DM10 Audacity Tutorial

Objectives – to use Windows Media Player and Audacity to capture a track from an AudioCD. To record directly into Audacity using a microphone. To open an existing audio sfx file. To mix voice, sfx, and song into a new wave file, using normalize, envelopes, fades, and other fun audio processing common to all audio editing software.

Recording from an AudioCD

1. Insert an AudioCD into the CD or DVD drive. Open Windows media player and select the track you want to capture. Don’t start playback yet. Launch Audacity on your computer.
   
2. Set up your desktop so you can see both the Audacity main window and the Media player.
   
3. Activate the red record button in Audacity. This should make a track appear with the playhead moving to the right – recording is taking place. If you want to record in stereo and only one track appeared in Audacity, stop recording with the brown stop button. Delete the entire track that just opened and go to Edit>Preferences. Set the Channels dropdown to 2 Stereo, click OK, and repeat from the beginning of this step.
   
4. When recording has started in the correct number or tracks (mono or stereo), use the Windows Media player to start playing the song you selected. If it’s working right you should see the top right meters moving with the sound, as well as waveforms appearing in Audacity. Don’t worry about silence at the beginning, you can delete that later. Capture more than you want to use with the intent of trimming later. If the meters show there is no sound but the Audio CD is playing, it’s possible that your sound card has certain settings muted. Go to Setting up you sound card below. In Audicity there is also a menu with recording source options in the middle row of the tools. Choose either “What you hear” or “Stereo Mix” for capturing from a CD. Choose “Microphone” for recording from a mic.
   
5. Stop recording whenever you want and trim as needed. You can save the file as an Audacity project (.aup) which is a proprietary file type but this is not saving the song you captured. To save the actual song, you can export as a wave file. (If capturing a song for simple playback in PowerPoint, trim the ends as needed and export as a wave or mp3 file.)
   
   

Setting up your sound card
The sound card settings are typically activated by double clicking the little speaker icon at the bottom right of the computer screen. Find the properties for recording and show all the options, and then select for wave recording. When you record from the microphone, this is where you will also make that setting change.

Importing a sound effect or existing audio file

1. Go to Project>Import Audio, locate and double click the audio file you want to import into your Audacity project.
   
2. You may need to expand the Audacity window to see the additional track or tracks. You can also go to View>Fit Vertically and all the tracks in your project will be shown.
   
3. The double-arrow tool in the toolbar can be used to move the sfx anywhere in the horizontal length of the track. If you want the mono sfx to play in either the left or right stereo channel of the captured song, first you have to split the stereo song tracks so they can be modified separately. To split the stereo track, select the stereo track and use the drop-down menu associated with the track on the left side.

Recording from the Microphone

1. First you have to set the sound card to hear the microphone. Go to the sound card properties (double click the little speaker at the bottom right). Find the recording properties, select all options for viewing and select microphone.
   
2. In Audacity, click the red record button after going into Edit>Preferences and changing it to 1 Mono, so your new voice window will not be two tracks (unless that’s what you want).
   
3. When recording starts talk with the mic alongside your mouth instead of directly in front of it. When finished talking turn recording off in Audacity. Trim and process the waveform as needed.
   
4. Go back into the sound card settings for recording and set it back to wave so the mic will be turned off.

The mix down

1. You should have 4 tracks showing in Audacity: 2-stereo for the song you captured, 1 sfx, and 1 voice. Normalizing tracks is usually recommended: Effect>Normalize
   
2. You can move the sfx and voice to wherever you in horizontal position using the double arrow tool.
   
3. You can select areas of sound to listen to using the I beam selection tool. After a selection is made filters and effects can be added.
   
4. You can add fades and change volumes anywhere in the track using the Envelope tool (two white triangles).
   
5. After all processing and adjustments have been made you are ready for a final mix down. Go to File>Export as Wave. In the final mix down, mono sounds will be added to the stereo track they are directly below, you can move their association by moving the entire track up or down in the main Audacity window.
   (You can also File>Export as MP3 although there are licensing restrictions and a specialized MP3 format is used. This requires an additional download if you are doing this from home. See the Audacity help file – Sound File formats, for information. Like graphics, it’s usually best to save an uncompressed version (highest quality). You can always get a lower quality version out of it if needed.)