Greetings,
today I downloaded Audacity for Mac OS X and this program is very foreign to me. I selected the help menu and was directed to find:
audacity—1.2—help.htb
Is there a user manual for this program? I want to connect to my tape player and convert a tape from analog to digital.
Sincerely,
willibo
HTML Help Books
Forum rules
Audacity 1.2.x is now obsolete. Please use the current Audacity 2.1.x version.
Mac 0S X 10.3 and earlier are no longer supported but you can download legacy versions of Audacity for those systems HERE.
Audacity 1.2.x is now obsolete. Please use the current Audacity 2.1.x version.
Mac 0S X 10.3 and earlier are no longer supported but you can download legacy versions of Audacity for those systems HERE.
Re: HTML Help Books
Hello willibo,
I just downloaded Audacity yesterday, too. Here is what I have learned so far (also couldn't find any Help html, but I am going to Google for this):
Set your Preferences:
General:
Playback: Device: Built-in audio
Recording: Device: USB Audio CODEC (mine is from ADSTech.com)
Channels: Mine is set to Mono, since I am recording an old voice tape cassette
Check Hardware Playthrough
Check Software Playthrough
so you can hear what you're recording.
Quality:
Default Sample Rate: 44100Hz
(I think this adequate for voice, you may want to Google this, though)
Default Sample Format: 32-bit float.
I have no ideas what that means. I plan to Google this.
Real-time sample rate converter: Fast Sinc Interpolation
(once again because the quality of the tapes I am recording are not great anyway.)
High-quality sample rate converter: High-quality Sinc Interpolation
Real-time dither: None
High-quality dither: Triangle
(Once again, I don't know what those mean, so I have just left them at there default setting.)
The rest of the preference settings are pretty self-explanatory, although I am doing a lot of Googling to figure out what they mean.
I have been able to record my cassette tapes pretty easily. I connect my Sony Cassette boom box to my ADSTech Mac Instant Music device via the cables that came with the Instant Music device. Just plugged the device cable into the headset/microphone output deal on the boom box, and the USB cable from the ADS Mac Instant Music into my Mac.
Then, under Mac system preferences for "sound", I set the audio input to USB Audio CODEC and the audio output to "internal speakers." Make sure your input and output volume are not muted.
To get going in Audacity, choose "New" under the File Menu. Then go to the Project Menu and choose "new audio track." Start your tape and press the red dot, which is the record button. When you want to stop the recording, press the square button. On my Audacity interface all the buttons look "greyed out" but if you run your mouse over them and look in the lower lefthand corner of the display, it will tell you if the button is active or disabled.
I also downloaded some plug-ins from the links in the Audacity site. You will need them to export your files to MP3 and other formats.
You'll have to just fiddle around with things to get familiar with basics. I have a lot to learn about this program, but this is as far as I have gone and it is working basically well so far. This stuff is not intuitive all the time, so you will learn as you go along.
Hope this helps.
Shelley
I just downloaded Audacity yesterday, too. Here is what I have learned so far (also couldn't find any Help html, but I am going to Google for this):
Set your Preferences:
General:
Playback: Device: Built-in audio
Recording: Device: USB Audio CODEC (mine is from ADSTech.com)
Channels: Mine is set to Mono, since I am recording an old voice tape cassette
Check Hardware Playthrough
Check Software Playthrough
so you can hear what you're recording.
Quality:
Default Sample Rate: 44100Hz
(I think this adequate for voice, you may want to Google this, though)
Default Sample Format: 32-bit float.
I have no ideas what that means. I plan to Google this.
Real-time sample rate converter: Fast Sinc Interpolation
(once again because the quality of the tapes I am recording are not great anyway.)
High-quality sample rate converter: High-quality Sinc Interpolation
Real-time dither: None
High-quality dither: Triangle
(Once again, I don't know what those mean, so I have just left them at there default setting.)
The rest of the preference settings are pretty self-explanatory, although I am doing a lot of Googling to figure out what they mean.
I have been able to record my cassette tapes pretty easily. I connect my Sony Cassette boom box to my ADSTech Mac Instant Music device via the cables that came with the Instant Music device. Just plugged the device cable into the headset/microphone output deal on the boom box, and the USB cable from the ADS Mac Instant Music into my Mac.
Then, under Mac system preferences for "sound", I set the audio input to USB Audio CODEC and the audio output to "internal speakers." Make sure your input and output volume are not muted.
To get going in Audacity, choose "New" under the File Menu. Then go to the Project Menu and choose "new audio track." Start your tape and press the red dot, which is the record button. When you want to stop the recording, press the square button. On my Audacity interface all the buttons look "greyed out" but if you run your mouse over them and look in the lower lefthand corner of the display, it will tell you if the button is active or disabled.
I also downloaded some plug-ins from the links in the Audacity site. You will need them to export your files to MP3 and other formats.
You'll have to just fiddle around with things to get familiar with basics. I have a lot to learn about this program, but this is as far as I have gone and it is working basically well so far. This stuff is not intuitive all the time, so you will learn as you go along.
Hope this helps.
Shelley
Re: HTML Help Books
if your start and play buttons read disabled how do you undo?
-
kozikowski
- Forum Staff
- Posts: 68901
- Joined: Thu Aug 02, 2007 5:57 pm
- Operating System: macOS 10.13 High Sierra
Re: HTML Help Books
http://audacityteam.org/manual-1.2/tutorials.html
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... _Tutorials
These cover some of the basics of editing. You can find the pathway to them at any time from the Tips and Tutorials link at the top of this page.
<<<Check Hardware Playthrough
Check Software Playthrough
so you can hear what you're recording.>>>
You may not want both. That can give you echoes in your presentation.
<<<Default Sample Format: 32-bit float.
I have no ideas what that means. I plan to Google this.>>>
44100 sample rate and 16-bit, Stereo (not 32-bit) are the digital format of the sound on a Music CD. Those are really good numbers to use until you get used to what you're doing. If you change the import format numbers in iTunes to those same numbers, you can import your music and burn a CD with no decrease in sound quality. That action will mess up importing into your iPod, so write the iTunes numbers down before you change them (I use AAC-256 for my preferred iPod compression).
<<<start and play buttons read disabled>>>
Do they come alive if you click inside the blue waves of your timeline? You may want to go through those basic editing tutorials before you dig yourself any deeper.
Koz
http://audacityteam.org/wiki/index.php? ... _Tutorials
These cover some of the basics of editing. You can find the pathway to them at any time from the Tips and Tutorials link at the top of this page.
<<<Check Hardware Playthrough
Check Software Playthrough
so you can hear what you're recording.>>>
You may not want both. That can give you echoes in your presentation.
<<<Default Sample Format: 32-bit float.
I have no ideas what that means. I plan to Google this.>>>
44100 sample rate and 16-bit, Stereo (not 32-bit) are the digital format of the sound on a Music CD. Those are really good numbers to use until you get used to what you're doing. If you change the import format numbers in iTunes to those same numbers, you can import your music and burn a CD with no decrease in sound quality. That action will mess up importing into your iPod, so write the iTunes numbers down before you change them (I use AAC-256 for my preferred iPod compression).
<<<start and play buttons read disabled>>>
Do they come alive if you click inside the blue waves of your timeline? You may want to go through those basic editing tutorials before you dig yourself any deeper.
Koz