Most sound editing software is quite expensive, which for podcasters or video people just starting out can stand in the way of getting any experience with sound design. Sound is important for video production as sound is 80% of the effect you get when you watch a film or video. Try watching an action movie with the sound off and you’ll see what I mean.

Audacity is an open source sound editing software, open source meaning the source code is free to anyone who cares to add to the program. Unlike a lot of open source stuff the layout is clean and easy to navigate around. The tools are easily of professional standard, containing effects like echo/delay, fade in/fade out, compression etc., tools that any professional would expect to be in there, but it’s also easy enough to use for a first timer. You don’t have to be a young, tech literate hip-hop DJ to understand it. But if you ARE, you won’t be put off by its features.

If you just want to load a sound file and convert it to another format, Audacity will do that. MP3 support is an add-on but the plugin is easy to obtain and install. You just download the MP3 library and install it in the correct directory, then point the software to it. So yes, it can just be a “sound wrench” for tricky audio file jobs. But what it’s best at is recording. My 14 year old daughter uses this program to record an audio blog, and I didn’t train her how to use it. She just picked it up, in the way kids do and played with it. Now she’s doing pretty credible multitrack recording. Not bad for a day’s work. Given also that she’s using some cheap karaoke microphone to do it, the quality she’s getting out of it is pretty good.

Audacity is cross platform, for Windows, Mac OSX and Linux and you can find out more details from http://audacity.sourceforge.net/.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 5th, 2006 at 4:12 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.