Audacity Forum

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?

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

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

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