Asking Questions

Audacity Forum
The Audacity Forum is a great place to ask; a Forum member will most likely have the answer, or will point you to where you can find it.

Searching the Forum
Many questions have been asked before, and you can obtain your answer just by searching! Look for the Search box top right of any Forum page, and enter some general words that relate to your question, separated by spaces. For example if you are recording from a USB turntable and can't hear the records in Audacity, try entering: USB turntable  hear  records

How to join
If you need to ask your question on the Forum, there is a quick and easy registration process.


 * Go to the Forum Registration page.
 * Agree to the Terms of Service, then enter the required information.
 * Within minutes you will receive an account activation e-mail. This is only so as to stop others signing you up when you don't want to. Click the link in this e-mail to complete your registration, then you will be able to log in to the Forum and post your first question.

Asking your question
Please post your question to the particular Forum board that corresponds to your computer operating system and version of Audacity. This makes it much easier for us to help you.


 * 1) Go to the front page of the Forum http://forum.audacityteam.org/
 * 2) Click on the link for the operating system and version of Audacity you have (for example, Audacity 2.X for Windows)
 * 3) On the page you come to, click New Topic top left
 * 4) Type a meaningful subject, for example "Cannot hear the first track when I record the next".
 * 5) Type your question:
 * 6) *Please include full details of what you are trying to do
 * 7) *State the exact version of your operating system (for example, Windows 7 x64 SP1 or OS X 10.5.8) and exact three section version number of Audacity (for example 2.0.5) - you can find the Audacity version at (or  on a Mac)
 * 8) *If you have found another topic that looks similar, by all means state the web address of the topic, but still post a new topic because it is easier to track your individual question that way
 * 9) *If you are recording something, please state what you are recording, the make and model number of the recording equipment you are using and how it connects to the computer
 * 10) *If there is an error message, please state what you did that led up to this, and what exactly the message says
 * 11) *It can help to attach a screenshot or a small audio file. You can click "Upload attachment" underneath the Preview/Post Message buttons to attach files up to 1 MB in size. Use the button to place images "inline". See How to post an audio sample and How to attach files to forum posts.
 * 12) *Use Preview to make sure the message is correct, then Post Message to post it.

If this is your first post or you have not yet made many posts, you will receive an e-mail in due course confirming that your post has been approved. Please don't post a duplicate of your original message during this time. If you post often, your message will be posted immediately to the Forum.

By default you will be subscribed to the topic you created so will receive an e-mail when a reply has been made. Make sure you don't accidentally uncheck "Notify me when a reply is posted" when posting the message, otherwise you will have to keep checking the topic online to see if there is a reply. You can check the topics you posted to at any time by clicking "View your posts" near the top of any Forum page.

You will not normally receive any other e-mails from the Forum unless you post to other topics. To unsubscribe from any topic, do one of these:
 * Click the link for "User Control Panel" top left of any page, click the "Overview" tab at far left, then "Manage subscriptions" underneath that tab
 * Click the "Unubscribe topic" link at the bottom of the topic you subscribed to.

In the same way, if you find an interesting topic started by someone else that you would like to follow, click "Subscribe topic" at the bottom of that topic.

Audacity-users mailing list
This is another place where Audacity users can get together, learn about our program, share tips and ask questions. The difference here is that this a mailing list, meaning you usually send messages to the list by e-mail using your e-mail program. You will also receive an e-mail every time any other list member makes a post. Sometimes there can be a lot of e-mails if an interesting topic is started! To reduce the number of e-mails, you can always subscribe in "digest" mode, which combines each day's messages into one large e-mail.

If you only want to ask a question every now and then, the Forum may suit you better.

How to subscribe
Go to the list information page. Fill out the subscription information half way down the page. You will be sent an e-mail requesting confirmation. This is only so as to stop others signing you up when you don't want to. Click the confirmation link in the e-mail to subscribe and start receiving e-mails. Note: This is a public mailing list - messages are seen by all list subscribers, and posted on several web sites where the messages are archived.

Searching for an answer
You can sometimes find an answer quickly by going to the Nabble archive of the list and finding a similar topic to yours. Type in some words in the search box at the right like "No sound USB microphone". Providing you are subscribed to this list and have a Nabble account, you can also post messages to the list from Nabble, using your web browser.

Asking your question
This list is essentially one large collection of individual messages. Each message on this same topic is a "thread", which keeps messages on the same subject together. So if you ask questions here, please give us the following information. You'll get your answer much quicker that way.


 * Give the subject of your message a descriptive title that summarises your problem - "No sound in iTunes after recording from USB microphone" is great; "Help me!!" isn't...
 * Tell us what computer operating system you are using (for example, Windows XP or Mac OS X 10.5.1)
 * Tell us exactly what version of Audacity you are using (see Help > About Audacity, or Audacity > About Audacity on a Mac computer)
 * If this is a recording problem, tell us what equipment you are recording with, and how it's connected to the computer

Etiquette
Following these rules helps everyone get the most out of the list, whether searching for an answer or replying to a message:


 * To start a new topic: Choose a new subject and Press "Compose" in your e-mail software to start a completely new e-mail. Please don't take someone else's message with its own subject and content and post your own unrelated material into it. If you must compose a new message by replying to someone else's, at least change the subject and remove all the text from the original message. Note that this still means the online archives of this list will keep the old subject, because they store the header references to the old subject. This makes it very difficult to follow messages online, so please try to compose a new message if you can.
 * When replying to a message:
 * Don't send a reply which includes a complete copy of the message you are replying to, unless it's really necessary. Retain only those parts of the original message that are relevant to your answer. Otherwise the message becomes too long by the time several people have replied.
 * If you are replying to a digest e-mail, change the subject to that of the individual message from the digest that you are replying to.

How to unsubscribe or change your options

 * Towards the bottom of the list information page, look for the "Audacity-users Subscribers" section. At the bottom of that section, you'll find "To unsubscribe from Audacity-users, get a password reminder, or change your subscription options enter your subscription email address:". Enter your e-mail address and click the "Unsubscribe or edit options" button.
 * On the page that follows, look for "Unsubscribing from Audacity-users" a little way down the page. If you really want to leave the list, click "Unsubscribe".