Published on 2020-04-22 by Kenneth Flak
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In this course we will mainly use Audacity, as this is quite simple to set up and work with; it is free and open source; and it is very powerful, even if it looks a bit less impressive than many of its commercial, beautifully designed equivalents.
Open it up to take a look at what is there. In the beginning you will see an empty canvas and a few controls:
{{< figure src="/images/soundTech/audacityEmpty.png">}}
Let's leave the settings as they are for now, and start by checking if we get some sound by creating a sine wave. Click on Generate->Tone in the top menu. A dialog opens up, asking you for some values. Leave the frequency at 440, set the Amplitude to 0.2 so that you don't kill your ears and click OK.
{{< figure src="/images/soundTech/audacityMakeSine.png">}}
The result should look like this:
{{< figure src="/images/soundTech/audacitySineResult.png">}}
and sound like an obnoxious, 30 second long test tone. Press the space bar to hear what you just created. If it works, all good, if not, we'll take a look at the sound settings in the workshop.