[A12n-forum] FYI: Audacity free/opensource audio editor

["Don Osborn" <dzo@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

This software discussed below may be of interest.  One of the potential
areas for African language use in ICT I've been interested in (and writing
about occasionally on A12n-forum) is audio.  It may find particularly
interesting applications in the context of community telecenters in rural
areas, but would still be useful all over.

Don Osborn
Bisharat.net

----- Original Message ----- 
From: "phil cash cash" <cashcash@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <ILAT@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Thursday, March 04, 2004 7:09 PM
Subject: Audacity


tá'c 'alaxp (good day!) ILAT,

Audacity just released 1.2.0!  Audacity is an open source and completely
free audio editor.

http://audacity.sourceforge.net/

At the 2003 American Indian Language Development Institute (AILDI) here at
the Univ of Arizona, we tested and used Audacity in our course "Computer
Applications for Indigenous Communities."  We recieved a very postive
response from all our students, both elders and college age students alike,
on its simplicity and ease of use.  The elder students really liked its
graphic interface with its "big" buttons.

The student's main use of Audacity was simply to capture live speech in
digital format and transfer it into a simple multimedia environment like
PowerPoint.  We used standard headset microphones, though now, you can buy
headset microphones with "noise reduction", a very very useful feature that
blocks out ambient background noise when recording a native speaker.

When recording in Audacity, you are able to use an unlimited number of audio
tracks.  One of our Hupa students created a traditional song composition
with mutiple tracks using only her voice.

Audacity supports a wide variety of audio formats (including WAV, MP3, and
Ogg  Vorbis).  In 2003, we created only WAV files in our course due in part
to the difficulty in downloading the MP3 plug-in, however, with the latest
version it is now much easier to do.  You will notice that you download
Audacity and the MP3 plug-in separately.  After downloading, I did a simple
test to create an MP3 file and it went smooth without a hitch.  Of course,
the advantage of using the MP3 format for your sound file format is the
reduction in file size and ease of use in multimedia environments.

Btw, Audacity's "help" files are outstanding!

I encourage language people to go buy a headset (w/noise reduction; although
you really don't have to...really), download Audacity and the MP3 plug-in,
and try it out.  Send me an MP3 greeting in your language!

qó'c (later),

phil cash cash (cayuse/nez perce)
UofA, ILAT