28 Comments

Audacity rocks. I use it for my radio show. Thanks for the simple pointers Josh.

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Thanks, Dee. Do you use Audacity for music, too, or just for voice?

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Both. We mix the shows either it. Voice and music and promos, etc

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This is very helpful, weirdly for the smallest thing: after mistakes, pause and repeat. Somehow mentally I’ve thought of a fresh take to then edit together. But really editing by deletion may be the easiest. But, there’s a lot here. Thanks.

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Indeed. In addition to avoiding all of the extra clicks from starting over, it's less likely that your volume or tone will change as significantly as it might with a bunch of separate takes spliced together. It's also easier to try a few different inflections if it's hard to figure out how to best deliver a sentence.

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Just finished using Audacity to record and edit a voiceover for today's story. Thanks so much for this tutorial and encouragement. It is intuitive and easy to use, especially by keeping it simple - my edits were cuts only. It's cool how you can start to read the visual of the sound and get a feel for how much space to leave between sentences and paragraphs. Fun!

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So great to hear! Thanks for telling me. Now that I'm back on a weekly schedule, I'm wondering if a follow-up post on layering music and sound effects would be too far afield of what my readers really want from me. But it's nice to have been of service :)

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Maybe? I kinda knew what I was getting into but still amazed at how long it takes. I edited about an hour’s worth of audio and it took me 4 hours. But that may be because I’m a perfectionist. 🤔😂

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Same. It's kind of like grading papers: there aren't any real shortcuts if you want to do it well. It typically takes me 6-8 hours to produce a podcast episode from the point at which I generate the transcript to the published audio file. Cutting that down further would require me to publish things that I couldn't accept -- filler words, distracting noises, redundancies...

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Exactly. I've seen that AI is promising some things about podcast editing, like filtering ums and ahs, but I'll believe it when I see it. Having produced a 7-episode podcast, I've been loathe to jump into that river again. And that was with a 4-person team (granted, students, but smart people, if busy with their lives).

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I knew the basics, but I do this infrequently enough that having a little primer like this will be terrific. I’d be interested in the deeper dive you mentioned on Notes.

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I second the use of audacity. Back in the day, I did podcasts for all my online courses using it.

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I will have to check this out. I have just been recording into Substack but as you said, it leads to lots of retakes and doesn't allow for editing at all. My son is coming home from college for the summer and this is his forte so I am going to have him train me.

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I'm also happy to help, Matthew. Message me privately, and I'll share what I know. Hopefully this tutorial would help you edit a voiceover. The only other thing you might need would be a little help with optimizing audio (boosting the recording with the compressor tool, using the noise reduction tool, and then the "normalize" and "limiter" features). A few of those steps can make a big difference.

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I've used Audacity for three years to edit our podcast, but now the difficult question: what about using Audacity to create an audiobook?

Any guide for doing that?

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Good question, Sarah. I'm curious what you'd see as the fundamental difference between an audiobook and a voiceover? My sense is that one could create an audiobook by recording and editing chapters separately, then splicing them all together into a master file. But I'm not clear on what problems you'd be trying to solve in an audiobook that you wouldn't already have managed on a smaller scale with a podcast.

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I think I'm trying to figure out how to ensure the chapter breaks when I upload. That is a project for AFTER my book is finished, however 😂 But Audacity is very easy to use. I can verify that for anyone who reads your post and questions it. I am an English teacher who now feels fairly confident about my audio editing skills.

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I love Audacity. I also use Auphonic to clean up the file recording before importing to Audacity. It means that I don’t have much to do in Audacity then.

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I've heard others mention Auphonic, but I distrust automated editing. Which features do you use in Auphonic?

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I think it’s called Production

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Only the basic clean up feature. And I don’t just assume it’s worked I check it in Audacity. It just seems to smooth things out and get rid of bitty noise, if you know what I mean.

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I'll have to try it. Are you saying it's a simpler version of Audacity's Noise Reduction tool? I typically use the compressor in Audacity before reducing background sound, so I'm not sure it would save me a step. But always worth experimenting. I have not found a way to spend less than 6-8 hours producing a podcast episode. But it's possible that I have a higher standard than most listeners care about.

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I find it easier and quicker than Audacity for noise reduction. It seems quite intuitive. I’m by no means an expert but it works for me. I use it for the meditations I make for my website and for the audio I add to my newsletters.

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There’s an add-on that allows you to import other file types, so you don’t need to convert https://manual.audacityteam.org/man/importing_audio.html

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Excellent -- thanks! As always, the Audacity directions could be more straightforward, and it takes a lot of clicks to install the add-on. But it appears to be working, so that will save a step in the future.

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Terrific! Many thanks for this.

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Happy experimenting, if you're not already familiar with Audacity :)

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It’s been a minute. I tend to forget how to use software if I’m not on it regularly.

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