Audacity is a cross-platform, open source application for any audio file recording, edits, and manipulations. You can use this software for Audiobooks, Podcasts, and fixing the audio on your videos.

Head on over to the main Audacity website to directly download the application for your computer, or if you are on Linux, just install it from your repository. The application is pretty simple to use, with a few little points to remember:

Recording Audio

It is easy to record audio, but make sure you use the selection tool in the toolbar to select the correct audio input if you have multiple microphones on your computer. Remember that many webcams also have mics, so select your audio source before recording. You can also set the record source to be the desktop playback if you are recording something that is playing through your speakers. You can likewise also set where the application's audio output pipes through.

Plugins

Audacity has a variety of plugins that can be used for a variety of specialized functions. In our context, you will want to install the plugins for Audiobook processing. These will allow you to set the RMS, a requirement of ACX and Findaway Voices. It will check all your files so you can be sure they will pass the initial quality check. You can follow the instructions here to install plugins:

Windows:

C:/Program Files/audacity/Plugins/

Mac:

~/Library/Application Support/audacity/Plug-ins/

Linux:

/usr/share/applications/audacity/plugins

Once you have the plugins dropped into that folder, head over to the Tools menu and Add / Remove Plugins, highlight the new plugins and hit the Enable button and you are good to go.