A lot of people learning to play guitar are also interested in
recording their music. It helps them actually hear what they’re
doing. They can record original songs they’ve written and they can
share their skills and songs with friends by e-mailing them mp3s of
their playing.
Anyway this past week I heard about a recording studio software
package that I thought you would be interested in. It does all
kinds of really magical things – and IT’S FREE! Now usually “free”
stuff isn’t worth wasting you time with, but this software is
amazing.
The software is called “Audacity”, and some of the features are:
Recording
Audacity can record live audio through a microphone or mixer, or
digitize recordings from cassette tapes, vinyl records, or
minidiscs. With some sound cards, it can also capture streaming
audio.
- Record from microphone, line input, or other sources.
- Dub over existing tracks to create multi-track recordings.
- Record up to 16 channels at once (requires multi-channel
hardware).
- Level meters can monitor volume levels before, during, and after
recording.
Import and Export
Import sound files, edit them, and combine them with other files or
new recordings. Export your recordings in several common file
formats.
- Import and export WAV, AIFF, AU, and Ogg Vorbis files.
- Import MPEG audio (including MP2 and MP3 files) with libmad.
- Export MP3s with the optional LAME encoder library.
- Create WAV or AIFF files suitable for burning to CD.
- Import and export all file formats supported by libsndfile.
- Open raw (headerless) audio files using the “Import Raw” command.
- Note: Audacity does not currently support WMA, AAC, or most other
proprietary or restricted file formats.
Editing
- Easy editing with Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete.
- Use unlimited Undo (and Redo) to go back any number of steps.
- Very fast editing of large files.
- Edit and mix an unlimited number of tracks.
- Use the Drawing tool to alter individual sample points.
- Fade the volume up or down smoothly with the Envelope tool.
Effects
- Change the pitch without altering the tempo, or vice-versa.
- Remove static, hiss, hum, or other constant background noises.
- Alter frequencies with Equalization, FFT Filter, and Bass Boost
effects.
- Adjust volumes with Compressor, Amplify, and Normalize effects.
- Other built-in effects include:
o Echo
o Phaser
o Wahwah
o Reverse
Sound Quality
- Record and edit 16-bit, 24-bit, and 32-bit (floating point)
samples.
- Record at up to 96 KHz.
- Sample rates and formats are converted using high-quality
resampling and dithering.
- Mix tracks with different sample rates or formats, and Audacity
will convert them automatically in realtime.
Perhaps the best thing, however, is that Audacity will run on
Windows, Mac, Linux and other operating systems, and the hardware
requirements are amazingly low so just about anybody can use it.
(It will run on a 300mHz processor with as little as 64 meg of RAM!)
You can check it out and download it free at:
http://audacity.sourceforge.net/about/
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