Audacity, audio mixing

Audacity many uses, one program.  Audacity is great software for recording or mixing multiple tracks.  It allows you to edit your tracks and add special effects or lay tracks together.  But that isn’t the best part.  The very nice thing about Audacity is its ability to allow you to record whatever sound is playing through your sound card. 

If you are listening to streaming music: You can record it!

If you are talking on Skype, Teamspeak or Ventrillo: You can record it!

If you just want to have a part of a song or speech: You can record it!

Which may perhaps bring up the legality issues while working with this program, but I trust you.

Once you have recoreded the sound you want or have mixed your tracks, Audacity saves it as an Audacity file.  However, there is a .dll file you can get called LAME.  This allows you to save and export .mp3 files from Audacity, which is an excellent feature.

You may be wondering about the quality of recording streaming music, I find it to be surprisingly good.  I did however have problems the first time recording, my music sounded horrible.  If this happens to you, just update your sound card drivers. 

To record streaming music, you need to open up the preferences (Ctrl+P) and select the device, in your case probably your sound card, through which the music is streaming.  Then back on the main program layout you will see a drop down menu with selections like microphone, stereo mix, cd player, and a few others.  You will want to select ’stereo mix’ for the best quality. 

Overall Audacity is a great program that is very easy to use, so enjoy!

Get Audacity!