Audacity Forum

Which operating system?
Which version of Audacity? (Not just "latest", look in "Help > About Audacity" for the version number)

The outer dark shade shows the peak level. The inner lighter shade shows the RMS level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Root_mean_square).

Audacity 2.0.5 is too old. The Limiter effect was added on 2nd June 2015. If you are able to build Audacity from the source code, the tarball is available from FossHub. The most recent version is Audacity 2.1.2rc (pre-release version) and in a few days there will be 2.1.2 rc3. The official release v...

Robdan1 wrote:The Audacity software came free with a piece of hardware from EzCap

In that case you should check the version number (Help menu > About Audacity) because it is likely to be an old version. The current version is 2.1.1 and is available here: http://web.audacityteam.org/download/mac

How exactly are you getting the files into Audacity? "File menu > Import > Audio"? Set Windows to show the file extension (http://windows.microsoft.com/en-gb/windows/show-hide-file-name-extensions#show-hide-file-name-extensions=windows-7). What is the full name (including the file extensio...

If you are humming a tune (more than one note) then getting the "average frequency" will not help. You can use "Plot Spectrum" (in the "Analyze" menu) to see the frequencies that are contained in the currently selected audio. If you select just one note from a recording...

For multi-track editors (such as Audacity), the idea of "overdubbing" is to create a new recorded track while listening to other tracks. Thus you can create multiple voice / instrument recordings, recording one track at a time with each voice / instrument on separate tracks. This then allo...

does using Audacity as a tag editor (i.e.; opening a mp3 and immediately exporting it again and modifying the tag when shown the metadata screen) degrade the audio portion if saved in the same format (e.g.; variable bit rate 4)? Yes it does. Audacity is not a "tag editor", it is an "...

Do you have another mic that you could try plugged into th iRig, just for testing purposes. The near total absence of frequencies below 100 Hz indicates that either a substantial amount of filtering is taking place, or something is set up wrong, or something is broken. Whatever the cause, your "...

There are also two "standards" for 0 dB input level. In professional audio, equipment may be calibrated to indicate a "0" on the VU meters some finite time after a signal has been applied at an amplitude of +4 dBu. Consumer equipment typically uses a lower "nominal" sig...