Audacity 101: The Unofficial Audacity Tutorial & Step By Step Guide Paperback – October 24, 2012

If you want someone to take you by the hand and walk you through how you can make an audio recording in 4 easy steps, buy this book. I just did and I know it's going to save me time and aggravation because I am so not techie. Thankfully, I don't have to be because the guys who wrote Audacity 101 did that part. Even better, they wrote a conversational, step-by-step instruction guide explaining how to record, edit, add music (only if you want to) and, finally, how to produce "...kick butt, iPod ready MP3 audio products." And, says the narrator, "We'll go step by step through the entire process, with complete explanations and shots of the screens you'll be dealing with all along the way."For me, this book works because that clear headed (and funny) narrator literally talks on the pages, telling me what I need, where to get it and, most importantly, how to use it. And, how to trouble shoot if I mess up. I've known for a long time that I needed to incorporate audio into my online platform but, I always felt a bit intimidated by the technology. Now, I can't wait to get started! Highly recommended.

I was expecting this book to go more into detail about how to set things up with audacity, as well as how to use audacity. But all in all, it gave a good summary on the best way to get the program to work for you. It's a great book to add to additional information. It gives very good information.

That sounds really snooty, I know. To be honest, I wish I had shelled out the money for this book when I had first downloaded Audacity. It *would* have saved me a lot of time, but as it stands today, this book is useless if you already have practice with Audacity. Everything in this book I had already taught myself, simply by messing with the program and through YouTube and other articles on the internet. No one needs to pay for the info presented here.I know it's a "101" book; the basics. But even still, there should be more to this book than the most basic of basic techniques. If that's what you need, great. Buy this book, learn the basic basics, and then throw it away because it's use will have come to an end.There are things that you can do with Audacity that would blow your mind, but this book doesn't even come close to telling you any of it. This is what you need to record on Audacity, edit, and add a piece of intro music, and... that's it.What if you're a podcaster and you need to do interviews through Skype or other telephonic means? What if you need to add sound effects, or what if you want to have music in the background with your vocals in the foreground? That's pretty basic, "101" stuff too.I'm a podcaster, and I have recently upgraded all of my recording equipment. I figured as long as I'm stepping my game up in the technical aspect, I should become more proficient with Audacity. I bought the Kindle edition, so thankfully I didn't spend too much on this, because it taught me nothing, though that doesn't make it bad for you.Still... you should also be aware that the Kindle edition CONSTANTLY tries to get you to buy the author's video lessons with: "Need help with Audacity? Get step-by-step video training here" followed by a link to some video lessons... every other page it does this. I don't pay for spam, so what would have been a four-star review is now a three.If you know nothing, and I mean absolutely NOTHING, about producing audio, and you want a quick-start guide, here it is. It's well written and to the point. And that's another reason It's getting three stars from me instead of two. this will have a use for the absolute, oblivious beginner but if you want something that digs deeper look elsewhere.There are many articles online about how you can create awesome audio productions with Audacity, be it music or audio seminars or books, or podcasting. YouTube is bursting from the seams with tutorials on how to use Audacity, the basics, the not so basics, to advanced killer techniques that one would never think a free program to be capable of. You don't have to pay for what's in this book. But it WILL save you time in getting started, if you are not familiar with the basics.I hope this helped.Paul J. HaleHostThe Disney Story Origins Podcast

This book lacked essential information, needed to be more transparent on many aspects, and definitely would cause some lack of understanding of Audacity

I don't do a lot of audio processing, but being a musician I do a bit of recording and I like to make the recording sound a good as possible. I used Audacity on my old WIN PC platform for several years and liked it. When I moved to MAC I figured GarageBand would handle anything I needed.Perhaps I just over complicate things, but I've never been able to get GarageBand to do much of anything. Interfaces don't seem to work, USB mics sound "boomy" and getting tracks to balance and mix properly is just beyond my skill level with GB.Audacity for MAC is just like my old friend from the PC, Easy to use, great effects and all in all exactly what I need to get the job done. This beginners guide is a great piece to keep close by when you are getting started.

Are you taking advantage of the fact that different people have different learning styles? Are you taking advantage of the fact that people can learn by listening when they are engaged in other tasks such as driving? If you are producing information products, you should be make them available in an audio format. This book walks the reader through one way of doing that -- and Audacity is free, too! This book has all the information required. (However, if you want even more, it links to a $9 Udemy course.) You'll learn how to record audio, how to edit audio, how to add music to it, and how to generate MP3 files from it. If you want to learn how to do this, I highly recommend this book.

i was hoping for more advanced tutoring and more detail, but it was helpful to have it there in black and white to refer to, and i did learn some new things

Well written and adequately illustrated, this is an excellent beginner's book that will have you up and running with your first attempt at working with audio. It does help that the software is fairly intuitive to access its features and this book assists in using them.