Many a time, we make recordings at home. For example, a younger sister may be embarking on a musical career, and it is important to make a recording of her performance. Or, the baby has just uttered its very first syllables, and it must be preserved for posterity.

We do have our iPods and other gadgets where we can capture that most important performance. What happens if we feel the need to doctor it, give it some background music, or to simple make it a little louder? At such times, there is the need for an editor for audio files.

One of the most versatile and simple audio editors is Audacity. This is available as a free application and can be used on all the major platforms such as Linux, Mac and Windows. There is practically nothing that you cannot do with Audacity. Broadly, you can record, import, edit, translate, modify and export all types of audio files.

To begin with, you have several inputs you can record from. The choices include microphone input, line input or auxiliary sources. The inputs can be mixed, each have their own level controls. Recordings up to 96 KHz are supported. Importing from and exporting to, is allowed from Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV, AIFF, FLAC and several other formats. All 16-, 24- and 32-bit formats are supported. A large variety of plug-ins is provided for different functions such as adjusting volume, removing noise and normalizing. Built-in effects are available for Echo, Reverse, Wahwah, Phaser, and others. The complete list of features of Audacity is simply too large to be listed here.

Audacity is very useful when transferring music or audio files between different media. For example, audio from vinyl records or magnetic tapes is very readily transformed into WAV or MP3 or OGG files for storage on optical media. For this the first requirement is a proper player, a turntable with preamplifier for the vinyl or a tape-recorder for the magnetic tapes will be required. It is necessary to ascertain that proper equalization is being used: RIAA for the vinyl and NAB for the tapes.

The outputs from either the turntable or the tape-recorder have to be taken in via the line-in of the computer in which Audacity is running. Audacity will have to be in recording mode, recording from the line-in. The level has to be adjusted to prevent clipping on the loudest passages. The complete vinyl or tape could be recorded as one large file and edited later.

Normally, vinyl content is associated with pop, crackle and ticks representing dust ingrained in the soft vinyl, while tape is famous for the background hiss. All of this can be removed with the Effects that are built-in into Audacity. If the loudness is not good, amplification can be added. All the actions can be undone and redone to any number of steps.

There are features for cutting, splicing, and joining, modifying and other editing in Audacity. Editing and mixing a large number of tracks is possible. If the bass or treble is lacking, this can be corrected.

Finally, when the result sounds good, the files can be saved with different names and in formats such as MP3 or OGG or WMA and recorded on to CDs.

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