Audacity a sound editing tool

Audacity

I was on look out for converting the old audio tapes into an MP3 format.I could successfully done and it helped me to displace the cassettes which was cluttering at my shelf. I come to know about this open source program and installed in my system. I was amazed to see the performance of such a nice sound editing software.

What is audacity?

Audacity is a digital audio editor application. Audacity is a digital audio editor and mixing platform, complete with a graphical user interface and cross-platform OS support. It's one of the most popular open-source downloads in the world.

What is the typical use?

It is a very simple audio recording tool which can be added in you computer and with ease of use and with the following features.

• Importing and exporting WAV, AIFF, MP3 (via the LAME encoder, downloaded separately), Ogg Vorbis, all file formats supported by libsndfile library
• Version 1.3.2 also supports Free Lossless Audio Codec (FLAC)
• Recording and playing sounds
• Editing via Cut, Copy, Paste
• Multi-track mixing
• A large array of digital effects and plug-ins. Additional effects can be written with Nayquist
• Amplitude envelope editing
• Noise removal
• Support for multi-channel modes with sampling rates up to 96 kHz with 24 bits per sample
• The ability to make precise adjustments to the audio's speed while maintaining pitch (Audacity calls it changing tempo), in order to synchronize it with video, run for the right length of time, etc.
• The ability to change the audio's pitch without changing the speed.
• Converting cassette tapes or records into digital tracks by automatically splitting one wav (or the other supported types) track into multiple tracks based on silences in the track and the export multiple option.
• Multi-platform: works on Windows, Mac OS X, and Unix-like systems (including GNU/Linux and BSD) amongst others.
• Os supported Windows 98/ME/2000/XP/Vista.
• Audacity can also be used for post-processing of all types of audio, including podcasts.

Other comments:

Audacity uses destructive rather than non-destructive editing. All effects are applied as permanent changes to the waveform, and are not dynamic or real-time.

Audacity lacks dynamic equalizer controls - equilization must also be applied as a permanent effect.

Audacity does not include support for keyframe-based effects. Support for scrubbing is also not included.

Audacity it will be stored as high memory occupying WAV files in the hard disk.Till such time we export into an MP3 or WMV file.

It is really a great audio editing tool.

For the procedural learning click here

For Audacity down load click

To see the Video demo

 

See how to remix

 

 

Text to speech/voice/narrator/audio reader

Text to speech reader

I have been quiet some time on the process of finding a good text to speech reader or narrator to read the  content in an audio form or to  read the doc or PDF files into audio form.

In between I have tried very much with the Vista narrator option. But I could notice there is a limitation for this. As the narrator only announces the menu and sub menu and screen settings but not the content .At times after using the narrator it was highly annoying and a big nuisance when we start working in the system.

My friend suggested of having a try on the Ultra Hal text to speech reader. He suggested this tool  as it does a fair job. I have installed the Ultra Hal text to speech reader in the system which is a free version of the tool.

 

In the free version the 3 voices are default.You can adjust the pitch and speed based on the document.

Usefulness

• This program will read all the standard Windows dialog box messages out loud to you. This can be a great aid for the visually impaired or for anyone who just wants messages to be read out loud.
• The Ultra Hal Text-to-Speech reader is also able to read the clipboard contents.

• Having use of this function you can easily have it read your email and web sites that you visit.
• Your chat messages can speak instead of text message and you can hear the messages from your  buddy
• This can be a great tool for proof reading because hearing your text out loud helps you spot all mistakes
• This program can also be used for reading e-books. Why strain your eyes trying to read a book

 

Gray areas:

• With the free version Ultra Hal Text-to-Speech Reader have only 3 standard voices.
• The documents like word and PDF files when we open throws with special characters and hence I have tried with the window pane. Might be a limitation with the free version.
• The audio file format is exported to a memory occupying WAV format we need to use tools like audacity to convert to MP3 or WMV formats.

I was quiet happy with this tool as it served the purpose though with the minimum functionality. Some of the features as mentioned I have tried converting text documents with audio file formats and then compressed to a MP3 file using audacity.

So whoever are on the look out of text to speech reader or Text to voice reader  or text to narrator I can recommend this tool which is free. Over all with the basic features with the tool I would rate it is a Good.

http://www.zabaware.com/assistant/.

To down load please click here.