One of my favourite open source programs is an audio editing package known as Audacity. The program is available for Windows, Mac and Linux computers and is a fantastic example of the quality and ease of use that the open source community is capable of developing and supporting in an ongoing fashion.

The program supports a great deal of really cool stuff, and is particularly valuable to those looking for a quick and easy way to produce audio recordings.

With this in mind I wanted to take a couple of minutes to take you through the following:

• Installing and setting up the software,
• Basic editing, recording and processing tips,
• Exporting recordings and MP3 export configuration
• Places to go for more information

The clip is best viewed full screen, by clicking on the monitor icon in the lower right hand corner of the video player. You can also access the recording directly here: http://blip.tv/file/1645986. The Blip.tv page also contains a link to download either an FLV version of the recording, or the original AVI file (roughly 375 MB).

With that said a few corrections are necessary:

• @1:14 I say you download the software by right-clicking and then selecting save-as. This is not correct. You have to click the link to follow it to another page, where the download begins automatically. Right-clicking will only save a tiny HTML file and not the installation file you’re actually after.
• @6:10 I say that clipping occurs when the wave form goes beyond 1.0. I don’t believe this is technically correct. The main thing to bear in mind is that pushing the volume too high (via the amplify effect) will result in audio distortion, which is something to be avoided as much as possible. If you’re interested in reading more on audio clipping you might refer to the Wikipedia article.

The support documentation on the Audacity site is really impressive as well, so be sure to check out their documentation and wiki .