Audacity

Audacity is the free editor most people start with, and it goes further than most people take it. These walkthroughs show the exact menus and settings, from realtime effects to AI-assisted cleanup.

  • Audacity
  • Fundamentals

How to use Audacity: a beginner’s guide to Audacity 4

Audacity is a free, open-source audio recorder and editor for Windows, macOS and Linux — not a full DAW. This guide takes a beginner from the download to an exported file in one sitting: getting Audacity 4 through MuseHub, the first launch, the window, a first sound and a first recording, the first cuts, a first effect, cleanup, and save versus export, including sharing to audio.com.

17 min read
  • Audacity

How to trim and cut audio in Audacity

Trim a clip with its handles, cut or delete a section, choose whether the gap closes, split and join clips, fade the edges and export only what you edited — the Audacity 4 way, with the shortcuts.

8 min read
  • Audacity
  • Podcasting
  • Mixing & mastering

How to make audio louder in Audacity: normalize, compress and limit

Which of Audacity’s five volume effects to use and when — Normalize, Amplify, Compressor, Limiter and Loudness Normalization — with the steps for each in the order that works, the loudness targets Apple Podcasts and Spotify publish, the mistakes that turn louder into distorted, and the plugins that go past the built-ins.

10 min read
  • Audacity
  • Mixing & mastering

Best Audacity plugins in 2026

Twelve Audacity plugins, free and paid, ranked on what they do for a podcast or a track — EQ, reverb, pitch correction, noise removal and voice tools — with the format of every pick and whether it loads in Audacity 4.

9 min read
  • Audacity
  • Podcasting

How to edit a podcast in Audacity

Editing a podcast in Audacity 4 is one chain, always in the same order: import and arrange the takes, cut and tighten, clean up the noise, level the voices to a loudness target, add music and sound effects, then export an MP3. Every step has a built-in tool, and most have a plugin on MuseHub that does the same job faster.

13 min read