Tips for advanced Audacity editing

Tuesday, June 23rd 2009 by Wes FryercloseAuthor: Wes Fryer Name: Wes Fryer
Email: wes@isteconnects.org
Site: http://www.speedofcreativity.org
About: Wesley is an international learning consultant, author, digital storyteller, educator and catalyst for educational reform focused on blended learning, differentiated instruction, and creative engagement. His bio is available on www.wesfryer.com/bio and complete vitae on www.wesfryer.com/vitae.See Authors Posts (74)

This week in a Celebrate Oklahoma Voices digital storytelling workshop in Oklahoma City, I learned several new “advanced” tips for improving the quality of audio recordings with Audacity from one of our participants. The handouts for Audacity which we use in our 2.5 day workshop cover the basics of recording audio, playback, selecting and deleting audio segments, splitting audio, and using the envelope tool to fade background music in and out. We do not address, however, the “effect” menu in Audacity, and it is full of multiple options which can enhance a specific audio clip.

If you’re not familiar with Audacity, you should be. As a free, cross-platform, powerful Audio editor I recommend it be included on every “standard hard drive image” used by school districts. Whether you’re running Macintosh, Windows, or Linux computers, Audacity will work on your computer.

Until this week, the only “effect” in Audacity I’d used was “amplify.” This is helpful when you have an audio clip which was recorded at a low level. First, select the portion of the clip you want to amplify, just like you would select text in a word processing document using the “I-bar” or selection tool. From the EFFECT menu choose AMPLIFY.

Audacity will automatically calculate the maximum amount of amplification which can be applied without distorting the clip you have selected.

The first “new” Audacity effect I learned about this week is “click removal.” When people speak into a microphone, sometimes hard consonants like “p’s” or “t’s” will cause pops or clicks to be recorded inadvertently. One way to prevent these recording artifacts is to use a pop filter when recording. If pops and clicks are recorded, however, this Audacity effect can remove them. After selecting the portion of a clip you want to “clean,” choose EFFECT – CLICK REMOVAL.

Next use the provided sliders to adjust the sensitivity of the pop and click adjustments in the click removal tool. Use the preview button to test how the clip sounds with specific settings, and click “remove clicks” when you are satisfied with the result.

Another helpful Audacity effect is “normalize.” The English Wikipedia defines audio normalization as:

…the process of increasing (or decreasing) the amplitude of an entire audio signal so that the resulting peak amplitude matches a desired target.

Normalizing audio can make different clips which were recorded at different levels sound similar and like they “fit” together. It can make an audio recording sound much more professional. To normalize in Audacity, select an audio clip and choose EFFECT – NORMALIZE. Adjust the normalization options as desired, and click OK to apply the changes.

Levelator is a free application from The Conversations Network that can also be used to normalize audio, but it normalizes entire audio files rather than clips in a program like Audacity.

Do you know of other Audacity effects which can be helpful when creating voice tracks to use in digital stories?

Thanks to Manuel Gonzales for sharing these tips!

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