the audio buffers within Audacity, and the software interfaces being used (for example, MME or DirectSound).
Audacity can automatically correct for the latency, once the latency has been measured, as described below. In the Preferences dialog, under the Audio I/O category, there's a Latency correction edit box, where the units of the correction are milliseconds. If you record audio in a new track, then the audio is automatically moved later in time by this latency correction. So to shift the audio earlier in time to offset the latency, the number should be negative.
The default value of the latency correction is -130 milliseconds. However, if you've changed the value of the correction using versions of Audacity prior to 1.3.7, then your value will be unchanged after you've updated to version 1.3.7. The default value will be only roughly correct for a particular recording set up, and it's recommended that you measure the actual latency.
The following method for measuring the latency when using a microphone for recording is accurate to about 10ms, which normally should be good enough. It consists of the following three parts, which will be described in detail in the following sections:
To record the click track being played back through your headphones, you'll obviously need to take them off temporarily. If you're using a separate microphone, rather than a headset microphone, then position it close to the headphones so that it can pick up the clicks. Press R to start the recording, and then press Spacebar to stop the recording after a handful of clicks.
With the first track still being the focus, press Shift + U to mute it, and then playback the recorded track. If the clicks are very quiet compared to Jaws, then amplify the track:
The following instructions describe how to find the position of the recorded click which corresponds to the click which occurs at 1 second in the generated track, and then update Audacity's latency correction. It's assumed that the original track is still muted from when you checked the level of the recorded track 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 (Ctrl + P).
On the left hand side of the dialog is a tree view which contains a list of categories. To the right of this tree view are controls for setting the options which correspond to the category which is selected in the tree view. 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:
Bug Warning: The names of the edit boxes are short time and long time, and the units are seconds. However Jaws misreads these names. The short time edit box it reads as Audio to buffer: (higher = more latency) edit, and the long time edit box it reads as milliseconds edit.
The Select all audio option is described in the Select all audio option section of the Selecting audio section above. This option is on by default, but for users of screen readers, it's recommended that it is turned off. To set this option either on or off:
Due to legal issues about patents, 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.
Because of the way the audacity software is structured, it needs a copy of the lame encoder library that been compiled in a particular way, and so you have to use the LAME library which is available from the web page given in the instructions below – other versions of the LAME library don't work with Audacity 1.3.7.
To download and install the LAME library:
The next time Audacity is opened, it should automatically find the LAME library. If there's any problem with this you can locate the library manually in the Preferences dialog. Under the Import/Export category, there's a MP3 Export library Locate button which opens a dialog for manually locating the library.
The FFmpeg library contains decoders and encoders which enable Audacity to open and save files in formats which are not supported by the standard installation of Audacity. The FFmpeg library is not included with Audacity due to legal issues about patents. Nearly all encoders are covered by one or more patents, but these patents aren't recognised in all countries. The FFmpeg License and Legal Considerations page of the FFmpeg website contains a few comments on these issues.
To download and install the FFmpeg library:
You then need to tell Audacity that the FFmpeg library has been installed:
To set whether the Metadata editor automatically opens each time you export audio:
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:
BUG WARNING: unfortunately in this version of Audacity, many of the command names have a space in front of them, so using the first letter of a command to quickly find it doesn't work alot of the time.
To reset all the shortcuts to their default values, Tab to the Defaults button and press it.
Vista's Sound dialog has three pages: Playback, Recording, and Sounds. The following sections describe how to open this dialog, the controls on the Recording page, and how to open a device's properties dialog where you can adjust the input level of the device.
Here are a couple of ways of opening the dialog, and moving to the Recording page. Method one:
Method two:
The recording page contains a list of devices, and when appropriate, one or more of the buttons: Configure, Set Default, and Properties. The commands provided by the buttons are also available on the context menus of the devices in the list, and it's normally easier to use these, rather than the buttons.
There are two options which control which devices appear on the list, and they appear on the context menu of any of the items in the list. The two options are Show Disabled Devices and Show Disconnected Devices, and by default both options are not checked. If you can't find a device which you think should be there, it may be disabled, and so will show up if the Show Disabled Devices option is checked.
For each item on the list there are three lines of text: its name, a short description, and its status, which can be working, disabled, or Not plugged in. Unfortunately, Jaws only reads the the first of these lines. If you need to read the other lines, then you can press Insert + Numpad Minus to route the Jaws cursor to the PC cursor, and then use Up Arrow and Down Arrow. One way of telling if a device is disabled without having to use the Jaws cursor, is to open its context menu: if there's an Enable item, then the device is obviously disabled.
To open the Properties dialog of a device which is selected in list on the Recording page, press Spacebar, or choose Properties from its context menu.
The input volume (level) can be set on the Levels page of this dialog. For many devices there's a single slider, but a microphone may also have a microphone boost slider.
| 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 backward short period during playback | Left Arrow |
| Seek forward short period during playback | Right Arrow |
| Seek backward long period during playback | Shift + Left Arrow |
| Seek forward long period during playback | Shift + Right Arrow |
| Play cut/delete preview | C |
| Play looped | L or Shift + Spacebar |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Move to previous track | Up Arrow |
| Move to next track | Down Arrow |
| Toggle selection of focused track | Enter or Ctrl + Spacebar |
| Select all the tracks (and all the audio) | Ctrl + A |
| Deselect all the tracks (and any time-range) | Ctrl + Shift + 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 |
| Mute all tracks | Ctrl + U |
| Unmute all tracks | Ctrl Shift + U |
| Solo/Unsolo focused track | Shift + S |
| Command | Keystrokes |
|---|---|
| Move to start of tracks (time zero) | Home |
| Move to end of all audio | End |
| Move to start of audio in selected tracks | J |
| Move to end of audio in selected tracks | K |
| New cursor position at playback position | [ |
| Move backward short period | Comma |
| Move forward short period | Period |
| Move backward long period | Shift + Comma |
| Move forward long period | Shift + Period |
| Cursor left by a very small amount | Left Arrow |
| Cursor right by a very 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 all the audio | Shift + End |
| Selection start at playback position | [ |
| Selection end at playback position | ] |
| Selection end at start of audio in selected tracks | Shift + J |
| Selection end at end of audio in selected tracks | Shift + K |
| 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 |
| Append Record | Shift + R |
| Pause/unpause | P |
| Stop | Spacebar |