Recording and Editing with Audacity

To Record:

  1. Open Audacity
  2. Select “Save Project As…” from the “File” menu, give your project a name and click “OK.”
  3. Select the microphone settings
    a. To use all four microphones, select Aggregate Device, 8.
  4. Put on the headphone and check the
    volume for the microphones by clicking
    the microphone scale at the top of the
    window to listen to the microphones live. Have each person speak while you monitor their volume. Adjust the volume using the “Gain” knob on the back of the microphone so that the volume registers
    between -12 and -6 on average. Aim to keep each person’s volume in the upper green and yellow range.
    Tip: Do not change the other knob on the back of the
    microphone, it should be set to Cardoid for voice recording
  5. To record, click the red small dot on the top (or press the “r” key). This will record all currently active
    mics.
  6. Press Pause (P) to pause.
  7. Press Stop to complete recording.
  8. Press Play (Space) to playback your recording. You can adjust the point of playback by clicking on a specific point in a track.
  9. Save your recording by pressing Cmd-s (or select save from the file menu).
  10. To export your audio, click “File” and “Export” to select your preferred file format (mp3, wav, etc.).

To Edit:

  1. To incorporate sound not recorded in your Audacity workstation, use “import” in the toolbar to select
    files to incorporate into your project.
  2. To match sound levels between different tracks and sound recorded on different microphones, etc. use
    the Envelope tool located in the toolbar.
  3. To cut a portion of your audio track, drag the cursor over the unwanted recording selection, and select
    “cut” from the edit menu (Cmd-x).
    a. Here are other useful keyboard commands for editing:
    https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/keyboard_shortcut_reference.html
  4. When your editing is complete, select “File” and “Export.”

Further Resources:

• YouTube has several helpful videos for recording and editing with Audacity.
• Trinity Students have access to LinkedIn Learning which has several classes on working with Audacity:
https://www.trincoll.edu/LITC/its/Pages/Lynda.aspx

Audacity Instructions For LITC 122