New To This site

[brodbk]

I am new to audacity. Need help in compressing a file. Want to up load to website. What are the steps to compress the file?

[Gale Andrews]

I am assuming you mean compress the file size, not compress the dynamics, which you'd do with Effect > Compressor. You want to File > Export as MP3; before doing so, follow these instructions to add the LAME MP3 encoder to your computer, which Audacity uses to do the MP3 compression.

Gale

[waxcylinder]

And note that you can control the amount of compression by adjusting the bitrate for export - in 1.2 this is done in Preferences (In 1.3 and presumably 1.4 when it comes, it is settable as part of the export dialog).

For music a bitrate of 128 is generally considered the minimum quality for - for speech people often go down to 64. Test it it out if it sounds warbly or like you are talking in a tin can then you have too much compression.

WC

[brodbk]

Thanks for the help. You are right I was talking about the sized of the file.