Audacity – the free, open source, sound editing software
Audacity is an excellent way of preparing short sound clips.
This software is totally free. The latest version can be be downloaded from this site; http://audacity.sourceforge.net/
Any sound that the computer can make can be captured by Audacity; a CD playing in the CD drive; input from a microphone; a radio programme being listened to via the internet.
Short extracts can be taken from copyright tunes to use in Powerpoint, Clicker or other software to create personalised materials for pupils with exceptional needs.
Audacity saves projects in its own format – .aup (Audacity project). It also will export files in .wav format. It will also export files using a Mpegs (.mpg format) which are smaller files because compression is applied at the time of saving. However you need to have a module available to the system. This is called ‘lame_enc.dll’. This can be downloaded from the site too. You will only be using short clips, so compression is not an important issue.
Great news, Audacity will run from a pen-drive! It does not have to be installed on the computer system at all. There are Windows, Mac and Linux versions.
Even greater news. Audacity will run from a pendrive. Make sure you put ‘lame_enc.dll’ on your drive beside the Audacity application. That’s all you need. Have fun with it.
Note – this week – last week of September 2007, it has been impossible to download a working version of the software. The version downloaded is corrupted. Not such good news.
Here is some documentation to help you get started with Audacity;
