Audacity is a free and open-source digital audio editor and recording

application software Application may refer to: Mathematics and computing * Application software, computer software designed to help the user to perform specific tasks ** Application layer, an abstraction layer that specifies protocols and interface methods used in a ...

, available for

Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for ser ...

macOS macOS (; previously OS X and originally Mac OS X) is a Unix operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc. since 2001. It is the primary operating system for Apple's Mac computers. Within the market of desktop and lapt ...

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

, and other

Unix-like A Unix-like (sometimes referred to as UN*X or *nix) operating system is one that behaves in a manner similar to a Unix system, although not necessarily conforming to or being certified to any version of the Single UNIX Specification. A Unix-li ...

operating systems. The project was started in the fall of 1999 by Dominic Mazzoni and Roger Dannenberg at Carnegie Mellon University, and released on May 28, 2000, as version 0.8. As of September 22, 2022, Audacity is the most popular download at FossHub, with over 114.1 million downloads since March 2015. It was previously served from

Google Code Google Developers (previously Google Code) , application programming interfaces (APIs), and technical resources. The site contains documentation on using Google developer tools and APIs—including discussion groups and blogs for developers usi ...

and

SourceForge SourceForge is a web service that offers software consumers a centralized online location to control and manage open-source software projects and research business software. It provides source code repository hosting, bug tracking, mirroring ...

, where it was downloaded over 200 million times. Audacity won the SourceForge 2007 and 2009 Community Choice Award for Best Project for Multimedia. It is licensed under GPL-2.0-or-later. In 2019, then-lead developer James Crook started the fork ''DarkAudacity'' to experiment with a new look and other UX changes. Most of its changes were eventually incorporated into the mainline version and the fork ended. In April 2021, it was announced that Muse Group (owners of MuseScore and

Ultimate Guitar Ultimate Guitar (Ultimate Guitar USA LLC), which is also known as Ultimate-Guitar.com or simply UG, is an online platform for guitarists and musicians. Its website and mobile application provides guitar tablature catalogues and chord sheets. U ...

) would acquire the Audacity trademark and continue to develop the application, which remains free and open source.

Features and use

In addition to recording audio from multiple sources, Audacity can be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including effects such as normalization, trimming, and fading in and out. It has been used to record and mix entire albums, such as by

Tune-Yards Tune-Yards (stylized as tUnE-yArDs) is the American, Oakland, California–based music project of Merrill Garbus and Nate Brenner. Garbus's music draws from an eclectic variety of sources and utilizes elements such as loop pedals, ukulele, voca ...

. It is currently used in the Sound Creation unit of the UK OCR National Level 2 ICT course. Audacity's features include: * Recording and playing back sounds ** Scrubbing (Version 2.1.1 and later) ** Timer Record – schedule when a recording begins and ends, for unattended recording **

MIDI MIDI (; Musical Instrument Digital Interface) is a technical standard that describes a communications protocol, digital interface, and electrical connectors that connect a wide variety of electronic musical instruments, computers, and ...

playback (version 2.2.0 on) ** Punch and Roll recording – for editing on-the-fly (version 2.3.0 on) * Editing ** Via

cut, copy, and paste In human–computer interaction and user interface design, cut, copy, and paste are related commands that offer an interprocess communication technique for transferring data through a computer's user interface. The ''cut'' command removes t ...

, with unlimited Undo levels ** Smart clips (version 3.2.0 on) Non-destructive trimming (and un-trimming) of audio clips ** Real-time effects (version 3.2.0 on) Non-destructive and destructive effect processing. ** Multi-track features including navigation controls, zoom and single-track edit, project pane and XY project navigation. ** Amplitude envelope editing ** Precise adjustments to speed (

tempo In musical terminology, tempo ( Italian, 'time'; plural ''tempos'', or ''tempi'' from the Italian plural) is the speed or pace of a given piece. In classical music, tempo is typically indicated with an instruction at the start of a piece (ofte ...

) while maintaining pitch, to synchronize audio with video or for precise running time ** Conversion of records, tapes or MiniDiscs to digital tracks by splitting the audio source into multiple tracks based on silences in the source material * Cross-platform operation – versions for

, and

systems (including

and

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution or Berkeley Standard Distribution (BSD) is a discontinued operating system based on Research Unix, developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berk ...

). (It uses the

wxWidgets wxWidgets (formerly wxWindows) is a widget toolkit and tools library for creating graphical user interfaces (GUIs) for cross-platform applications. wxWidgets enables a program's GUI code to compile and run on several computer platforms with mini ...

software

library A library is a collection of materials, books or media that are accessible for use and not just for display purposes. A library provides physical (hard copies) or digital access (soft copies) materials, and may be a physical location or a vir ...

for a similar

graphical user interface The GUI ( "UI" by itself is still usually pronounced . or ), graphical user interface, is a form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicator such as primary notation, inst ...

on various

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems schedule tasks for efficient use of the system and may also i ...

s.) * Large array of digital effects and plug-ins. Additional effects can be written with Nyquist, a Lisp dialect. ** Built-in

LADSPA LADSPA is an acronym for Linux Audio Developer's Simple Plugin API. It is an application programming interface (API) standard for handling audio filters and audio signal processing effects, licensed under LGPL-2.1-or-later. It was originally de ...

, VST and Nyquist plug-in support ** Noise Reduction based on sampling the noise to be minimized ** Vocal Reduction and Isolation for creation of karaoke tracks and isolated vocal tracks ** Pitch adjustment maintaining speed, and speed adjustment maintaining pitch ** Saving and loading user presets for effect settings across sessions (version 2.1.0 on) * Support for multi-channel modes with

sampling rate In signal processing, sampling is the reduction of a continuous-time signal to a discrete-time signal. A common example is the conversion of a sound wave to a sequence of "samples". A sample is a value of the signal at a point in time and/or s ...

s up to 96

kHz The hertz (symbol: Hz) is the unit of frequency in the International System of Units (SI), equivalent to one event (or cycle) per second. The hertz is an SI derived unit whose expression in terms of SI base units is s−1, meaning that on ...

with 32 bits per sample * Audio spectrum analysis using the Fourier transform algorithm * Importing and exporting

WAV Waveform Audio File Format (WAVE, or WAV due to its filename extension; pronounced "wave") is an audio file format standard, developed by IBM and Microsoft, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is the main format used on Microsoft Wind ...

AIFF Audio Interchange File Format (AIFF) is an audio file format standard used for storing sound data for personal computers and other electronic audio devices. The format was developed by Apple Inc. in 1988 based on Electronic Arts' Interchange File ...

MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...

(via

LAME Lame or LAME may refer to: Music * "Lame" (song) by Unwritten Law * ''Lame'' (album) by Iame People * Ibrahim Lame (born 1953), Nigerian educator and politician * Jennifer Lame (), American film editor * Quintín Lame (1880–1967), Colombian ...

encoder, now integrated),

Ogg Ogg is a free, open container format maintained by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The authors of the Ogg format state that it is unrestricted by software patents and is designed to provide for efficient streaming and manipulation of high-quality di ...

Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conj ...

, and all file formats supported by

libsndfile libsndfile is a widely used C library written by Erik de Castro Lopo for reading and writing audio files. It supports a wide variety of audio file formats and will convert automatically from one to another. It allows the programmer to ignore m ...

library. Versions 1.3.2 and later supported

Free Lossless Audio Codec FLAC (; Free Lossless Audio Codec) is an audio coding format for lossless compression of digital audio, developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation, and is also the name of the free software project producing the FLAC tools, the reference software ...

(FLAC). Version 1.3.6 and later also supported additional formats such as WMA, AAC, AMR and AC3 via the optional

FFmpeg FFmpeg is a free and open-source software project consisting of a suite of libraries and programs for handling video, audio, and other multimedia files and streams. At its core is the command-line ffmpeg tool itself, designed for processing of vid ...

library. * Detection of dropout errors while recording with an overburdened CPU * From 2.3.2 on, a mod-script-pipe for driving Audacity from Python (can be enabled in Preferences) * Full user manual for the application, accessible online **Many dialogs and error messages have a "?" help button to link the user to relevant pages in the manual * Four user-selectable visual themes (version 2.2.0 on) ** Four user-selectable colorways for waveform display in audio tracks (version 2.2.1 on) Audacity supports the

LV2 LV2 (LADSPA Version 2) is a set of royalty-free open standards for plug-in (computing), plug-ins and matching host applications. It includes support for the audio synthesis, synthesis and digital signal processing, processing of digital audio and ...

open standard for plugins, and can therefore load software like

Calf Studio Gear Calf Studio Gear, often referred to as Calf Plugins, is a set of open source LV2 plugins for the Linux platform. The suite intends to be a complete set of plugins for audio mixing, virtual instruments and mastering. As of version 0.90.0 there ...

. The version 3.0 update (March 2021) introduced a new project file format, .aup3, using an

SQLite SQLite (, ) is a database engine written in the C programming language. It is not a standalone app; rather, it is a library that software developers embed in their apps. As such, it belongs to the family of embedded databases. It is the m ...

database to store each project in a single database file. The version 3.0.3 update (July 2021) introduced crash reporting and error reporting for database errors; optional update checking was also added. The version 3.1.0 update (October 2021) introduced clip handles, smart clips and playback looping. In April 2022, an official Audacity app was added to the Microsoft Store. The version 3.2.0 update (September 2022) added real-time effects, VST3 support and a streamlined interface.

Limitations

*Audacity does not natively import or export WMA, AAC, AC3 or most other proprietary or restricted file formats; rather, an optional FFmpeg library is required. *Audacity does not support instrument VST (VSTi) plugins. *There are no real-time track equalizers or other real-time effect slots for recording, only playback.

Language support

In addition to

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

, Audacity is available in

Afrikaans Afrikaans (, ) is a West Germanic language that evolved in the Dutch Cape Colony from the Dutch vernacular of Holland proper (i.e., the Hollandic dialect) used by Dutch, French, and German settlers and their enslaved people. Afrikaans gra ...

Arabic Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...

Basque Basque may refer to: * Basques, an ethnic group of Spain and France * Basque language, their language Places * Basque Country (greater region), the homeland of the Basque people with parts in both Spain and France * Basque Country (autonomous co ...

Bulgarian Bulgarian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Bulgaria * Bulgarians, a South Slavic ethnic group * Bulgarian language, a Slavic language * Bulgarian alphabet * A citizen of Bulgaria, see Demographics of Bulgaria * Bul ...

Catalan Catalan may refer to: Catalonia From, or related to Catalonia: * Catalan language, a Romance language * Catalans, an ethnic group formed by the people from, or with origins in, Northern or southern Catalonia Places * 13178 Catalan, asteroid #1 ...

Chinese (simplified) Simplified Chinese characters are standardized Chinese characters used in mainland China, Malaysia and Singapore, as prescribed by the ''Table of General Standard Chinese Characters''. Along with traditional Chinese characters, they are one o ...

, Chinese (traditional), Corsican,

Czech Czech may refer to: * Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe ** Czech language ** Czechs, the people of the area ** Czech culture ** Czech cuisine * One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus' Places * Czech, ...

Danish Danish may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to the country of Denmark People * A national or citizen of Denmark, also called a "Dane," see Demographics of Denmark * Culture of Denmark * Danish people or Danes, people with a Danish a ...

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

Finnish Finnish may refer to: * Something or someone from, or related to Finland * Culture of Finland * Finnish people or Finns, the primary ethnic group in Finland * Finnish language, the national language of the Finnish people * Finnish cuisine See also ...

, French, Galician,

German German(s) may refer to: * Germany (of or related to) ** Germania (historical use) * Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language ** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law **Ge ...

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, Hungarian,

Irish Irish may refer to: Common meanings * Someone or something of, from, or related to: ** Ireland, an island situated off the north-western coast of continental Europe ***Éire, Irish language name for the isle ** Northern Ireland, a constituent unit ...

Italian Italian(s) may refer to: * Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries ** Italians, an ethnic group or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom ** Italian language, a Romance language *** Regional Ita ...

Japanese Japanese may refer to: * Something from or related to Japan, an island country in East Asia * Japanese language, spoken mainly in Japan * Japanese people, the ethnic group that identifies with Japan through ancestry or culture ** Japanese diaspor ...

, Lithuanian, Macedonian,

Marathi Marathi may refer to: *Marathi people, an Indo-Aryan ethnolinguistic group of Maharashtra, India *Marathi language, the Indo-Aryan language spoken by the Marathi people *Palaiosouda, also known as Marathi, a small island in Greece See also * * ...

Norwegian Norwegian, Norwayan, or Norsk may refer to: *Something of, from, or related to Norway, a country in northwestern Europe * Norwegians, both a nation and an ethnic group native to Norway * Demographics of Norway *The Norwegian language, including ...

(

Bokmål Bokmål () (, ; ) is an official written standard for the Norwegian language, alongside Nynorsk. Bokmål is the preferred written standard of Norwegian for 85% to 90% of the population in Norway. Unlike, for instance, the Italian language, there ...

Polish Polish may refer to: * Anything from or related to Poland, a country in Europe * Polish language * Poles Poles,, ; singular masculine: ''Polak'', singular feminine: ''Polka'' or Polish people, are a West Slavic nation and ethnic group, w ...

Portuguese Portuguese may refer to: * anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal ** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods ** Portuguese language, a Romance language *** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language ** Portu ...

( Brazilian),

Romanian Romanian may refer to: *anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania **Romanians, an ethnic group **Romanian language, a Romance language *** Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language ** Romanian cuisine, tradition ...

Russian Russian(s) refers to anything related to Russia, including: *Russians (, ''russkiye''), an ethnic group of the East Slavic peoples, primarily living in Russia and neighboring countries *Rossiyane (), Russian language term for all citizens and peo ...

, Slovak,

Slovenian Slovene or Slovenian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Slovenia, a country in Central Europe * Slovene language, a South Slavic language mainly spoken in Slovenia * Slovenes The Slovenes, also known as Slovenians ( sl, Sloven ...

Spanish Spanish might refer to: * Items from or related to Spain: **Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain **Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries **Spanish cuisine Other places * Spanish, Ontario, Can ...

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

, Turkish,

Ukrainian Ukrainian may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Ukraine * Something relating to Ukrainians, an East Slavic people from Eastern Europe * Something relating to demographics of Ukraine in terms of demography and population of Ukraine * So ...

Vietnamese Vietnamese may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to Vietnam, a country in Southeast Asia ** A citizen of Vietnam. See Demographics of Vietnam. * Vietnamese people, or Kinh people, a Southeast Asian ethnic group native to Vietnam ** Overse ...

and

Welsh Welsh may refer to: Related to Wales * Welsh, referring or related to Wales * Welsh language, a Brittonic Celtic language spoken in Wales * Welsh people People * Welsh (surname) * Sometimes used as a synonym for the ancient Britons (Celtic peop ...

. The documentation, the Audacity Manual, is available only in English. The Audacity Forum offers technical support in Spanish, French, Russian and German.

Architecture

The diagram illustrates Audacity's layers and modules. Note the three important classes within wxWidgets, each of which has a reflection in Audacity. Higher-level abstractions result from related lower-level ones. For example, the BlockFile system is a reflection of and is built on wxWidgets' wxFiles. Lower down in the diagram is a narrow strip for platform-specific implementation layers. Both wxWidgets and

PortAudio PortAudio is an open-source computer library for audio playback and recording. It is a cross-platform library, so programs using it can run on many different computer operating systems, including Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. PortAudio supports ...

are OS abstraction layers, containing conditional code that chooses different implementations depending on the target platform.

Reception

As free and open-source software, Audacity is very popular in education, encouraging its developers to make the user interface easier for students and teachers. Jamie Lendino of '' PC Magazine'' recently rated it 4/5 stars Excellent and said, "If you're looking to get started in podcasting or recording music, it's tough to go wrong with Audacity. A powerful, free, open-source audio editor that's been available for years, Audacity is still the go-to choice for quick-and-dirty audio work." CNET rated Audacity 5/5 stars, calling it "feature-rich and flexible". Preston Gralla of ''

PC World ''PC World'' (stylized as PCWorld) is a global computer magazine published monthly by IDG. Since 2013, it has been an online only publication. It offers advice on various aspects of PCs and related items, the Internet, and other personal tech ...

'' said, "If you're interested in creating, editing, and mixing you'll want Audacity." Jack Wallen of ''

Tech Republic TechRepublic is an online trade publication and social community for IT professionals, providing advice on best practices and tools for the needs of IT decision-makers. It was founded in 1997 in Louisville, Kentucky, by Tom Cottingham and Kim Sp ...

'' praised its features and ease-of-use. In ''

The Art of Unix Programming ''The Art of Unix Programming'' by Eric S. Raymond is a book about the history and culture of Unix programming from its earliest days in 1969 to 2003 when it was published, covering both genetic derivations such as BSD and conceptual ones such ...

'' (2003),

open-source software Open-source software (OSS) is computer software that is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to use, study, change, and distribute the software and its source code to anyone and for any purpose. Op ...

advocate Eric S. Raymond wrote of Audacity, "The central virtue of this program is that it has a superbly transparent and natural user interface, one that erects as few barriers between the user and the sound file as possible." Some reviewers and users have criticized Audacity for its inconvenient UX design, unsightly GUI and comparative lack of features compared with Adobe Audition. Matthew McLean wrote "Audacity looks a bit more dated and basic, but this will be appealing to many folks who’re just starting out". In May 2021, after the project was acquired by Muse Group, there was a draft proposal to add opt-in

telemetry Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots ''tele'', "remote", an ...

to the code to record application usage. Some users responded negatively, with accusations of turning Audacity into

spyware Spyware (a portmanteau for spying software) is software with malicious behaviour that aims to gather information about a person or organization and send it to another entity in a way that harms the user—for example, by violating their priva ...

and also violating the GPL by adding an age restriction. This spawned several forks. The company reversed course, falling back to error/crash reporting and optional update checking instead. Another controversy in July 2021 resulted from a change to the privacy policy which said that although personal data was stored on servers in the

European Economic Area The European Economic Area (EEA) was established via the ''Agreement on the European Economic Area'', an international agreement which enables the extension of the European Union's single market to member states of the European Free Trade As ...

, the program would "occasionally erequired to share your personal data with our main office in

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a List of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia, Northern Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the ...

and our external counsel in the USA". That July, the Audacity team apologized for the changes to the privacy policy and removed mention of the data storage provision which was added "out of an abundance of caution."

References

;Notes * * *

Sources

* James Crook, Amy Brown, Greg Wilson -
The Architecture of Open Source Applications - Chapter 2 Audacity
', released 2012 under

CC BY A Creative Commons (CC) license is one of several public copyright licenses that enable the free distribution of an otherwise copyrighted "work".A "work" is any creative material made by a person. A painting, a graphic, a book, a song/lyrics ...

3.0 ( open access).

External links

*
Audacity platform and operating system version compatibility
{{FLOSS 2000 software Audio editing software for Linux Cross-platform free software Free audio editors Free music software Free software programmed in C Free software programmed in C++ MacOS multimedia software Podcasting software Software that uses FFmpeg Software that uses wxWidgets Software using the GPL license Software that uses SQLite