A guide for users of the Jaws, NVDA, and Narrator screen readers, written by David Bailes. More guides are available on the Jaws Guides page of the VIP Software Guides website. Although these are written specifically for users of the Jaws screen reader, many of them may also be useful to users of other screen readers.
The remainder of this guide is for versions 3.1.0 to 3.1.3 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.
This is a guide for versions 3.1.0 to 3.1.3 of Audacity, which 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.
Audacity 3.1.1 to 3.1.3 contained fixes for a number of serious bugs found in 3.1.0, so it's highly recommended to use the most recent version. Audacity 3.1.3 is available as either a 64 bit or 32 bit version. It's recommended to install the 64 bit version, unless you have a particular reason for needing the 32 bit version. Note that if you're going to install the 64 bit version, and you have a 32 bit version of Audacity installed, you should uninstall this before installing the 64 bit version.
You can download the 64 bit version of Audacity 3.1.3 using the following link Audacity 3.1.3 64 bit installer and the 32 bit version using the following link Audacity 3.1.3 32 bit installer.
The remaining sections of the introduction are as follows. There are introductions to Projects and the cursor in Audacity, and descriptions of some message boxes which can be shown at startup, and how to get help. There is then an outline of some new features and changes which were introduced in Audacity 3.1.0 There are then sections on Audacity's two sets of default shortcuts, some advice if you are using a non US/UK keyboard, and details of where to get the Jaws script for Audacity.
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, and there are a number of different types of track in Audacity: audio, label, and time. However, time track are not accessible to users of screen readers, and so won't be described in this guide. 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.
One or more of the messages boxes described in the next three sections may be shown when you open Audacity.
If you haven't previously used a version of Audacity which has the option of automatically checking for updates, then when you first open Audacity, an App updates message box opens which tells you about this feature. By default Audacity now periodically checks to see whether there is a new version available. If you don't want this checking to happen, then there's a link in the dialog to the application category in the Preferences dialog where you can change the setting. You can also change this setting at any time, as described in the Automatic checking for updates section of the Preferences section
When you open Audacity, a Welcome message box opens, and this contains an HTML window which contains some information on how to obtain help for Audacity. Unfortunately the links in this text can't be opened using keyboard navigation, but details of the available help are given in the next section. The message box also contains a “Don't show this again at start up” check box. To stop the message box appearing in future, just check the check box, and press the OK button.
If you install the 64 bit version of Audacity and have previously only installed the FFmpeg library for 32 bit versions of Audacity, then the first time you open Audacity, a FFmpeg startup failed dialog will open, telling you that there's a problem. This can easily be fixed by installing the 64 bit version of the FFmpeg library, as described in the FFmpeg library section of the Preferences section.
Audacity is an extremely powerful program, and this is only an introductory guide. For more information see:
The new features and changes which were introduced in Audacity 3.1.0 include the following:
If you run Audacity 2.2.0 or later in a user account where versions of Audacity before 2.2.0 have not been run, then by default, there are less shortcuts available than in those earlier versions of the program. However, you can change to using a fuller set of shortcuts, and this is described in the Standard and full sets of default shortcuts section of the Preferences section. The remainder of this guide assumes you are using the full set.
If you're using a keyboard other than a US, UK, or Irish keyboard, then a couple of important keystrokes won't work if you're using Audacity's default settings. To fix this, see the The left and right bracket shortcuts on keyboards other than US, UK or Irish section, which is in the Customizing section.
There's a Jaws script for Audacity, and its uses include giving additional feedback, and providing convenient ways of obtaining information. Full details of its functionality can be found on the Jaws Script for Audacity website. A direct link to the installer for a beta version of version 2.2.2 of this script is: Jaws-Script-for-Audacity_2_2_2-beta-2020-06-21.exe.
Note that for those using Jaws, the remainder of the guide does not assume that this script is installed.
If you're using Jaws or NVDA, you can read Audacity's status bar using the screen reader's standard keystroke for reading a status bar. Unfortunately, Narrator doesn't currently have a command to read the status bar. However if the track view is the focus, then you can move to the first field of the status bar by pressing Narrator key + Right arrow, and return to the track view by pressing Narrator key + Left arrow.
To open either an audacity project file or a standard audio file, use the Open dialog, which is on the File menu (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. The types of standard audio files which Audacity can open described in the next section.
When you first open Audacity, the window contains an empty track view table, and so when you open an audio file, it opens in this initial window. After opening a standard audio file, the track view table contains a single track, whereas after opening an Audacity project file, the track view table contains all the tracks in the saved project. If you then open any other audio 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.)
In addition to opening standard audio files, you can also import one or more standard audio files into the current project. In this case, a new track is added to the track view table for each of the files. For details, see the Importing audio files section.
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.
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, open the File menu, open the Save Project sub menu, and choose Save Project (Ctrl + S). 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, FLAC, MP3, Ogg Vorbis, and MP2. In addition, you can save in some other formats, such as wma and m4a, if you download and install the FFmpeg library, which is not included with Audacity because of legal issues with patents. Details of how to do this are given in the FFmpeg library section.
To save audio in one of the standard audio formats:
The Export (or the Save Other) sub menu on the File menu also contains commands for opening dialogs for Exporting as MP3, Wav, and OGG. These commands open the Export Audio dialog with the Save as type combo box already set to the appropriate format. However, given that the Export Audio dialog remembers the last format that was used, and that the more specific commands do not have default shortcuts, you may find is more convenient just to use the Export Audio dialog.
You can select the playback device which Audacity uses in a number of places, including the Upper toolbars section of Audacity's main window and the Devices category of the Preferences dialog. If you only have one playback device on your computer, you shouldn't need to change the setting.
Audacity's playback volume is controlled by playback volume slider which is in the Upper toolbars section of Audacity's main window. The total playback volume is determined by both Audacity's playback volume, and the playback device's volume slider, which can be set in Windows.
To change either of these settings in the Upper toolbars section of the main window, assuming that the Track view is the current focus:
These are the keystrokes for some common playback commands. Apart from the commands for seeking, the commands can be found in the Playing sub menu of the Transport menu:
For all the commands listed above which start playback, where playback starts and then automatically stops depends on whether a time range is selected (see the Selecting audio section). If there is no selection, then playback starts at the cursor position, and automatically stops at the end of the audio in the project. If a time range is selected, then playback starts at the start of this selection, and automatically stops at the end of the selection.
If you ever need to check the playback status, that is, playing, stopped or paused, then this information is available as the first item in the status bar.
Loop playback is described in the Loop playback section of the Basic editing section. Audacity also includes several more specialized playback commands, and these are described in the appropriate places in the guide. A full list of playback commands is available in the Playback section of the Keystrokes section.
The Track view 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 your screen reader reads this when you move to the track, or press your screen reader's keystroke 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 Editing when there are multiple tracks section of this guide.
The Cursor is displayed in the track view 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 screen reader users via the Start of selection and Audio Position spin boxes in the Selection Toolbar.
Whenever the focus is within the track view table, and the table contains one or more tracks (rows), then one of the tracks has the focus, and you can move to the next or previous track by pressing Down Arrow or Up Arrow, respectively. You can also move to the first or last track by pressing Ctrl + Home or Ctrl + End, respectively.
You need to be able to select tracks:
There are a number of ways of selecting and deselecting tracks:
If a track is selected, then when your screen reader reads the name of a track, it also says “selected”.
There are two sections of the main window which contain toolbars, and these will be referred to as the upper and lower toolbar sections. The upper toolbars section appears above the track view table, and the lower toolbars section appears below it. As previously mentioned you can cycle round the upper toolbars, the track view table, and the lower toolbars either forwards or backwards by pressing Ctrl + F6 or Ctrl + Shift + F6 respectively.
In both the upper and lower toolbars sections, you can navigate to all the controls in the toolbars in that section by pressing Tab or Shift + Tab. Note that you can only press the buttons in the toolbars by pressing Enter. You can't use Spacebar, as this key is the keystroke for starting and stopping playback.
You can show and hide all these toolbars using the Toolbars sub-menu on the View Menu. Only showing the toolbars which you find useful has the advantage of greatly reducing the number of Tabs needed to find a particular control.
Bug warning: There's a bug which affects users who have been using Audacity since version 2.2.1 or earlier. You may find that if you show a toolbar which has not been shown since version 2.2.1, then the toolbar will be shown as a floating toolbar somewhere in the Audacity window, and you will not be able to tab to it. To work around this, choose reset toolbars on the Toolbars sub menu. You can then set which toolbars are displayed.
The remainder of this section on toolbars contains sections on the upper and lower toolbars, and then sections on some individual toolbars: the selection, time, and play at speed toolbars.
By default, the Upper toolbars section of the main window contains the following toolbars:
The Upper toolbars section also contains a Timeline options button, which opens a menu containing items which either aren't of much interest to most screen reader users, or which duplicate settings which can be more conveniently available elsewhere.
By default, the Lower toolbars section of the main window contains the selection toolbar and the time toolbar, and these toolbars are described in the following two sections.
The selection toolbar contains the following controls:
The controls on the selection toolbar which are used for displaying and changing times are often referred to as edit spin boxes. They have this name because to change a time you can either type in times, or use Up Arrow or Down Arrow to increase or decrease the value of the time respectively. In the guide they will often be referred to as just spin boxes for brevity.
Each spin boxes contains a time which can be in a number of different formats, and you can change it by choosing one of the options on a spin box's context menu. In the case of the edit spin boxes in the Selection toolbar, if you change the format of one of them, then this change is also applied to the other one. The default format of the edit spin boxes in the Selection toolbar is hh:mm:ss + milliseconds, but the format hh:mm:ss + hundredths is a useful alternative, as adjusting times to a hundredth of a millisecond is normally accurate enough. Nearly all the examples in this guide will use the latter format.
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 + hundredths format, the time consists of four sections: hours, minutes, seconds, and centi-seconds (hundredths of seconds), each consisting of two digits.
If you move to a spin box by tabbing, then your screen reader reads the entire contents of the spin box, for example, 00h13m04.73s, that is 0 hours, 13 minutes, and 4.73 seconds.
Within a spin box, one of the digits is the focus. When you first move to a spin box after opening Audacity, the last 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:
When you use one of these keystrokes, your screen reader reads the digit which is now the focus. In addition, if you've moved to a different section of the time, then your screen reader reads the new section before reading the digit. For example, if the time is 01h42m38.46s and the focus is the second of the minutes digits (the digit 2), then if you press Right arrow your screen reader says 38s, 3. Alternatively, if you press End then your screen reader says 46 centi-seconds, 6.
There are a couple of ways of changing the value of the time:
If you are using the Jaws screen reader, you can always read the entire time by pressing the keystroke to read the current line.
The Snap to combo box contains three options: Off, which is the default, Nearest, and Prior. If the combo box is set to either Nearest or Prior, then this has two effects on using the left and right arrow keys to move the cursor or the start or end of a selected time range.
The first effect is that if Snap combo box to is set to Nearest, then if you move the cursor or the start or end of a selected time range, then its position is always automatically adjusted to the nearest whole number of the smallest unit in the format of the edit spin boxes. For example, if format is hh:mm:ss, then a position of 1.3 seconds would be adjusted to 1 second, and a time of 1.8 seconds would be adjusted to 2 seconds. In a similar manner, if the Snap to combo box is set to Prior, then the times 1.3 seconds and 1.8 seconds would both be adjusted to 1 second.
If the Snap to combo box is set to Nearest or Prior, the second effect is that the minimum amount that the position of the cursor or the start or end of selection changes by is the smallest unit in the format of the edit spin boxes. So, for example, if the format is set to hh:mm:ss, and you press Right arrow to move the cursor to the right, the minimum change in position is 1 second.
The Time toolbar is in the Lower toolbars section of the main window, and contains a single control, an audio position spin box. During playback or recording, this shows the position of the playback recording cursor respectively. Otherwise, it shows the time that playback would start if you pressed Spacebar. Note that unlike the spin boxes in the Selection toolbar, you can't change the time shown by the audio position spin box, you can only read its value.
The default format of the audio position spin box is hh:mm:ss, and you can change this using the control's context menu.
In addition to playback at the normal speed, you can also playback audio at speeds varying from very slow to three times the normal playback speed. You can do this either using the Play at speed toolbar, which is in the upper toolbars section of the main window, or by using the commands on the Play-at-Speed sub menu on the Extra menu.
The play at speed toolbar contains:
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.
Reading the current position of the cursor is described in one of the following sections, and the ways of moving the cursor are as follows:
In Audacity, there is either a cursor or a selected time range. When there is a cursor, then the times shown by the controls for start of the selection are the same as the times shown by the controls for the end of the selection, and these times are the position of the cursor. Because of this, we can use the start of selection controls for reading and changing the position of the cursor, as described in the next two sections.
There are a couple of ways of reading the cursor position. The first is to read the Start of selection control on the Selection toolbar:
The second way of reading the cursor position is to open the Set left selection boundary dialog:
With no time range selected, consider the two cases:
This section describes how the step size of the left and right arrow keys depend on the horizontal zoom of the audio data, and how to set the amount of zoom so that the step size has suitable values. The same step sizes are also used by the Shift + Left or Right Arrow and Ctrl + Shift + Left or Right Arrow keystrokes for expanding or contracting selected time ranges.
Audacity has the ability to vary the amount by which the audio data is zoomed in the horizontal direction. This allows sighted users to view the audio data in either more or less detail, depending on the task.
Pressing Right Arrow or Left Arrow moves the cursor by the same physical distance on the screen, whatever the amount of horizontal zoom. So if the amount of zoom is increased, then the time by which the cursor is moved is decreased. Similarly, if the amount of zoom is decreased, then the time by which the cursor is moved is increased.
After opening or importing a file, the horizontal zoom is adjusted so that the longest track in the project takes up the available space in the track in the window. So the initial amount of zoom, and so the step size of the arrow keys depends on the length of the tracks.
However, you can set the horizontal zoom to a predefined amount. You can do this by opening the view menu, opening the zoom sub menu, and choosing Zoom Normal (Ctrl + 2). When the zoom is set to normal, then the left and right arrow keys move the cursor by slightly more than one hundredth of a second. This step size is normally too small to be useful. However, you can easily adjust the step size using the zoom in and zoom out commands which are also available on the Zoom sub menu on the View menu:
So, for example, after setting the zoom to normal (Ctrl + 2), which sets the step size to slightly more than one hundredth of a second, if you zoom out (Ctrl + 3) three times, this multiplies the step size by 8, resulting in a step size which is slightly less than a tenth of a second. As another example, if you press Ctrl + 2, and then Ctrl + 3 7 times, then the step size is about one and a half seconds.
The use of the word scrubbing in audio editors originates from editing using reel to reel tape machines. The tape was moved backwards and forwards over the tape head to find the precise position for an edit. In Audacity, there are two commands for scrubbing which are of interest to keyboard users: Scrub backwards which has the keystroke U, and Scrub forwards, which has the keystroke I. By pressing and holding one these keys you can play either backwards or forwards. The speed of playback depends on Audacity's horizontal zoom setting, and so by changing this you can have the audio played back at a wide range of speeds.
If you are using the Jaws screen reader, and its typing echo setting is set to characters, which is the default, then if you press and hold one of keys for scrubbing, you will hear the name of the key being repeated while you scrub. To avoid this, you can temporarily set the typing echo to none. To do this, press Insert + 2 until you hear the word none, and use the same keystroke to set the typing echo back to characters.
If no time range is selected, and you press and hold one of the scrubbing keys, then playback starts at the cursor. When you release the key, playback stops and the cursor is positioned at this time. Alternatively, If a time range is selected, and you press and hold one of the scrubbing keys, then playback starts at the start of the selection. Unlike during normal playback, if the end of the selected time range is reached, playback doesn't automatically stop. When the key is released, the selected time range is deselected, and the cursor is positioned at the time the key was released.
If you press and hold one of these keys, and whilst still holding it, press and hold the other key, then playback immediately changes direction, and does not stop when you release the original key.
The playback speed for these commands depends on Audacity's horizontal zoom setting. This can be set using the commands on the zoom sub menu, which is on the View menu:
You can position the cursor more accurately using lower playback speeds, and you may find that a playback speed of one quarter is a useful choice for the speed. The accuracy of the positioning of the cursor also depends on the Audio interface which Audacity communicates with your audio devices. The choice of interfaces is described in the Audio interface section later in the guide. Using the WASAPI interface will give you the most accurate positioning.
In the above description, it's been said that when one of the scrubbing keys is released, the cursor is positioned at the time the key is released. However, there is an exception to this if either the Left bracket or Right bracket key has been pressed during playback. In this case, the time selection present when the scrubbing key is released is preserved. This behaviour allows scrubbing to one of the options described in the section One general method for selecting a time range.
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. The selection of tracks was described in the track selection section above, and selecting a time range is described in the following sections.
Using Audacity's default settings, if you try to perform some action on some audio, such as applying an effect, and in fact no audio is selected, then a dialog opens, telling you that no audio is selected. However, there is an auto select option, and if that is turned on, then instead of the dialog appearing, all the audio in the project is selected, and the effect is applied to this audio. For users of screen readers, it is recommended that you leave this option off, but full details of the option and its setting are described in the Auto-select 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.
There are two general ways of selecting a time range. One of these is described in the next section, and the other method is described in the Selecting a time range using the stored cursor position section below. After this, there are sections on useful playback commands, making fine adjustments to time ranges, and how to deselect time ranges.
The first general way of selecting a time range consists of two steps:
Note that when a time range is selected, playback plays the selected time range. There are also a number of additional playback commands which are described in the Playback commands for checking a selected time range section.
You can use any of the following methods for setting the other end of the selection:
In the following examples, it's assumed that one track is selected, and any other tracks are not selected. In the cases which involve pressing a key during playback, then in practice, you'd probably want to then make small adjustments to the selection, as described in a section below.
The second general method of selecting a time range consists of four steps:
In some circumstances, this method is easier to use than the method described in the previous section. Having stored the cursor position, you can use what ever method you want to position the cursor at the other end of the time range you want to select, without any danger that you'll loose the other end of the selection.
Note that during playback, including when paused, the Store Cursor position command stores the position of the playback cursor, rather than the cursor used for editing. However, it's normally easier to position the edit cursor precisely where you want it, and so for selecting a time range, you probably won't want to store the position of the playback cursor very often. Similarly, during playback, including when paused, the “Cursor to Stored Cursor position” on the Select sub menu selects from the position of the playback cursor to the stored cursor position.
When a time range is selected, then if you press Spacebar for playback, only the audio in the selected time range is played. In addition you can use the following playback commands to check that you've selected the time range which you want:
The settings for the length of these periods all share the settings of the play cut preview command, and can be set in the playback category of Preferences.
There are a couple of ways of making small adjustments to a selected time range, and they are described in the next two sections.
You can use the following keystrokes to move the start or end of the selection by a small amount. Adjusting the step size is described in the Step size of the left an right arrow keys section above.
Note that the two keystrokes that use Ctrl contract the selected time range, and the other two keystrokes expand the selected time range.
If you press any of the following keystrokes which move the cursor, then any selected time range is deselected: Home, End, J, K, Left Arrow, Right Arrow, Comma, and Period. 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 group of the Playback category in the Preferences dialog.
To cut the selected audio, press Ctrl+ X. The selected audio is removed from the tracks, and placed on the Audacity clipboard.
As in the case of deleting audio, you can preview the effect of your cut by pressing C for Play cut preview.
To copy the selected audio onto the Audacity clipboard, press Ctrl + C.
To paste the audio on the Audacity clipboard into the selected track or tracks, press Ctrl + V. There are two cases:
If no tracks are selected when you paste some audio, then the audio is inserted at the beginning of a new track.
There are a couple of convenient playback commands which can be used for checking that the transition at the start and end of the pasted audio sounds alright:
The settings for the length of these periods share the settings of the play cut preview command, and can be set in the playback category of Preferences.
To replace the selected audio with the same length of silence, on the Edit Menu, open the Remove Special sub menu, and choose Silence Audio (Ctrl + L).
To insert a period of silence into the selected tracks:
Set the time that you want, and then press Enter to press the default OK button. The period of silence is inserted, and a time-range which covers this period is selected.
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. Also, all the spin boxes in the dialogs which are opened from the Generate menu have a default format of seconds, and the first non-zero digit is the initial focus, rather than the first digit.
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.
If an effect does not support real-time preview, which is described in the next section, then its dialog nearly always contains a Preview button which allows you to hear a short sample of the effect applied to the selected audio. By default, the length of the preview is 6 seconds, but you can change this in the Preferences dialog, where in the Playback category, in the Effects Preview group, there's a Length edit box.
The effect's dialog also contains a Manage button, which opens a menu which includes commands for presets.
Some of the effects which can be used Audacity include real-time preview – where you can change the settings of an effect during playback. A small number of the effects included with Audacity's installation, for example, the bass and treble effect and the wahwah effect, have this feature. In addition, if you have downloaded any VST or LADSPA effects, then these have real-time preview.
The dialogs of effects which include real-time preview include the following controls, all of which have access keys:
After opening one of these effect dialogs, you can return to the main Audacity window without closing it. Dialogs with this behaviour are known as modeless dialogs. You can cycle round the Audacity main window and any open modeless dialogs by pressing Alt + F6. Because these effect dialogs have their own playback controls, you may not need to make use of the behaviour very often.
There are two ways of deleting tracks:
If you delete or cut part of the audio in a track, and if the beginning or end of this part hasn't zero amplitude, then this can result if sudden changes in the amplitude of the audio. If the size of these sudden changes are large enough, then you'll hear them as clicks. A similar problem can occur if you copy and paste audio.
You can avoid introducing these clicks by using the “At Zero Crossings” command, which is on the Select menu, and has the shortcut Z. If a track is selected, but there isn't a selected time range, then if you apply this command, the position of the cursor is moved to the nearest position where the amplitude of the audio in the selected track is zero. The change is position is very small, so you don't have to worry that this will make a large change to the cursor position. In a similar manner, if there's a selected time range, the positions of both the start and the end of the time range are adjusted so that the amplitude of the audio in the selected track is zero.
So to avoid introducing clicks:
In Audacity 3.1.0, there is now a loop range which controls loop playback, and which is independent of the selected time range. The options and commands for looping can be found on the Looping sub menu of the Transport menu.
If the Loop On/Off option on the Looping sub menu is not checked, then as you might expect, playback proceeds as normal, and there is no looping. If the option is checked, playback starts as the position of the cursor, or the start of the selected time range, if there is one. Playback proceeds until it reaches the end of the loop. At this point playback jumps back to the start of the loop, and the loop is then played repeatedly until you stop playback.
There are a couple of ways of setting the loop range:
You can play the audio between the start and end of the loop once by opening the Transport menu, opening the playback sub menu and choosing Play Once/Stop (Shift + Spacebar). Note that in versions of Audacity before 3.1.0, Shift + Spacebar was the default shortcut to the command Loop play, which has been removed.
If you want to update the loop range without stopping playback, you can do this using the selection start and end time controls on the selection toolbar. Simply change one of the values, and then on the Transport menu, open the Looping sub menu, and choose Set Loop to Selection.
This section describes some commands and settings which are relevant when you want to work on a project which contains more than one track.
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 (Ctrl + Shift + I). 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.
To add a new empty track, choose an option from the Add New sub-menu which is on the Tracks menu.
To duplicate the selected audio into new track or tracks, open the Edit menu and choose Duplicate (Ctrl + D). The duplicated audio retains the same timings as the original selected audio, so in the new track or tracks the audio data starts at the start of the selected time range.
Each track can be muted and soloed. These settings are used to control which tracks contribute to playback, and to the audio saved in one of the standard formats. By default, a track is neither muted or soled. After reading the name of the track, your screen reader says the words muted and soloed if this is the case.
If a track is muted, then it doesn't contribute to playback, or to the audio saved in one of the standard formats. There are a number of commands for changing whether or not tracks are muted:
All apart from the first of these commands can be found on the Mute/unmute sub menu of the Tracks menu.
If one or more tracks is soloed, then only these tracks contribute to playback or to the audio saved in one of the standard formats, regardless of the Mute settings of all of the tracks. To toggle whether or not the focussed track is soloed, press Shift + S.
There are a number of options for the solo setting and its interaction with the mute setting:
The setting which has these options can be found by going to the Tracks Behaviors category of the Preferences dialog, where there is a Solo button combo box.
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 range of gain (db) is -36 to +36.
The gain of a track is applied to the whole track, and is only applied during playback, or when the track is exported to a file, or when you use the mix and render command. Changing the gain doesn't affect the amplitude of the audio data in the track.
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 range of pan is -100 to 100, corresponding to left and right.
You can open the menu of a focused track by pressing Shift + M, or the Application key. The commands on the menu include renaming the track, and moving the track, and the latter is described in the next section.
On the Track menu there are commands for moving a track up, down, to the top, and to the bottom of the tracks. By default, these commands to not have keystrokes assigned to them, but you can assign your own keystrokes in the keyboard category of Preferences, which is described in the Keyboard shortcuts section, which is in the Preferences section. The names of the commands are move focused track up, down, to top, and to bottom. Keystrokes which are not currently used and are suitable include Ctrl + Shift + Up Arrow, Ctrl + Shift + Down Arrow, Ctrl + Shift + Home, and Ctrl + Shift + End.
If you select two or more tracks, you can align the audio in these tracks so that the audio in a track starts at the end of the audio in the previous track. To do this, open the tracks menu, open the Align tracks sub menu, and choose Align end to end. Notes:
You can time shift the audio data in one or more selected tracks so that either the start or the end of the audio is at some desired position. You can specify this position either with the cursor, or the start or end of a selected time range. All the commands for moving the audio are available on the Align Tracks sub menu which is on the Tracks menu, and some examples of using them are given below.
There are a couple of convenient playback commands which can be used for checking the position of the shifted audio:
The settings for the length of these periods share the settings of the play cut preview command, and can be set in the playback category of Preferences.
To move the audio in one or more tracks so that it starts at some desired time:
If you'd wanted to move the audio in one or more tracks so that it ended at some desired time, then you'd simply change step three to use the End to Cursor/Selection Start command, instead of Start to Cursor/Selection Start.
As another example, if you want to time shift one or more tracks by a certain amount of time, then:
Note that if you're wanting to move a track which you've recorded and which doesn't line up with the existing tracks, then you may need to move the start of the audio to earlier than time zero. Because you can't move the cursor before time zero, the above method has to be modified so that in step two, you press K to move to the end of the audio in the selected tracks, and then in step five, you use the End to Cursor/Selection Start command. Note that Audacity does have an automatic latency compensation.
When you've got more than one track in the project, you may well want to fade some tracks when the audio in other tracks starts and ends. For example, if there's some introductory music before the start of some spoken audio, you may want to start fading the music down just before the start of the speech. The fade up and down effects have been mentioned already in the guide, and these simply fade up or down with the start and end of the fades being either zero or 100 percent of the original amplitude. The next two sections describe the Auto duck and Adjustable fade effects, which enable you to do more complex fades.
The Auto Duck effect reduces the volume in the selected audio during the periods in which the level of another track, known as the control track, exceeds a certain threshold. The track which is used as the control track is the last unselected track which is immediately below a selected track.
So, for example, if you've got one music track, and one voice track in the project, and you want to reduce the volume of the music when there's speech in the voice track:
These are the various Auto Duck settings:
In an entirely similar manner, the time over which the volume in the selected audio is faded back up is also made up of two parts: the inner and the outer fade up lengths, which have default values of 0 and 0.5 seconds respectively.
This effect can be used in two ways, depending on the setting of the Handy presets combo box:
The Adjustable fade effect dialog contains the following controls:
As an example of the use of this effect, say that you want to fade down the audio in a track to 50 percent of the original, and then stay at that level till the end of the track.
The idea of sync-lock tracks is to try and keep a group of tracks time synchronized with each other when some operation, such as deleting, affects the timing of one or more tracks in the group.
Say you just had two audio tracks, and they were sync-locked. If you select one track and a time range, and delete the selected audio, then the audio in that time range in the unselected track is also deleted, so that all the remaining audio in the two tracks is still in sync with each other. Similarly with just two tracks which are sync locked, then if you select one track, and paste some audio into that track at the cursor position, then silence, with the same duration as the pasted audio, is pasted into the unselected track at the cursor position.
You switch sync lock tracks on and off in the tracks menu, and by default it's off. If there are only audio tracks in the project, then there's just one group of sync-locked tracks. The tracks in a project can be divided up into more than one group using label tracks. Each audio track which follows immediately after a label track starts a new group.
When you select one or more tracks in a sync locked group, then an appropriate icon is shown in the track for sighted users, and the phrase sync locked is added to the name of the track for screen reader users.
A label represents either a specific time position or a specific time range, and it can have a name. A label representing a specific time is referred to as a point label, and a label representing a specific time range is referred to as a region label.
Labels are stored in Label tracks. There can be more than one Label track in a project, but normally a single label track is all that is needed.
You can label positions or time ranges as described in the next section, and then easily return to these later on in your editing using the commands described in the Moving to labels section. In addition, a number of the tools on the Analyze menu add a label track to the project which contains their results. For example, the Find clipping tool produces a label track containing labels at points where the audio has clipped.
There are two commands for creating labels, and both are on the Labels sub menu on the Edit menu:
For these commands, there is an option as to whether any name for a new label is entered in a dialog box, or in an edit box in the label track. The second option is not very accessible for users of screen readers, and so it's recommended that you use the dialog box option. In the Preferences, in the Tracks Behaviors category, there is a “Use dialog for the name of a new label” check box, which is not checked by default, but which you can check.
Using these commands for creating labels using both of these options will be described. First, using a dialog box for the name:
To use these commands for adding labels, not using the dialog option:
There are two commands for moving to labels. For the purposes of working out which is the nearest label, the position of a region label is taken to be the start of its time range.
Both these commands use the labels in a single label track, not all the label tracks in the project. If there is a single label track in the project, which is the usual case, then the commands use that track whatever track is the focus. If there is more than one label track in the project, then if the focused track is a label track this track is used, otherwise the first label track below the focused track, if one exists, is used.
When these commands “move to” a label: if the label is a point label, then the cursor is set to the label's position; if the label is a region label, then a time range is selected using the label's time range. In both cases, Jaws says the name of the label, if it has one, followed by its position in the label track. If these commands are used during playback, then playback continues using the label's cursor position or time range.
The uses of the Edit labels dialog include renaming a label, deleting a label, and as an alternative to the move to label commands. To open the dialog, open the Edit menu, open the Labels sub menu, and choose Edit Labels. The dialog includes the following controls:
When you open the dialog, one of the cells in the table is the focus and is selected. Assuming that the project contains at least one label, then one of the names of the labels is selected. In determining which name is selected, the position of a region label is taken as the start of its time range:
When you close the dialog, either by pressing OK or cancelling it, then either the cursor or a time range is set using the label which is selected in the table, depending on whether the selected label is a point label or a region label.
Note that opening the dialog when there are no labels in the project is not recommended. If you do so the table contains a single row, and the name of a label track is the focus and is selected. The name of the label is blank. If you press the OK button, then a new label track is appended to the tracks in the project, and this track contains a label with a blank name. The best thing to do if you open the dialog in this state is to press Esc to cancel it. However even if you cancel, the cursor is set to time zero, and so you loose the previous position of the cursor.
The table has six columns: the name of the label track, name of the label, start and end times, and low and high frequencies. If a label is a point label, then the start and end time have the same value. The low and high frequencies are for spectral selection, and are not covered in this guide.
There are a number of ways of selecting a cell in the table:
Note that because Tab can be used for selecting a cell in the table, there are a couple of keystrokes which move you directly out of the table. From any cell in the table, Ctrl + tab, and Ctrl + Shift + Tab move to the next or previous control.
Screen readers read all the cells as if they were edit boxes. Just ignore this. None of the cells behave like standard edit boxes, and the way you edit a cell depends on the type of value it contains. The editing of the names of labels and the start and end times are described in the next two sections. In both cases you can confirm the edit by pressing Enter or Tab. The difference between the two is that Enter moves you the cell immediately below the current cell, and Tab moves you to the next cell. In addition, in both cases you can cancel the edit by pressing Esc.
You can either overwrite or edit the current name:
Note that by default, the time format of the start and end times is the same as the time format of the time controls in the selection toolbar. You can temporarily change the time format by using the context menu of one the times when it is being edited. This changed format only applies to the time controls in the dialog, and the temporary change is not saved when then dialog is closed.
Currently, the only reason for a screen reader user to select a label is to be able to use the Time Shift commands to move it, which is described in the next section.
To select a label, the label track containing the label has to be the focus. You can then use the keystrokes Tab or Shift + Tab to select the next or previous label respectively. Just like the commands for moving to the next or previous label, these commands also set the cursor position or a selected time range, depending on whether the selected label is a point or range label respectively.
The Time Shift left and Time shift right commands, can be used for adjusting the positions of clips, as described in the Time shifting clips section below. You can also use them to adjusting the positions of labels.
To adjust the position of a label, without adjusting the position of any audio, or any other labels:
In most of the rest of this guide, it has been assumed that an audio track contains a single section of audio data. However, an audio track can contain a number of separate sections, and these are referred to as clips. In Audacity, clips can not overlap.
There are a number of ways you can end up with more than one clip on a track:
Each clip can have a name, and when a clip is created, it's automatically given a name. These are some of the rules for the generation of these names:
In addition to these automatically generated names, you can also rename a clip to anything that you want, as described in the renaming clips section below.
There are commands for moving both to the next and previous clip boundary, where a clip boundary is either the start or end of a clip. These commands appear on the “Cursor to” sub menu of the Transport menu. The command to move the cursor to the next clip boundary moves the cursor to the next clip boundary after the cursor, or the end of the selected time range. Similarly, the command to move the cursor to the previous clip boundary, moves the cursor to the previous clip boundary before the cursor, or the start of the selected time range.
If any audio tracks are selected, then these commands find clip boundaries in these selected tracks. Otherwise, the commands find clip boundaries in all the audio tracks.
When the cursor is moved to a clip boundary, your screen reader says either start or end, followed by the number of the clip, followed by the name of the track. In the case where two clips are immediately next to each other, and the clip boundary is both the end of one clip and the start of the next, then your screen reader says this.
There are two sets of commands for selecting time ranges which involve clip boundaries, and these are described in the next two sections. In both cases, if any audio tracks are selected, then the commands use the clips in the selected tracks. Otherwise, the commands use the clips in all the audio tracks.
There are commands for both selecting the previous clip, and selecting the the next clip. They can be found on the Clip Boundaries sub menu of the Select menu, and they have shortcuts Alt + Comma, and Alt + Period respectively. When a clip is selected, your screen reader says the number of the clip in the track, followed by the name of the track.
Note that you can also easily use these commands for moving to clip boundaries. Just select the relevant clip, and then press Left Arrow or Right Arrow to deselect the selection, and position the cursor at either the start or the end of the clip respectively.
The two commands for selecting using clip boundaries can be used in more cases than the commands for selecting the next and previous clip which were described in the previous selection. They are also found on the Clip Boundaries sub menu on the Select menu, but they do not have keystrokes assigned to them by default.
When the start or the end of the selected time range is set to a clip boundary using these commands, your screen reader gives the details of the clip boundary, in exactly the same way as when the commands for moving the cursor to a clip boundary are used.
As in the case for naming a new label, for renaming a clip there's an option as to whether this is done using an edit box in a dialog box, or an edit box in the track. And again, using the dialog box is a lot more accessible for users of screen readers, and so it's recommended that you use the dialog box option. In fact the option is set using the same setting which is used for whether a dialog box is used for the name of a new label. In the Preferences, in the Tracks Behaviors category, there is a “Use dialog for the name of a new label” check box, which is not checked by default, but which you can check.
To rename a clip:
To split a clip into two clips in a selected track:
You can also split a clip into three parts using this method, if you select a time range which lies within the clip.
You can use the split delete and split cut commands to delete or cut the selected audio, without affecting the position of the contents of the track after the audio which was deleted or cut. This is in contrast to the standard cut and delete commands, which do cause subsequent contents to move. These two split commands can be found on the Remove Special sub menu of the Edit menu.
The effect of the split delete command is as follows. For each track which is selected, any audio data in the selected time range is removed, leaving an empty track in that time range, and so the position of any subsequent audio data in the track is left unchanged.
For example, if in a selected track, the selected time range lies within a a clip, this clip is split into two clips. The first clip ends at the start of the selected time range. There is then a section of empty track, which is the length of the time range, and then the second clip starts at the end of the time range.
As another example, if the start of the selected time range lies within the clip, and the end of the time range is at the end of the clip, then the clip is shortened – no new clips are created.
The effect of the split cut command is the same as the split delete command, except that the audio that is removed is placed on the clipboard, rather than just being deleted.
The Split New command can be found on the Clip Boundaries sub menu of the Edit menu. This command moves the selected audio to a new track or tracks, without affecting the position of any subsequent audio in the original track.
For each track which is selected, any audio data in the selected time range is removed, leaving an empty track in that time range, and so the position of the any subsequent audio data in the track is left unchanged. A new track is added after the last track, and the removed audio is pasted into this track at its original position.
You can think of Split new as being equivalent to Split cut, followed by the cut audio being pasted into a new track at the same position as the original selected audio.
If the selected audio contains sections of complete silence, that is the amplitude of the audio is zero, then the Detach at Silences command can be used remove those sections of audio, leaving clips which are separated from each other by the resulting sections of empty track. The command can be found on the Clip Boundaries sub menu of the Edit menu.
For each section in the selected audio where the amplitude of the audio is zero, the audio data is removed, resulting in a section of empty track, and the position of any subsequent audio data in the track is left unchanged.
To merge two or more adjacent clips in a selected track:
There are a couple of commands, Time Shift Left and Time Shift Right, which can be used to move either a single clip, or a number of clips. The Extra menu contains an edit sub menu, which contains these commands. For information about this Extra menu, see the Extra menu section of the Preferences section. By default no shortcuts are assigned to these commands, but if you use these commands frequently, you'll probably want to assign your own keystrokes.
The Time Shift Left and Time Shift Right Commands move the clip or clips by a small amount to the left or right respectively. As in the case of using the arrow keys to move the cursor, the amount of movement depends on the Zoom setting, and the step size can be adjusted, as described in the Step size of the left and right arrow keys section of the Moving the Cursor section.
Bug warning. Unfortunately these commands caused Audacity 3.1.0 to crash, but this problem was fixed in Audacity 3.1.1.
If the cursor is positioned at a clip boundary which is both the end of one clip and the start of the next clip, then for the purposes of moving clips, the cursor is considered to be within the second clip, and this is the clip which the commands use. Because of this, when you are placing the cursor within a clip to move it, it's recommended that you don't position the cursor at the end of the clip. If the cursor is at the end of a clip, then if you repeatedly use the Clip right command and the clip becomes immediately adjacent to the next clip, then the cursor will then be considered to lie within the next clip, and it is this clip, rather than the original clip that will move. This is unlikely to be what you want.
To move a number of adjacent clips in a track:
In the case where other tracks are selected, in addition to the focused track, then in these tracks, all clips which include selected audio are also moved.
The use of sync-lock tracks to keeps a group of tracks time synchronized was described in the Sync lock tracks section, which in the Editing when there are multiple tracks section. If sync lock tracks is enabled when you move either a single clip or a group of clips, then additional clips may be moved. We will refer to the clips that would be moved if sync lock tracks was disabled, as the original set of clips to be moved.
If a clip overlaps in time with a clip in the original set of clips to be moved, then it also will be moved. In fact, the rule is more general than this. For any clip, if there exists a series of clips, starting with this clip and ending with a clip in the original set of clips to be moved such that each pair of adjacent clips in this series overlap in time, then that clip will also be moved.
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 tags 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 Edit Metadata Tags dialog at any time by choosing Metadata from the Edit menu. In addition, if you save audio in one of the standard formats, then unless you've turned the appropriate option off, the Edit Metadata Tags dialog automatically opens, as described in the Saving audio section above.
The Edit Metadata Tags dialog contains the following controls:
The table has two columns: Tag and Value, and the first 7 cells in the Tag column contain preset tag names such as Artist Name and Track Title. Your screen reader indicates that these preset tag names are not editable by saying unavailable or disabled after their names.
There are a number of ways of selecting a cell in the table:
Note that because Tab can be used for selecting a cell in the table, there are a couple of keystrokes which move you directly out of the table. From any cell in the table, Ctrl + tab, and Ctrl + Shift + Tab move to the next or previous control.
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 selects the cell immediately below the current cell, and Tab selects the next cell, which is the tag name in the next row.
To edit 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. 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 commands and keystrokes, and adjusting the recording level cover material which is relevant to nearly all recording. After that there are sections on punch and roll recording, and latency compensation. The latter 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, and they're described in the following sections. Note that a number of these settings can be made either in the Devices category of the Preferences dialog, or an individual dialog, or the Device Toolbar.
Audacity provides a number of options for the software interface which Audacity uses to interact with the playback and recording devices:
You can set this option using either the Interface host combo box in the Devices category of the Preferences dialog, or the Audio host combo box in the Select Audio Host dialog (Shift + H), or the Audio Host combo box on the Device toolbar. Note that when you change this option, the settings of the recording and playback devices may change, and so you should check these settings.
You can select the recording device using either the recording device combo box in the Devices category in the Preferences dialog, or the recording device combo box in the Select Recording Device dialog (Shift + I), or the recording device combo box on the Device toolbar.
If you're using either the MME or the DirectSound audio interface, then the available devices may also include either “Microsoft Sound Mapper - Input” or “Primary Sound Captive Driver”, respectively. Both of these correspond to the device which has been set as the default recording device in Windows. Generally, using one of these options isn't recommended, as the default recording device can sometimes change unexpectedly, and so change your recording device in Audacity without any warning.
These combo boxes list all the recording devices which were plugged in and enabled when audacity was opened. If a device isn't listed, then check the Recording page of Windows Sound dialog to see if the device is enabled. This dialog is described in the Sound dialog in Windows section, for those unfamiliar with this dialog.
This section describes which control to use to adjust the recording level. How to adjust the recording level so that you don't get too much noise or clipping is described in the Adjusting the recording level section below.
If Audacity can control the level of the recording device, then you can use either Audacity's recording volume slider, or the appropriate Windows control. It's normally easier to use the recording volume slider in Audacity, which is in the Mixer toolbar in the Upper toolbars section of Audacity's main window. To move to it from the Track view table, press Ctrl + F6 twice, and then Tab or Shift + Tab until you get to the recording volume slider.
When Audacity can't control the level of the recording device, this is indicated by the recording volume slider being unavailable. For sighted users, the slider appears greyed out, and for users of screen readers, you can't Tab to it. In these cases you have to use the appropriate control which is part of Windows, as described in the Sound dialog in Windows section.
Whether Audacity can control the recording level depends to a large extent on the audio interface which you are using:
The number of channels of the recording device can be set using either the recording channels combo box in the Devices category of the Preferences dialog, or the recording channels combo box in the Select Recording Channels dialog (Shift + N), or the Recording Channels combo box in the Device toolbar. If you're recording using a microphone, then the appropriate setting depends whether it's a mono or stereo microphone. If you're recording from line in, stereo mix, or one of the loopback devices when using WASAPI, then the setting should be stereo.
The Overdub option controls whether Audacity plays any existing tracks while recording a new one. You can check or uncheck this option either on the Transport Options sub menu on the Transport menu, or in the Recording category of the Preferences dialog.
The Software Playthrough option controls whether Audacity plays the new track while it is being recorded. Normally this option should be off, but it's useful if you want to hear what you're recording from a device such a USB turntable. It can be checked or unchecked either on the Transport Options sub menu on the Transport menu, or in the Recording category of the Preferences dialog.
The recording commands and keystrokes, using default settings are:
Note that during a recording, the second section of the status bar contains the maximum length of recording you can make given your free disk space.
In the versions of Audacity 2.1.3 and earlier, the shortcuts R and Shift + R for two of the commands to start recording were the other way round. There's an option in Preferences which easily allows you to have them that way round if you find it more convenient. In the Recording category of Preferences, there is an “Record on a new track” check box, which is not checked by default. If this check box is checked then the two commands to start recording are:
There is a Recording meter in the Upper toolbars section of the Audacity window for helping to set up the recording level. The meter contains a Record meter drop down button, and you can move to this button by pressing Ctrl + F6 twice to move to the Upper toolbars, and then pressing Tab until you get to it.
If you press this button by pressing Enter, then a menu opens which contains commands for controlling the meter. You can start and stop monitoring using this menu, and the meter also automatically monitors the input signal during recording. To make the meter accessible for screen reader users, the following information is included in the name of the drop down button which is read out by screen readers:
To check what the peak level of a recording is roughly likely to be with current setting of the recording level:
Normally a good value of the peak level to aim for is 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.
At any time when the meter is monitoring, you can read the peak level that has occurred so far in that monitoring session, but how to do this depends on which screen reader you're using. If you are using either NVDA or Narrator, you can read the peak level by pressing the keystroke to read the current line. However, if you're using Jaws, to have to tab away and then tab back to the meter button.
The peak level can also be given using a linear scale of 0 to 1. You'll probably want to just stick with decibels, but if you want to change the scale:
Punch and roll recording allows you to easily correct a recording just after you've made a mistake.
Punch recording in is a term used for overwriting part of a recorded track when you're playing back the track. The punch in point is the time at which the audio editor switches from playback to recording over existing audio. And similarly, any punch out point is the time at which the audio editor stops recording and reverts to playback. In punch and roll recording, there is a punch in point, but no punch out point. The recording continues until you stop it.
The following is an outline of Punch and roll recording in Audacity:
Bug warning: if the overdub option is enabled, so that other tracks are played back during the punch and roll recording, unfortunately these tracks are not played with the correct timings. So it's currently best not to have overdub enabled during punch and roll recording.
Using Punch and roll record, you base the timing of the new recording on listening to the playback of the audio before the punch in point. However, within Audacity there is a delay between the played and the recorded audio. There is a default compensation for this, and this may be good enough. However, if the timing of the audio near the punch in point doesn't sound right, indicating that the compensation is not good enough, then see the Latency compensation section below for more details of this delay, and how to adjust its compensation.
A more detailed description of punch and roll recording is as follows. You are recording, and realize that you've just made a mistake. Stop the recording by pressing either Spacebar or X.
You now need to move the cursor to the position of the punch in point:
After you have positioned the cursor, then on the Transport menu, open the Recording sub menu, and choose Punch and Roll Record (Shift + D). This command causes the following to happen:
After a punch and roll record:
Immediately after the punch in point, Audacity applies a short crossfade from the original audio to the newly recorded audio. This is to avoid introducing any glitches. The default length of the crossfade is 10ms, which will probably be a suitable value, but you can change this value in the recording category of the Preferences dialog.
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 audio interface being used (for example, MME or DirectSound).
Audacity can automatically compensate for the latency, once the latency has been measured, as described below. In the Preferences dialog, in the Devices category, in the Latency group, there's a Latency compensation edit box, where the units of the compensation are milliseconds. If you record audio in a new track, then the audio is automatically moved later in time by this latency compensation. So to shift the audio earlier in time to offset the latency, the number should be negative.
The default value of the latency compensation is -130 milliseconds. 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 rhythm 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. Start recording in a new track (Shift + R, by default), 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 your screen reader, 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 compensation. 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 various 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. So, once you've selected the category which you are interested in, you can then Tab through the settings for that category. The dialog's default button is the OK button.
The Extra menu, which is not shown by default, contains commands which are not shown in the standard menus. It includes commands associated with the toolbars.
You can change whether or not this menu is shown either by using the Extra menus option in the View menu, or by using a setting in Preferences:
Whilst playing, you can jump (seek) forward or backward by either a short or long period. The default values of these periods are 1 and 15 seconds respectively, but you can set them to whatever you want. These settings are shared by the commands for moving the cursor by a short or long period. To set the values of these periods:
The is a select all audio option, which is off by default, and for users of screen readers it's recommended that this option is left off. This option causes tracks and/or time ranges to be selected with no audio feedback, and so can be confusing.
The select all audio option effects what happens in two situations. The first is if you try to perform some action on some audio, for example apply an effect, and in fact no audio is selected. Remember that for for some audio to be selected, both one or more audio tracks have to be selected, and a time range has to be selected. If the option is off, then the result of the action is that a dialog opens, telling you that no audio is selected. If the option is on, then all the audio is the project is selected, and the action is performed.
The second situation is if you try and perform some action on some tracks, for example to align them end to end, and in fact no tracks are selected. If the option is off, then the result of the action is that a dialog opens, telling you than one or more tracks need to be selected. If the option is on, then all the audio tracks in the project are selected, and the action is performed.
To change this setting:
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 recognized in all countries. The FFmpeg License and Legal Considerations page of the FFmpeg website contains a few comments on these issues.
Depending on whether you're using the 64 bit or the 32 bit version of Audacity, you'll need to install either the 64 bit or the 32 bit version of the FFmeg library respectively. You can check whether you're using a 64 bit or 32 bit version of Audacity by reading the build information: on the Help menu, choose About, and in the About dialog move to the build information page. Included in the information is the build type. For 64 bit Audacity this will be “CMake Release build (debug level 1), 64 bits”, and for 32 bit Audacity, just “CMake Release build (debug level 1)”. Instructions for downloading and installing the two versions of the FFmpeg library are given in the next two sections. There are no issues with having both versions installed at the same time.
To download and install the FFmpeg library:
Then, the next time Audacity is opened, it automatically finds the FFmpeg library.
To download and install the FFmpeg library:
Then, the next time Audacity is opened, it automatically finds the FFmpeg library.
To set whether the Edit Metadata Tags dialog automatically opens each time you export audio:
By default, when you execute one of the commands open, save, import or export, and a dialog opens so that you can choose a file, the default folder is set to be the last folder which you used for that command. If you haven't used the command before, then the default folder is a folder named Audacity in your Documents folder, which is automatically created by audacity.
However, for each of these commands, if you don't want the default folder to be the last folder, you can set the default folder to always be a particular folder. To do this:
The option to use a dialog for the name of a new label and for renaming a clip is not checked by default, but for uses of screen readers, it's recommended that it is checked. Note that despite the name of the check box, this option does also control whether a dialog is used when renaming a clip.
When a label track is the focus, if the “Type to create a label” option is on, then pressing any letter or number automatically creates a new label. By default this option is off, and users of screen readers will probably want to leave this unchanged. However, if you do want to change this option:
In the Preferences dialog, in the Track Behaviors category, there's a “Editing a clip can move other clips” check box, which by default is not checked.
When this option is enabled, then if any audio is added to a track, for example, by pasting, then all the clips in that track which start after the added audio are moved to the right by the length of the added audio. Similarly if any audio is removed from a track, for example, by deleting, then all the clips in that track which start after the removed audio are moved to the left by the length of the removed audio.
When the option is not enabled, then if any audio is added to or removed from a track, then the positions of all the clips in the track which start after the added or removed audio are unchanged. In Audacity, clips cannot overlap, so if you try to add audio which would go past the start of the next clip, you will get a warning dialog telling you that there is not enough room available to either paste the selection or generate the audio.
A number of recording options can be set in the recording category of the Preferences dialog, and these are described in the Recording settings section of the Recording section.
The controls in the Keyboard category of Preferences enable you to manage the keyboard shortcuts for all the commands available in Audacity.
The first three controls in the keyboard category are:
The commands are displayed as a tree view, and if a command has a shortcut associated with it, then although this appears before the name of the command, screen readers read this after the name of the command.
The layout of the commands in the tree view mirrors the structure of the menus in the menu bar of Audacity's main window. So at the top level of the tree view are the names of the menus in the menu bar. Each of these names contains the commands in that menu, and the names of any sub menus contain the commands in that sub menu.
The commands are displayed as a list which is sorted alphabetically be the name of the command. If a command has a shortcut assigned to it, then although this is displayed before the name of the command, screen readers read this after the name of the command. Note the if the command appears in a sub menu, then the name of the command is prefixed with the name of the sub menu, for example “Add New - Audio Track”. This is so that commands which have the same name, but which appear in different sub menus can be distinguished from one another.
The commands are displayed using a list of commands, and if the command has a shortcut assigned to it, this is displayed before the name of the command. The commands with shortcuts are listed first, and these are sorted alphabetically by the command's shortcut. The commands without shortcuts are then listed alphabetically by the name of the command. As in the case of View by name, if a command appears in a sub menu, then the name of the command is prefixed with the name of the sub menu.
You can search for a command or commands using the edit box whose name is either Search or Hotkey, depending on the view. The search results are shown in the tree view or the list as soon as anything is entered in the edit box – you don't have to press enter. The details of the search depend on the view:
To set a shortcut:
To clear a shortcut:
There are two sets of default shortcuts:
If Audacity 2.2.0 or later is run in a user account where versions of Audacity before 2.2.0 have not been run, then Audacity uses the standard set of shortcuts. However if one of these older versions has been run, then the full set if used, and there is no need to change which set of default shortcuts is being used.
To reset all the shortcuts to either the standard or full set of defaults:
By default, the keyboard shortcuts for moving the cursor to the playback position and setting the end of the selection to be the playback position are the left and right bracket keys. These keystrokes can also be used to open dialog boxes when there is no playback.
On US, UK, and Irish keyboards, the left and right bracket keys are the two keys to the right of the letter P key. On nearly all the keyboards used in other countries, the keys used to type Left Bracket and Right Bracket, are in different positions, and you often have to use modifier keys, such as Ctrl + Alt to type these characters. Unfortunately, using Audacity's default settings, the Left and Right bracket keys only execute the commands described above when these keys are to the right of the letter P key.
However, there is a straightforward solution to this problem. All you need to do is set the keyboard shortcuts for the two commands using the method described in the previous section. The letters G and H are currently not used as the shortcuts for any commands, so a suitable option is to set the shortcut for the Left at Playback Position command to be the letter G, and the shortcut for the Right at Playback Position command to be the letter H.
By default Audacity now periodically checks to see whether there is a new version are available. When one is available, a dialog opens with this information, and there is the option to install the update. If you don't want this automatic checking to happen, then in the Preferences dialog, in the Application category, there's a Check for updates check box. By default it's checked.
The Windows Sound dialog in Windows 7 and later versions has four pages: Playback, Recording, Sounds, and Communications. 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 this is the first:
And this is the second way:
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. If you can't find a device which you think should be there, it may be disabled, and so will only 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, such as working, disabled, or Not plugged in. NVDA automatically reads all three lines of text, but Jaws and Narrator only read the first line. If you're using Jaws, you can read the other two lines using the Jaws cursor. In addition, if you open the item's context menu, there will be either an enable or a disable command, which tells you whether or not the item is disabled or enabled, respectively.
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.
These are the keystrokes for the full set of default keystrokes – some of these are not included in the standard set. For more information about these two sets of defaults and how to change which set you are using, see the Standard and full sets of default shortcuts section, in the Preferences section.
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Open audio file | Ctrl + O |
| Import audio file | Ctrl + Shift + I |
| New project | Ctrl + N |
| Save project | Ctrl + S |
| Export Audio | Ctrl + Shift + E |
| Preferences dialog | Ctrl + P |
| Cycle forward through Upper toolbars, Track view table, and Lower toolbars | Ctrl + F6 |
| Cycle backward through Upper toolbars, Track view table, and Lower toolbars | Ctrl + Shift + F6 |
| Cycle forward through the Audacity main window and any open modeless dialogs | Alt + F6 |
| Cycle backward through the Audacity main window and any open modeless dialogs | Alt + Shift + F6 |
| Zoom normal | Ctrl + 2 |
| Zoom in | Ctrl + 1 |
| Zoom out | Ctrl + 3 |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Start/Stop | Spacebar |
| Start/Stop and move cursor | X |
| Scrub backwards | Press and hold U |
| Scrub forwards | Press and hold I |
| Pause/resume | 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 |
| Toggle between loop playback, and standard playback | L |
| Set the loop range to the selected time range | Shift + L, available in 3.1.3 and later |
| Play the looping range once | Shift + Spacebar |
| Select Playback Device dialog | Shift + O |
| Play cut/delete preview | C |
| Play short period before selection start | Shift + F5 |
| Play short period after selection start | Shift + F6 |
| Play short period before selection end | Shift + F7 |
| Play short period after selection end | Shift + F8 |
| Play short period before and after selection start | Ctrl + Shift + F5 |
| Play short period before and after selection end | Ctrl + Shift + F7 |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Move to previous track | Up Arrow |
| Move to next track | Down Arrow |
| Move to first track | Ctrl + Home |
| Move to last track | Ctrl + End |
| Toggle selection of focused track | Enter |
| Select all the tracks (and a time range which includes all the audio) | Ctrl + A |
| Deselect all the tracks (and any time-range) | Ctrl + Shift + A |
| Select all the tracks | Ctrl + Shift + K |
| Open menu of focused track | Shift + M or Application key |
| Close (Delete) focused track | Shift + C |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| 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 |
| Mute all the selected tracks | Ctrl + Alt + U |
| Unmute all the selected tracks | Ctrl + Alt + Shift + U |
| Solo/Unsolo focused track | Shift + S |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| 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 | Left Bracket |
| Stop playback and move cursor | X |
| Scrub backwards | Press and hold U |
| Scrub forwards | Press and hold I |
| 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 small amount | Left Arrow |
| Cursor right by a small amount | Right Arrow |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Select time range which includes all the audio, and select all tracks | Ctrl + A |
| Selection start at start of tracks (time zero) | Shift + Home |
| Selection end at end of all the audio | Shift + End |
| Selection end at playback position | Right Bracket |
| Selection start at start of audio in selected tracks | Shift + J |
| Selection end at end of audio in selected tracks | Shift + K |
| To move the end of the selection to the right by a small amount | Shift + Right Arrow |
| To move the end of the selection to the left by a small amount | Ctrl + Shift + Left Arrow |
| To move the start of the selection to the right by a small amount | Ctrl + Shift + Right Arrow |
| To move the start of the selection to the left by a small amount | Shift + Left Arrow |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| 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 |
| Duplicate the selected audio | Ctrl + D |
| Close (Delete) focused track | Shift + C |
| Find zero crossings | Z |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Add label at selection | Ctrl + B |
| Add label at playback position | Ctrl + M |
| Move to next label | Alt + Right Arrow |
| Move to previous label | Alt + Left Arrow |
| Select the next label | Tab |
| Select the previous label | Shift + Tab |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Select previous clip | Alt + Comma |
| Select next clip | Alt + Period |
| Rename selected clip | Ctrl + F2 |
| Split | Ctrl + I |
| Split delete | Ctrl + Alt + K |
| Split cut | Ctrl + Alt + X |
| Split New | Ctrl + Alt + I |
| Detach at silences | Ctrl + Alt + J |
| Join | Ctrl + J |
| Command | Keystroke |
|---|---|
| Record | R |
| Record in new Track | Shift + R |
| Punch and roll record | Shift + D |
| Pause/Resume | P |
| Stop | Spacebar |
| Select Audio Host dialog | Shift + H |
| Select Recording Device dialog | Shift + I |
| Select Recording Channels dialog | Shift + N |