Digital audio fundamentals and editing with Audacity

Audacity is a free and open-source, cross-platform program for recording and editing sounds. Screenshots.

You will learn how computer sound ‘works’, how it is represented, and how to modify and tweak it to sound exactly as you’d like.

Task

First you need to learn about digital audio fundamentals. These sources will explain the basics of the field:

• Digital audio basics
• Digital Audion on Wikipedia
• LoudnessWar: Audio Fundamentals Course

You can use these applet to visualize what sounds look like:

• Sound Wave applet
• Math & Physics applets (Acoustics section)

When you have a grasp of how digital audio works, go through the Tutorials section of Audacity wiki to learn how to use the program to easily modify or convert just any sound ever with just a few clicks.

For a successful completion of this task, you are required to:

1. record a sentence in your own voice, then
2. use Audacity to raise the pitch (tone) of your voice but don’t make the recording any shorter (or faster)!

Show the result to your instructors. If you are working in pairs, have the instructors guess who made the recording. Your job is to trick them!