Audacity — The Complete Guide: Free Narration Recording and a First Look at Noise Recordings
Audacity is an open-source audio editor for Windows, macOS and Linux: recording, cutting, background-noise removal and conversion between formats such as WAV, MP3 and FLAC. Engineers use it in two ways — clean narration for tutorial videos, and a first look at noise and vibration recordings.
Audacity
Audacity Team
Audio recording and editing — narration for tutorials, plus a spectrogram for examining noise and vibration recordings.
Get it from the vendorWhat you get
- Recording and editing — cut, paste, volume and fades.
- Noise removal — strip air-conditioner hum or background noise from narration.
- Spectrogram — a view of frequencies over time.
- Spectrum analysis — a frequency plot for a selected section.
- Plugins — VST3 and Nyquist to extend what it can do.
What it can and cannot do for noise checks
You can record noise from a pump, a fan or a machine and spot a dominant frequency in the spectrogram — for example one that matches the rotation speed. This is a first check only: an ordinary microphone is not calibrated, so do not use it to measure dB levels for a report or to compare with a standard. For acoustic room measurements — Room EQ Wizard.
Related tools
To put the narration into a video — Kdenlive or Shotcut. To record the screen with sound — OBS Studio.
Room EQ Wizard (REW)
REW / John Mulcahy
Acoustic measurement of a space — frequency response, reverberation time and background noise.
Get it from the vendor
Kdenlive
KDE
A multi-track non-linear video editor — for longer training videos and project presentations, with automatic subtitles.
Get it from the vendor
Shotcut
Meltytech
A free video editor — cut, caption, add callouts and export tutorial and site-inspection videos.
Get it from the vendorOBS Studio
OBS Project
Screen recording and streaming — software tutorials, model walkthroughs and recorded lectures in high quality.
Get it from the vendorThe bottom line
Audacity is the most widely used free audio editor — ideal for narration, and useful as a first look at noise recordings as long as you remember its limits.