Audacity 3.2.1 & the audio.com 'cloud' for storing music.

[Hugh-AR]

Audacity is an audio recording and editing software application that is open source, so anyone can download it for free with no restrictions of use. This software can: record live audio, cut, copy, splice or mix sounds together, and edit various audio files (Ogg Vorbis, MP3, WAV or AIFF to name a few).

Audacity 3.2.1 & the new 'cloud' for storing music files

The Audacity team have brought out a completely new version of their product, and not only that, they have introduced a new storage area ('cloud') where musicians can store and LINK to their music recordings (WAV or MP3). You have the options to allow people to just 'View' (ie. listen to) or 'View and Download', and you have to choose which of these options you want for every piece you upload. So this is a bit like having a BOX Account with people clicking on your LINK being able to listen to your music.

But the Audacity Team have taken their idea a step further, and they give you your own 'space' .. rather like a YouTube 'Channel'. You have to decide in advance whether your music upload should be made Public, or Unlisted. Anyone visiting your 'Channel' can see all your Public music uploads, and can listen to any one of them. The Unlisted ones won't appear on your page (although you can see them) so the only people able to listen to those are people you have sent the LINK to privately.

This is their new storage area ...



Note that everything the Audacity Team do is always FREE, and FOREVER. They believe that one should not have to pay for programs or storage space when creating music. BOX have been pushing for you to 'Upgrade your plan' and pay them. If you were worried about the implications of this, worry no more. Get yourself a FREE audio.com account.

https://audio.com/

When you get there, this is what you will see. You can CREATE an account, or Sign In to an existing account.



I have already created an account, so I click on Sign In .. and see this:



That's a bold statement to get your head round!

I then put in my Username and Password (actually, I don't have to do that as Google Chrome remembers my Username and Passwords and puts them in for me) and I am taken to my page.

[Hugh-AR]

How to upload a music file to your page.

When I get to my audio.com page I see this, top right.



To upload eg. an MP3, click on Upload.
You will then get this screen, with two options for uploading .. Drag and drop; or Click to browse audio files
I normally browse for the audio file I want to upload.

Choosing Click to browse audio files I am shown the FOLDERS on my computer, so I navigate to where my MP3 file is, highlight it and click Open.



You are then asked to choose a Category. In our case, this will be Music.
So click on that.

The audio file is then uploaded. You will see a red line moving across while it is doing it, and when it has finished this will turn green.



On the right, there are two icons. A 'dustbin' which you can click on to DELETE your recent upload should you change your mind about what you have just uploaded; and a 'pencil' (indicated by the red arrow). The pencil is the EDIT button.

Your music has already been uploaded to your Page, and you could just scroll to the top and click on My Audio to take you to your Page (and see your upload listed there).



But ...

Your music has been uploaded with the 'defaults', so it's best at this point to click on that pencil and make any additions/changes you want to make.

This is what you see when you click on the pencil (Edit Audio).



The top box is the Audio Title of the song, which has been put there from the file name of the song you uploaded.
You can change this to something more appropriate, .. and I have done this here, just leaving the Title of the song.
The next box down (Permalink) is their name for the file you uploaded so leave this 'as is'.



You can put something into the Description box, either something about the song itself .. or, tell people about anything special you have done when playing and recording your song. Words in the Description box will be picked up in audio.com SEARCHES.

The last thing you can do is to add an Image (Picture) to your upload. When you do this it is best to have an image in mind, which will end up SQUARE .. so if you are using a 16:9 picture there has to be a square portion of it that you can use.

I have downloaded a picture of an ice cream, then clicked on the words Upload Image .. which took me to the folders on my computer to find it. I clicked on the file to highlight it and then clicked Open .. which put the picture in as below (you may have to roll the mouse wheel towards you to get the square).

You can make the square LARGER or SMALLER by grabbing a corner of the square and moving it inwards or outwards .. which will reveal more/less of the picture behind it.

To MOVE the position of the square over the (hidden) picture behind, you GRAB the square in the middle with the mouse and move it about to where you want it. As you reposition the square you can see different parts of the picture appearing.

I have done both of the above until I have got my square in this position.

I now click on Save Changes underneath and the square picture pops into my audio.com upoad and I see this.



Not quite finished! Scroll down to the bottom and you will see the other options you should choose. Description I have already done.

Choosing Public means that your music will be LISTED on your Page, and others will see it when they find your page. Anything LISTED on your Page can be listened to by clicking the Play arrow.
If you choose Unlisted then nobody will find it ie. you are just using audio.com as a 'storage area' (like you would do Box).

The Allow others users to download this file .. well, click that box if you want them to have access to your MP3 track, and leave it blank if you don't.



Finally, click on the Save underneath.
Don't forget to do that or all your work will be lost!

This is how my audio.com upload of Ice Cream has ended up.
Click the Play arrow to listen.



Once uploaded, there are two ways you can pass your track on to others.
Look over on the right for the Share icon. This is three little circles in the form of a triangle.



When you click on those you get the Share options.



Clicking on one of these will COPY your file to the clipboard, ready to PASTE somewhere.

Choose Copy Link if you want the LINK to pass on (as below):

Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/ice-cream-t4

And Embed Code if you want to 'embed' your track into a Forum post (as I have done up above).

In either case, you can see my 'Channel' name at the top (Hugh-AR). If you click on that you will be taken to my 'Page' and see all the other tracks I have uploaded (so long as I made them Public. If I had them as Unlisted then they won't be listed here). Hovering your mouse over any one of them will reveal a PLAY arrow for you to click on.

If you click on the Title of the song you will be taken to just that one song on my Page to listen to.

Hugh

[Hugh-AR]

So what is the connection between Audacity 3.2.1 and this cloud? Well, you'll find out as soon as you install/upgrade the version of Audacity you have. Look along the top and you will see this:



That's a new button to click on. Share Audio. What it does is to load the music file you have in the program (the waveform you are looking at) straight up into your audio.com Page (Channel). So I tried this, and I had this come up ...



... understandably, as it didn't know who I was! And I certainly didn't want it going into the account of my friend Anonymous.
So I clicked on the words Link Account ... and got this.



I couldn't see any Open Audacity (I was doing this on a laptop, not on a Mobile) so clicked on the words Link Audacity and was able to LINK it to my Hugh-AR page.

And now I see this, which has my name showing ...



... so clicked on Continue to upload my file.

When it had done it I got this.



In order to do an upload like this you have to have a 'waveform' showing in the program. That Share Audio button is inactive until you have something to upload. But you do have to 'read between the lines' with that message box. Here it is slightly larger, so you can read what it says.



The words say, Only people you share this link with can access your audio.

What this actually means is that by default, it has uploaded it as Unlisted (so it won't be in the list of uploads on your page) and also, anyone listening to your music won't be able to download it.

If that is what you wanted .. fine. If you were creating a piece of music of your own ready to burst onto the pop scene then you may only want a music friend to listen to it, and certainly not to be able to download it. The LINK created from the Copy button can be sent to them in an email for them to click on and listen to.

But for me, I would want my 'performance' to be listed on my page, and for people to be able to download it if they wanted to.

So I will click on Go to my file .. which takes me to my audio.com page.

I can then click on the pencil ...



... which takes you to Edit Audio.



Scroll down to the bottom and change those options to Public and Allow other users to download my files.
And don't forget to click the Save!



All I have talked about so far is how to upload music to the new storage area created by the Audacity Team, either by doing it directly to your page from an MP3 or WAV file stored somewhere on your computer; or by uploading it directly from the Audacity program, which must be synced to your page. In either case you should check that the permissions are set as you want them. Public or Unlisted; and if you want to Allow other users to download your files.

To be continued ...

[Ron]

Another excellent article Hugh. This should be a great help to the less IT savvy folks out there. This software is still under development so improvements should be on the cards.

Ron

[Hugh-AR]

Ron,

It's interesting that you should say,

This software is still under development so improvements should be on the cards.

And of course you are quite right. When you scroll down the audio.com Home Page you see this:

What's audio.com all about?

We are an early stage audio-sharing platform currently in beta-stage of product development. Created by musicians, producers & technologists from Muse Group (Audacity, Ultimate-Guitar, Musescore) we’re dedicated to providing technical solutions that help you further your creativity by helping you upload, share and collaborate on your audio creations.

We’re still trying to figure out exactly the kind of product we want to be so please share your thoughts on our progress so far over on Reddit or directly via email - help@audio.com

There are several questions/ideas I want to put to them, so will email them on the address above.

1. I have uploaded a few MP3 files to my 'page' now. Looking at my page, the uploads are all in order of 'last viewed'.
They are not in alphabetical order!



If I had about 50 uploads and wanted to find the Share Link for one of them, it would be a nightmare trying to find it if they are not listed in alphabetical order. Maybe they could automatically list them in alphabetical order? Or, if people really wanted their latest creations at the top, have another tab at the top that would list them in alphabetical order.

2. Are they genuinely happy for us to use this space to host songs we want to be linked to Forums for other people to listen to? Taking the music community as a whole, this could mean an awful lot of songs!

3. When we play songs on our keyboards they are usually 'covers' of songs created/sung by other artistes. We obviously wouldn't put anything up by them and claim it as our own work, or put up their original recording track. YouTube have algorithms that trawl what is uploaded, and if they find Copyright material they tell you, and normally say that the Copyright Holders give permission for your video to be played .. but that adverts will appear on it and the revenue go to the Copyright Holders. Are audio.com going to do something like this, or is audio.com only for posting your own created music?

4. Will there be a way of finding other musicians who have uploaded music? Maybe an alphabetical list of 'uploaders'? Then I could look for eg. Ron Fraser.

5. Is there going to be a 'Search Box' for us to search for uploaders or songs on this site?

Hugh

[Hugh-AR]

Now I don't use Audacity to deconstruct my music, as I play an organ (the Yamaha AR80) and a keyboard (Tyros 4). Therefore all the 'experimenting' I do with sounds is with these instruments before I record a piece.

The Tyros 4 records either to MIDI or to WAV. I usually record to WAV, as I am not likely to want to change anything after I have recorded it. But then I do use Audacity to do a few 'tweaks' afterwards, like cut out any silence at the beginning and end of a recording; Normalise the recording to optimum levels if it is too quiet; and finally to convert the recording to MP3. The music I play is listened to on the internet, and it is better 'streamed' as MP3 as the files are roughly 10% the size of WAV files and you are not likely to experience 'buffering' with slower broadband speeds.

The AR80 organ, however, is a different matter. I have to record the audio from a LINE OUT (phono plugs) under the organ, and use an Audio Interface (the Behringer UCA202) to record to Audacity via a USB Port on my laptop. I have been recording to Audacity this way for years, and then all of a sudden encountered a problem. I realised that all my recordings were coming out as TWO TRACK MONO. This is where both left and right channels are the same, and the waveform looks like this.



That is completely unacceptable! Without the recording being in STEREO you don't get instruments panned to the left and right, and you get a 'hollow' sound coming from 'over the top of your head'. Not something a musician would want to listen to.

This was happening despite setting up Audacity with the correct choices. In the end I did suss out what was going on and managed to get STEREO recordings again. It was a WINDOWS update that had caused the problem. Windows had decided that the DEFAULT for recording should be MONO as all recordings were of people shooting each other when playing Computer Games .. and you didn't need STEREO for doing that!

If you want to read about how this was sorted, click this LINK below:
Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab.
http://www.tierce-de-picardie.co.uk/viewtopic.php?f=200&t=10606

---

Recording with Audacity 3.2.1

As I am back to recording my AR80 from the LINE OUT with the Behringer UCA202 Audio Interface and Audacity 3.2.1 via a USB Port on my laptop I thought I would draw your attention to a couple of settings in this new Audacity 3.2.1.

To set up the options for my Recording Device I need to click on Audio Setup.
This is at the top, next to the Share Audio we were looking at earlier.



Below, you can see the choices I have. The word BEHRINGER is one I had put in when I sorted the WINDOWS recording options from Two Track Mono to Stereo .. so I would recognise my Audio Interface Device! ie. the Behringer device hadn't been identified as being a BEHRINGER device.



And in this next box I made sure it was set to Stereo and not Mono.



Bottom left I set the Project Rate (Hz) to 44,100.



I did try doing a recording with these settings, and it was a disaster! The recording was much too loud and was mostly in the red. Lots of clipping going on!

So how to alter the Input Volume? I had no volume control on my LINE OUT or on my BEHRINGER UCA202 (only a volume control for headphone playback). Eventually I did find out how to do it.

Top right of the Audacity screen are a Microphone (Recording Level) and Speaker symbol (Playback Level).



You grab the little rectangle with the mouse and slide it to the left or right to decrease/increase the recording volume. The 'default' was on zero, all the way to the right. For the piece I was recording the correct level was about -22.

The piece I was recording was played by a Church Organist friend of mine, Don Wherly.
Click the below to listen.
Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab.
https://audio.com/hugh-ar/donwherly-wedding-march

This was uploaded to my audio.com page from Audacity with the default of Unlisted and no option to Download. So I clicked on Go to my file, and using the 'pencil' have gone down to the bottom and changed these to Public and Allow other users to download my files.

Hugh

[Hugh-AR]

There is a video about Audacity 3.2.1 & the new 'cloud' for storing music.

Audacity 3.2 - Real-Time Effects and Free Cloud Sharing



And you can join the Audacity Forum (which is FREE) to see the sort of questions their Members ask about this program.

Do a right-click to open this up in a New Tab.
https://forum.audacityteam.org/viewforum.php?f=46&sid=8a69f6cec55732166d5c7648e973840c

As far as I can tell, most people use Audacity to create their music. Audacity is a DAW.

What is a DAW?

To answer your main question right away, DAW stands for Digital Audio Workstation. It's a software program for making music: recording, editing, mixing, and manipulating sound.

When we play music on our keyboards we have already set up the sound we want to hear, so most of the things Audacity can do will not have much relevance for us.

[Hugh-AR]

As the questions I asked the 'cloud' developers are a few posts back, I am repeating the questions here .. as (surprise, surprise!) I have now had an email from them answering my questions!

1. I have uploaded a few MP3 files to my 'page' now. Looking at my page, the uploads are all in order of 'last viewed'.
They are not in alphabetical order!



If I had about 50 uploads and wanted to find the Share Link for one of them, it would be a nightmare trying to find it if they are not listed in alphabetical order. Maybe you could automatically list them in alphabetical order? Or, if people really wanted their latest creations at the top, have another tab at the top that would list them in alphabetical order.

2. Are you genuinely happy for us to use this space to host songs we want to be linked to Forums for other people to listen to? Taking the music community as a whole, this could mean an awful lot of songs!

3. When we play songs on our keyboards they are usually 'covers' of songs created/sung by other artistes. We obviously wouldn't put anything up by them and claim it as our own work, or put up their original recording track. YouTube have algorithms that trawl what is uploaded, and if they find Copyright material they tell you, and normally say that the Copyright Holders give permission for the video to be played .. but that adverts will appear on it and the revenue go to the Copyright Holders. Are audio.com going to do something like this, or is audio.com only for posting your own created music?

4. Will there be a way of finding other musicians who have uploaded music? Maybe an alphabetical list of 'uploaders'? Then I could look for eg. Ron Fraser, a friend of mine who I know has a page.

5. Is there going to be a 'Search Box' for us to search for uploaders or songs on this site?

Hugh

Their email Reply to my questions is below ...

[Hugh-AR]

Hi Hugh,

Thank you for your detailed tutorial. Nice to see that you are helping other users with understanding how things work.

Regarding your questions:

1. We currently order uploads by date added as a default but will definitely be looking at implementing better sorting features for profiles in the future.

2. Yes we are Let us worry about the logistics.

3. While we are in the Beta stage of our product we don’t have limitations on the posting of “Covers” as from a master-recording stand point this is your own content. I can’t speak too much about any plans regarding revenue sharing of songs that have publishing attributed to it but for the moment you are more than welcome to upload covers to audio.com

4. We are working on a browsing feature at this very moment, stay tuned.

5. As with above this should be able to find both users, uploads and pieces of audio for your convenience.

Thanks,

Aleksandr Zharkov

[Hugh-AR]

To get you to someone's Page (Channel) on audio.com, all you have to do is to click on the USERNAME showing under the name of the song.

So what if you don't want other people to have access to all your songs once they have listened to one of them?

Thing is, although you have no control over someone finding your Page on audio.com, you do have complete control of what they will see when they get there.

For every song you have uploaded to your page there are options available to you. Public means anyone finding your Page (Channel) can view ie. listen to your song. You can also choose whether they can Download the song or not.

But you also have the option of making your song Unlisted. This means that if they find your Page (Channel) the song will not be listed on there .. so they can't see the song name to click on it.

To show you how you can set these options up, and what the resultant effect is, I will change the options for some of my songs.

This is what someone would see when they find my Page (Channel) when I have chosen Public and allowed the Download of each of my files:



Going to my own audio.com Page, as well as seeing the above, I have a 'pencil' showing at the top on every song. This is the Edit button (obviously people visiting my Page won't see that).



Clicking on that pencil symbol I am going to change the options for those two songs listed at the top (Cherry Pink and Feelings) from Public to Unlisted. And I have unticked the box that said Allow other users to download this file. I then clicked on SAVE.



On my own Page it tells me that I have made these two songs UNLISTED.



I have also just 'unticked' the box that says Allow other users to download this file for one other song .. but left it as Public.



The result of what I have done is shown below. Those two songs, Cherry Pink and Feelings are no longer Listed so do not appear. Please note though that this does not mean that those two songs will no longer play. If you have the LINK to an individual song then it will 'play' irrespective of whether it was set as Public or Unlisted. Unlisted means just that. The song will not be 'listed' when someone finds your Page.

The song I set not to be able to Download is the Wedding March by Don Wherly. So no Download Arrow on this one.



Going back to what I said at the beginning, people will find your Page one way or another, so if you don't want them to see all your music uploads, make them all Unlisted. Posting a LINK to one particular song in the Forum will still 'play' even if it is Unlisted. Unlisted just means it is not 'listed' .. not that it will not play.

Please note that on your own Page, all your songs are listed .. it's your Page!

YouTube Channels have a similar way of categorising your videos. Public means anyone can view them; Unlisted means anyone with the LINK can view them .. but they will not be listed on your Channel or found from a YouTube 'Search'.

Hugh

PS. I have put all my songs back to Public and Downloadable so my Page is back to that first picture, with Cherry Pink and Feelings showing in the list.

[Ron]

You have compiled an excellent series of articles on using Audacity. Everybody should be able to save their recordings here should they decide to leave Box.
These deserve to be included within the instruction manual for Audacity.

Well done, Hugh.

Ron

[Hugh-AR]

Change to the original layout of the audio.com Page .. DELETING Songs.

If you have been looking at the screenshots of my audio.com Page you will see there has been a 'dustbin' on that top line.



This was there to enable you to DELETE a song you no longer wanted. The 'dustbin' is no longer there (I suspect it was too close to the pencil (Edit) .. too easy to click on the wrong one!).



What they have done is to MOVE the dustbin to the EDIT area. So click on the pencil (Edit) and you will see the dustbin you can click on to DELETE your song.