In my last video I made the mistake of saying that use of the envelope tool in version 3 of Audacity and the Clip Gain tool in the Beta 2 version of Audacity 4.0 is destructive, meaning that once you close the file, any changes you made using those tools was permanent. But it’s not. I was was wrong. I want to thank the person who brought this to my attention. I was able to go into YouTube studio and edit out that short piece where I made that remark. So it’s gone. This video is for all of you who may have heard me say that before I was able to remove it.
Audacity 4 Clip Gain vs Audacity 3.7.8 Envelope Tool
Let’s compare the Envelope tool in Audacity 3.7.8 to the Clip Gain tool in Audacity 4, Beta 2.
Audacity 4 Beta 1 Sandbox Testing and 2 More Bugs
Join me as I continue to use Audacity 4, Beta 1 as a sandbox to explore what’s new and any limitations or bugs. In this video I discovered 2 more bugs:
- The space bar has no affect on the playhead. I can’t start/stop playback using the spacebar. I also can’t stop recording using the spacebar. Go to 13:37 in the video to see this.
- I can’t drag and drop an existing audio file into this version. I found out after recording this video that Audacity 4, Beta 1 is preventing me from dragging and dropping any file into any other program. I had to close Audacity before that would work. Go to 23:02 to see what happened.
Have you had a chance to use the Beta 1 version yet? If so, what have you discovered? Let me know in the comments.
ACX Audiobook Production Using Audacity (Free 18 Video Course)
Are you an audiobook creator who uses Audacity as your editing software of choice? This free course is centered around Audacity and only Audacity for audiobook creation. No 3rd party plugins are required or used. IMPORTANT: This free course is based on Audacity version 3.0.5. This means that if you have a later version of the program your screen may look a little different than what’s in the course but the functionality is the same.
The topics covered in this course will give you the skills and confidence you need so you can produce and edit your audiobook narrations with excellence.
What you’ll learn in this course:
- How to install the four free Nyquist plugins used in this course
- The ACX Requirement for Room Tone
- The ACX Standard for Noise Floor
- The ACX Standard for File Size
- The ACX Standard for RMS Loudness
- The ACX Standard for Sample Rate
- How to set Audacity Preferences for ACX audiobook recording
- Simple definitions of Noise Floor, Sample Rate, RMS Loudness, and Bit Rate
- How to fix narration mistakes as they happen using Punch and Roll Record
- How to apply Equalization and when
- How to apply Compression
- How to level your audio using RMS Loudness to meet ACX requirements for RMS
- How to apply the Limiter effect to meet ACX standards
- How to apply the De-Clicker effect to reduce/remove mouth sounds
- The importance of running Audacity’s ACX Check Plugin
- How to build and run a Macro to automate our process
- How to clean up breath sounds using Punch Copy/Paste
- How to clean up breath sounds using Attenuation
- Content editing and final MP3 export
- How to meet the ACX requirements for MP3 file size and bit rate
Each lesson builds on the previous one as we build a short piece of audio together, add the different effects to it, run ACX Check on it, and export it as an MP3 file that’s ready to pass the ACX quality control standards. And we do all of this using only Audacity.
Audacity 4 Alpha Preview
Let’s see what the Alpha build of Audacity 4 can do. In this video I explore some of the new product features in this build of Audacity 4 as well as discover a few bugs. Bugs are to be expected in an Alpha build of any software and there are a few in here that need ironed out. Come with me as I delve into this version of Audacity and see what it will do and what’s new so far!
At about the 12:30 mark in this video, my mouse pointer disappeared. I could still see it but it disappeared from the video. I hope that’s not too much of a distraction.
Announcements: Audacity 4 and the New YouTube Courses Tab
In this video I wanted to make sure you saw the video that Audacity put out a couple of weeks ago on the progress of Audacity version 4. It’s very informative and I’ll link it here in case you haven’t seen it yet.
Also, my channel has a new tab called Courses. I put the five videos I did, called Audacity 101, into that tab. I plan on taking advantage of that tab so I’ll be placing more videos there in the future. My next video will be a walkthrough of the Audacity 4 (alpha build) interface so we can look at some things together. Stay tuned…
Audacity’s Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QYM3TWf_G38&t=883s
Learn Audacity 