Audacity Tutorial #1 – How to Set Up the Preferences for Audacity on Your PC

Today I'm going to tell you how to configure Audacity to work in your computer for the first time. But first things first, let me introduce you to this amazing free and handy audio editor: If you have ever dreamed of editing audio like a pro or creating your own customized ringtones or MP3 podcasts and you do not want to pay a small fortune to get a program to do it in the professional way, I highly recommend you give a try to Audacity, it is one of the best and at the same time simplest audio editors I have ever installed or used, and I can definitely say that it'll meet all your requirements at . Besides my personal opinion, over 60 million people downloading Audacity all over the world can't be wrong, right? Audacity is an extraordinary free audio editor which is not only cross-platform but also enables you to record, edit and manipulate digital audio files in different formats.

If you still haven't downloaded and installed Audacity go to the big blue “Download” button and click on it, the InstallIQ™ installer will take care of the rest. So, Audacity is such a piece of work, nevertheless, you need to adjust its preferences before you begin a recording project, by doing this ensures you that the sound source and playback options are perfectly configured and so does the bit-rate, quality parameters and more. by going to Edit > Preferences...

This will open the Audacity Preferences dialog box in Audacity. You can also open the Preferences Dialog box by entering the key combination Ctrl + P shortcut.

Once you are there the first thing you see is the Audio I/O tab ( I/O is the short for Input & Outputs). It is here is where you’ll define which source to record your sound from and through which output or device to play it back. So the first step is to set the Playback Output. Drop down the options under Playback and select the output device that you want to send the sound through. Just as an example, I’m sending it through the Microsoft Sound Mapper.

Now you have to set the recording input or source. So, select the sound device you want to record from, unfold the drop down menu in the Recording section. Probably you have a USB headset or microphone, and it will be appearing on this list and you can use it to do voice recordings.

In the case you want to record some music, you'd better check “Stereo” check-box next to Record. Otherwise, just leave it unchecked. The "Play other tracks while recording new one" and “Software Playthrough (Play new track while recording it) check-box can be left in its default state which is unchecked.

The next step is to set the parameters in the Sound Quality Tab, here is where you’ll adjust your audio quality. Just as a refferencs I can tell you that the higher the sample rate, the better the audio quality is, however the larger will be the file you are going to generate. For example if you aim at CD quality sound, you have to set your record frequency at 44,100 Hz. For the rest of the parameters you can leave them as they were set as factory defaults.

Final Words

As you can see, setting up Audacity is not difficult at all and you can do this in a couple of minutes, the best part is that once you do it, Audacity will be ready to work and you'll never have to adjust these again.

Give Audacity a try, we'll be back with much more tutorials on this amazing free audio editor, so stay tuned!

To download Audacity right now just hit the “Download Now” button below and start editing your audio like a pro!