Linux uses Advanced Linux Sound Architecture (ALSA) as its backend for sound, while macOS and Windows use their own closed frameworks. USB microphones usually get listed as Microphone, but a microphone with a 1/8' input jack likely gets labeled as Line in. What you choose depends on your setup and what audio peripherals you own. Setting inputs in Audacityįirst, you must set your audio input so that Audacity receives the signal from the microphone or audio interface you want to use.

Once installed, launch the application from your Application or Activities menu.

Whether the two diverge in features later remains to be seen. At the time of writing, the two are essentially the same application, so this article applies equally to both. On Windows or macOS, download an Audacity installer from the Audacity website.Ī recent fork, called Tenacity, aims to continue the Audacity tradition with a different team of developers.

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On Elementary, Mint, and other Debian-based distributions: $ sudo apt install audacity On Fedora, Mageia, and similar distributions: $ sudo dnf install audacity Install Audacity on LinuxĪudacity is available on most Linux distributions from your package manager. Throughout this article, I'll highlight the keyboard shortcut I use in Audacity if you want to optimize your own settings. By building shortcuts around single letters, you can have one hand on the mouse and one on the keyboard, so the delay between choosing a tool or an important function and clicking the mouse is mere milliseconds. I use Audacity a lot, and being an editor by training, I'm used to significant and usually single-key keyboard shortcuts in my applications. The Audacity team has consistently provided an open source application for recording and cleaning up sound in the two decades since. Audacity recognized that, occasionally, the average computer user needed to edit audio. Initially developed at Carnegie Mellon University at a time when many people still thought computers were just for office and schoolwork, and you required special DSP peripherals for serious multimedia work. The Audacity sound editor is one of those open source applications that filled a niche that seemingly nobody else realized existed.

Audacity open source