Audacity

[jmu11]

你们好

Hey everyone,

I've been looking around here for awhile now and can't thank you enough for how much help and direction I have already received by just searching through the forum. I'm currently in my second semester of mandarin chinese and after a relatively unproductive first semester I've realized its going to take a lot of work if I really want to become proficient in the language. Thank god I found you guys!

So here's my first question, I was reading a post where senior members were giving advice on how they got to be able to speak with good speed while still being able to pronounce their tones correctly. One member suggested listening to a clip with audacity, but instead of listening to the whole thing at once, take a small part of it and put it on repeat and just keep reading along with it until you are able to use the same pace as the reader. But I don't know how to cut up sound clips with audacity, play them in a loop, or play it in slow motion (if possible)...Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Hopefully I'll be able to post up some audio clips soon too. Thanks everyone. Really glad I found this place.

[imron]

Assuming you have already downloaded and installed Audacity, use it to open up an mp3 recording that you have.

Then use the mouse to select a portion of the recording that you are interested in. When you press play, it will only play the selected portion, which you can then continue adjusting until the selected part matches the part you are interested in.

You can then do whatever you want with the selected portion, e.g. copy and paste it into a new file, apply effects such as changing the speed (see the effects menu) etc.

If you only want to loop the selection, hold down the shift key, and the play button will turn into a loop-play button.

The Audacity online documentation also contains instructions and tutorials on how to do basic sound editing tasks.

Good Luck!

[jmu11]

太好了! 谢谢你.

[turnup]

Another feature I've found helpful in audacity is the "label track" combined with the "export multiple" feature. Basically you create a label track, and with that you can name slices of sound (they can even overlap). Once you have all the slices labeled, you can choose to export multiple from the File menu and it will generate mp3/ogg files or whatever and assign them the names you gave them from the label track. It also does track numbering for you.

I use this to generate sliced up versions of audio files for use on my mp3 player in loop 1 mode. It works great.

[querido]

With "Effect"..."Change Tempo" you can change the tempo (speed), without changing the pitch!

(Other effects can change the speed and/or pitch, etc.)

[Pengyou]

Has anyone run across software that performs the same functions as a fuduji - the tape recorders to help one study language?

[roddy]

Merging with answer . . .

[Pengyou]

Thanks! i have considered audacity for the fuduji replacement but I am hoping to find something that has a slick interface - similar to the buttons on the fuduji, that will make it very user friendly to use. Some of my students are really bright with gadgets but some barely know how to use their cell phone. Also, I have not found a way with audacity to continually repeat the original message and the user's recorded message back to back.

Edited October 28, 2009 at 12:42 PM by Pengyou

[Pengyou]

I just found this with a google search:

http://wareseeker.com/Audio-Multimedia/icoolplayer-1.0.1.0.zip/3507388

I have downloaded it and installed it. It runs but it is not very intuitive. I will play with it further - if any of you are interested, please feel free to join in.

[roddy]

Select the bit you want, then CTRL+Play to have it repeat that section should do it. I can see it might not be the most user friendly option, but it's pretty close . . .

[animal world]

This seems to be the most current of several Audacity threads to post my question.

How can i convert a .wav file into a format that Audacity will accept? Don't want to purchase any sw since i'll seldom use it.

Audacity doesn't allow importing .wav files because of "patent restrictions." A quick search led me to a site where you can download free converter sw. So, i typed in my name and email address and was directed to the next page where i learned of the requirement to also sign up for a free trial with one of their six sponsors. At that point out i deleted my info given and bailed out.

Any suggestions?

[querido]

Hey, there's an Audacity forum, and it looks active too.

Your problem sounds odd to me (can't import wav?). You're on Windows, right? That's why I'm referring you to the above, because mine works right on Linux.

I see you're being careful. Did you get your Audacity directly from them?

Edited January 25, 2010 at 06:30 PM by querido

[animal world]

Querido, i knew i could count on you! Unfortunately, i goofed in my previous post. The file in question isn't .wav but .wma. That's the file format generated by the basic Windows recorder. I run Windows Vista. Audacity gives me the following message: "it cannot open this type of file due to patent restrictions. You need to convert it to a supported audio format."

I'll have a look at the Audacity forum. If you have an answer, please post as i'm anxious to slice and dice this file and repeat saying what's on the slices until i'm being hauled off to the lunatic asylum (does this sound familiar?).

[querido]

(I'm not sure, but I think I need to say I presume that this is for your own personal use and not for copyright abuse. Right?)

Linux handles these things, and always in more than one way too.

Windows? I don't want to look into that right now, thus the link to the forum above.

I'll share some links to some powerful tools you could look into.

With foobar2000 you can probably convert it to something other than wma. That's probably what I would do. I would stick with wav and mp3, myself. This was also my favorite audio player when I used Windows.

foobar2000 with super forum here.

Sox can snip files like Audacity, but it would be simpler to convert away from wma and stick with Audacity:

sox (harder to learn, probably)

(does this sound familiar?)

Yes. Careful with that.

Edited January 25, 2010 at 11:03 PM by querido

[animal world]

Tried to post an update sooner but lost connection. Seems i'm out of luck on this so far. I browsed the Audacity forum and found a long thread on .wma issues. Downloaded the beta of 1.3.1 (or whatever it is) and also the suggested plug-in for .wma files. But i'm still getting a message from Audacity; this time around it is that it cannot understand this file format.

I'll look into foobar2000 as i prefer to stay with Audacity and the great majority of my files are in an acceptable format. (Hmm, should i really place my trust in a program called foobar?

As always, thanks for your help!

[animal world]

Update: downloaded Foobar2000 and saved the file in the 3 formats offered. None were accepted by Audacity. Will visit the Foobar forum tomorrow.

[chrix]

Maybe it's a stupid question, but why not record in the WAV format to begin with ? (the WMA format is proprietary and AFAIK also not loss-less)

[SiMaKe]

(This solution doesn't avoid the use of other software but if you have an iPod you may already have the necessary tools)

If you have iTunes for music/podcast file management, it will automatically convert wma to one of several formats (mp3, wmv, aac,etc). Select General tab under Edit-->Preferences then select format under the "import encodings" drop down. Select mp3. Then import the file via Add File to Library then use Audacity on the resulting mp3.