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Audacity Information Reviews & Insights

Score7.8 out of 10

107 Reviews and Ratings

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Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Audacity are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Robust Audio Editing: Users have consistently praised Audacity for its robust capabilities and wide variety of controls, with many stating that it meets their audio editing needs. The program allows users to splice audio segments together seamlessly, ensuring a smooth editing experience. Additionally, the availability of basic editing features such as cuts and fades is appreciated by users who are looking to make simple edits.

Ease of Use: Many reviewers have highlighted how easy it is to navigate and use Audacity's user interface. They find it simple and intuitive, even for those with minimal experience in audio editing. The program's workflow is considered easy and straightforward, allowing users to quickly complete tasks without feeling overwhelmed. Furthermore, the learning curve for Audacity is small, making it accessible to new users who want to get started with audio editing right away.

Free and Cost-effective Solution: The fact that Audacity is free has been widely appreciated by users looking for a budget-friendly option. Its open-source nature makes it accessible to anyone without having to spend money on expensive software. Users also value the program's compatibility with both Mac and PC platforms, allowing a wide range of individuals to access its features at no cost.

Reviews

6 Reviews
Information

Audacity for audio podcast produciton

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Audacity does the work. I use it to edit and produce my podcast. Audacity has the features need to efficiently produce my podcast. The UI is clear and easy to use. I am able to import the files easily and export in the file type needed for the podcast. Audacity processing is fast and efficient; and the program is stable and reliable.

Pros

  • displays tracks for ease of editing and ordering
  • imports all necessary file times
  • efficiently processes files for export

Cons

  • easier to grab and re-order tracks, the grab area is small
  • I am constantly zooming in and out to grab a small piece of track; make it easier to grab an audio clip
  • a button to move the focus to the beginning of the tracks

Likelihood to Recommend

Audacity is great for editing and producing my monthly podcast. It is easy to add tracks, edit them and move clips around. Also, Audacity is efficient at exporting files for podcast production. It can not handle video production and does not have a transcript development feature. If you're producing an audio podcast, do it.
JK
John Kostuch
Host in Social Media at CentreSteer Media (Broadcast Media, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Audacity
13 years of experience
View profile

Doesn't hurt to have a free product in my tool set

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Right now, we are using Audacity after recording podcasts to edit the output of the resulting audio file. This includes splicing, adding an intro and outro, removing "ums" and "you knows" as well as any other interference, as well as removing other unnecessary noise.

Pros

  • Open-source.
  • Community support, lots of help documents.

Cons

  • Difficult interface to understand without the help documents.
  • Some functions require the use of third-party plugins that are more expensive than the product (which is free).

Likelihood to Recommend

Audacity is a free open-source product that does a great job with audio editing, handling pretty much all files with ease. While out of the box, you may require some free plugins to process the audio file you work with, some of the functionality for more advanced tasks requires paid plugins that may not necessarily even resolve the issue. In particular, Audacity doesn't seem to have a seamless solution to remove echo, and many of the various help documents seem to suggest that a paid plugin would resolve this issue; none of them work. The interface looks very professional, but to that end, it's also intimidating to use and it's difficult to figure out how to do things at times. You may need to refer to help documents on a regular basis; for every podcast I've recorded, I've had to revisit another help issue. I've done more than 40 hours of editing since I've started but I still don't feel confident I understand how to amplify the volume in text or to reduce it. I feel like a newbie and perhaps I shouldn't be one at this "late" stage. That said, Audacity is perhaps one of the best audio solutions on the market, and it doesn't hurt that this is free.
TW
Tamar Weinberg
Founder and CEO in Marketing at TAMAR. (Internet, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Audacity
1 year of experience
View profile

Fun, fancy, and free!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Audacity to create samples of music, karaoke tracks, and piano accompaniments that we sell on our website. I appreciate the simplicity of the product, ease of use, and ability to trim, edit, and extract the audio in a usable format (it allows you to choose between AIFF, WAV, mp3, AC3, M4A, MP2, FLAC, AMR, Ogg Vorbis, WMA, etc. and options for various bit rate modes, quality, variable speeds, and channel modes (stereo/joint-stereo). I also appreciate the ability to change the speed of the music without changing pitch and the ease with which I can transpose. The sound quality of the transposed music is surprisingly good.

Pros

  • Simple to use.
  • Free download.

Cons

  • Free version has possibly limited options for someone with more advanced skills.

Likelihood to Recommend

I think for novices who need to slow down/speed up music, trim or edit music, or do general editing of the music with effects Audacity is a great software program to use! If you're looking to be a producer the free version probably isn't going to have enough options.
JS
Jennifer Stirling
Executive Assistant to Lindsey Stirling in Customer Service at Lindseystomp Music / Lindsey Stirling Touring (Music, 11-50 employees)
Vetted Review
Audacity
7 years of experience
View profile

Audacity is my go-to audio editing software hands-down!

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Audacity a lot for the editing of podcast audio as well as audio that supports video files.

Pros

  • Very intuitive
  • Free to use

Cons

  • It takes a while to get the hang of it.
  • Integration with popular video/audio apps.

Likelihood to Recommend

It's a great tool to use that I've grown to love over the years. I don't use anything else to edit my audio at this time. It's an excellent app that I don't have any suggestions for improvement.
JM
Justin McClelland
Real Estate Tax Analyst/Software Developer in Marketing at Schwaps (Computer Software, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Audacity
17 years of experience
View profile

Powerful audio editing tools with a no-frills interface

Rating: 8 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Our team produces a number of podcasts on development, design, and content strategy — audio editing isn't a normal part of our workflow, so we don't have a suite of high-end editing tools on hand to use. Our hunt for a low-cost, cross-platform audio editing tool flexible enough for multi-track editing and post-processing led us to Audacity and we've been using it ever since.

Pros

  • Audio filtering and processesing
  • Multi-track editing and audio compositing

Cons

  • User experience and workflow is… very open source
  • Lacks presets or guidance for common export targets (podcasting, CD-quality music, etc)

Likelihood to Recommend

We use Audacity as a podcast editing, prep, and export tool; it has enough filtering and audio-processing features to perform tasks like balancing tracks, removing background noise, and it lets us make fast edits across multiple synced audio tracks. A common scenario for us is chopping out a minute or two of irrelevant conversation from the three parallel tracks for each podcast participant — some of the simpler editing tools we evaluated required that edits be made track-by-track, all but ensuring the audio falls out of sync.

The more complex the editing, the more Audacity's clunky interface can frustrate — it's impossible to beat the price (free!) but it's also easy to feel lost when trying to accomplish something basic until you learn its idiosyncrasies.
JE
Jeff Eaton
Senior Digital Strategist in Professional Services at Lullabot (Internet, 51-200 employees)
Vetted Review
Audacity
7 years of experience
View profile

Audacity is NOT Audition, but IS all you need for simple projects.

Rating: 10 out of 10
Incentivized

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I use Audacity for both business and pleasure. Since I use Linux with only open source solutions, it works perfectly for my varying needs.

Pros

  • It is very lightweight. Uses relatively few resources, but is robust with its functionality.
  • It is highly intuitive, user-friendly. If you want simplicity without a huge learning curve, this is a great solution.
  • I know this is specific, but its Noise Reduction tool is excellent. For anyone needing to remove background noise, quickly and easily, with quality and fine-tunable results, you can't go wrong!

Cons

  • My biggest complaint is when multitracking, on occasion, Audacity's source files corrupt and are NOT recoverable. If you have an important, complex project, Audacity might not be the ideal solution for this reason alone. I have scoured the forums for help, and have found many well-thought suggestions, but more than once I have had to go back to square one, which is very frustrating.
  • The UI could use some updating. Although user-friendly, some icons/functions are not immediately clear.

Likelihood to Recommend

It is well suited for simple vocal recordings, such as Podcasts. Based on the issues I have experienced multitracking, it is not ideal for recording multitrack songs.
JJ
Jerry Janes
Digital Media Specialist in Marketing at Janes Consulting (U.S.) (Online Media, 1-10 employees)
Vetted Review
Audacity
12 years of experience
View profile