1© 2006, Wayne B. Dickerson

Recording your Voice Tutorials1 - Downloading and Installing

AudacityWayne B. Dickerson

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how todownload and install a free but high-qualityaudio recording program called Audacity.

Remember: This tutorial will move alongautomatically. However, if you want topause, or go back a slide or move forward,or resume playing, just right click yourmouse on the screen for these options. Ifyou want to return to the main menu, justpress the Esc key.

For ESL 110/510 part of your courserequirements will be to make soundrecordings. In fact you will make dozensof recording for your instructor before thesemester ends.

Instead of recording your voice oncassette tapes and bringing the tapes toclass,

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you may record your voice using acomputer-based recording program andsend your sound file digitally to yourinstructor.

To do this, you will need two things: (1)a microphone and (2) a recording program.

Inexpensive headset microphones(under $10) are available many places -WalMart (where I got mine), K-Mart, CircuitCity, Best Buy, Target, most drugstores, andmany other places. Mine looks like this.

As for the recording program, there aremany computer-based audio recordersavailable; some are very good, and othersare quite poor. In order for us to have a highlevel of compatibility in the recording andplayback that we do this semester, I wouldlike you to use Audacity for your recordingassignments unless you already use anothergood-quality recording program. Audacity ison many university computers. You maywant to download it to your personalcomputer, too, so you will have easy accessto it whenever you need it.

You can find Audacity’s home pageat audacity.sourceforge.net.It is not ataudacity.com. When you reach the homepage, click on Other downloads.

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On the Download page, you will seeseveral options under Stable 1.2.4 forall users. If you are a Windows user,select the first option; if you are a Macuser, select the second, and so on. Thedownloadable version of Audacity is free.Audacity on CD is available for Windowsfrom many vendors.

When you have clicked on yourplatform - Windows or Mac, or other -you will be taken to an Audacity pagewhere Audacity recommends the bestdownloads to use. Ultimately, you willdownload two products from this page.The first is the Audacity program itself.The second is the LAME MP3 encoder,listed under Optional Downloads.Audacity uses the MP3 encoder to saveyour sound files economically. So youneed this file, too.

Let’s start with the Audacityprogram. We will return later for theencoder. So click on the recommendedAudacity installer.

You will be taken to a window were youcan choose which download site to use.Pick one of the US sites for fasterservice, then click on the Download link.

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The installer will be downloaded toyour desktop. You will see an icon likethis: (install icon).

Before you double click on the iconto install the program, be sure to exit allother programs that are running on yourcomputer.

When you finish installing theprogram, an icon like this will appear onyour desktop: (program icon).

A click of the Audacity icon opens theprogram.

Now, let’s return to the Audacity siteto download the LAME MP3 encoder.On this page, click on LAME MP3encoder.

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This will take you to a help pagewhich will guide you in the downloadingprocess, whether you are downloading toa Windows or a Mac computer. Take amoment to read the simple instructions,then click on the appropriate LAMEdownload page.

Here you see a page filled with thesites where you can download the sameencoder file, called LAME-3.96.1. Selectany download site from the list.

You will then be asked if you want toopen the file or save it to your local harddrive. Select Save to Disc, and click OK.The file will be downloaded to yourdesktop in a compressed or ‘zipped’form. When the download is complete,you will see an icon like the one on theright side of the slide.

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Go to your desktop and double click onthe icon to unzip or uncompress the file. Awindow shows you a list of files that youdownloaded. The file you want is calledlame_enc.dll. Highlight this file, and thenclick the icon to unzip or uncompress thefile. In this program, it is the minus signlabeled Extract.

The program now wants to know whereto save the unzipped file. The best place toput the encoder is in the same folder withthe Audacity program files. On a Windowscomputer, the Audacity program will likely bein a folder on the C:\ drive under ProgramFiles, then under Audacity. You can browseto that site. When you reach it, click OK tocomplete the process.

With that done, you can go back to yourdesktop and delete the download icon andall its contents.

Let’s review the process ofdownloading and installing Audacity.First go to Audacity’s homepage ataudacity.sourceforge.net, and follow thelinks to download the recommendedAudacity installer to your computer froma site in the US. Close all programs onyou computer, then double click theinstaller icon to install your personal copyof the program.

To give Audacity the tools it needs,return to Audacity’s download page todownload the MP3 encoder. Install it inthe same directory where you justinstalled Audacity. On a Windowscomputer that is typically C:\ProgramFiles\Audacity.

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You are now ready to checkseveral setting on your computer andin Audacity to insure that you are ableto make the best quality recordingyou can make.

In the next tutorial, instructions onhow to set your computer are givenfor a Windows machine. Comparablesettings should be set if you are usinga Mac OS X computer.

To return to the main menu,press the Escape key.

Total run time: 8:20 min