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.
Loading Reviews List....
Audacity Reviews
3 Reviews
Enterprises (1,001+ employees)
Search is temporarily unavailable. Filters are still applied.
I use Audacity for audio recording, editing, normalizing audio levels, and more. It's especially handy when I need to sync prerecorded audio segments to a presentation so it can be viewed more than once by attendees at their own pace. The program offers quite a bit of functionality for a free software.
Pros
Splicing audio segments together
Recording & re-recording directly in the program
Editing sound levels so segments aren't dramatically louder or quieter than another
Cons
Adding more instructions: it's a simple program but users may need an external guide to get started
Automatic filter for background noise
Speech to text captioning
Likelihood to Recommend
Audacity is well-suited for any basic audio recording and editing needs. If you have a small budget, only need a program for a small, specific project, or don't need too many extra tools, Audacity is the perfect program for you. It helps me prerecord presentations before posting them online, so I'm not giving the same presentation over and over again.
Audacity is being used by individuals as a standalone audio recording and editing software for audio projects as well as to record, edit, or mix audio in support of video projects. Faculty and staff usually create media to be used by students, often within the classroom. Some users create public facing content including podcasts.
Pros
Audacity is great at supporting users across platforms and is equally approachable on Mac and PC
Audacity gives good basic editing (cuts and fades) and recording (usb or internal microphone) functionality for free
Audacity has several helpful tips geared towards the novice user, including helping them to export a file rather than just save an Audacity project
Cons
Audacity has changed some icons recently for certain editing functions and that can be confusing for users and support
The interface isn't the worst I have seen but the UI isn't exactly enjoyable on Mac or PC
Some of the functionality can quickly feel overwhelming to a new user, pointing toward help documentation the first time an advanced tool is used would be appreciated
Likelihood to Recommend
Audacity is great for a person doing a one-time or hobby level audio recording where they need to keep costs low or are just recording something quickly and not regularly needing an audio editor. As a professional, I rarely use Audacity myself because the interface isn't enjoyable and some features are better supported on paid software such as Audition, Logic, Pro Tools, etc.
We use Audacity in the linguistics lab to record audio through a USB pre-amplifier (typically the Focusrite Scarlett Solo) and to re-sample or re-encode audio data in other formats which may not be readable (or maybe too big) for analysis software like Praat. We also use Audacity for some post-recording manipulation for perceptual studies.
Pros
Audacity is free and user-friendly but also allows for outstandingly fine-grained tuning if you know what you're doing.
We find this software invaluable for recording or re-encoding audio data for linguistic analysis.
We're also able to manipulate audio files (e.g. by changing pitch) to present for perceptual studies. Audacity's algorithms really do an excellent job of manipulating only the selected variable and maintaining the integrity and crispness of the audio file.
Cons
Audacity has an older-looking interface that can make a large number of options overwhelming sometimes, but it's free, so I've never really found this to be worth complaining about.
The included documentation also uses a pretty outdated interface, but again, it's free and there are a huge amount of much more thorough resources available online.
Likelihood to Recommend
Audacity is absolutely invaluable as a free resource for making high-quality audio recordings on a computer and editing those recordings. Sure, there are other paid options with newer interfaces, but they are typically super expensive. Audacity works, it works well, and it's totally free. As a linguistic researcher who does recording, analysis, and manipulation of files, there's virtually no audio problem I've come across that Audacity won't work for.
